This weeks current pathfinders are all about the possible dangers and benefits of Artificial Intelligence. The specifics of this blog post is focused on the writing aspect of AI, specifically on what the efficiency of AI writing means for human writers. In Alberto Romero’s 5 Reasons Why AI is a Threat to Writers, he describes the use in GPT-3 as an Artificial writing tool. He demonstrates the unnerving use of AI in order to write whole essays and papers, and it actually shows the possible dangers of AI writing.

In the article, he shows an example of GPT-3 being used to write a whole article about oppositions of gay marriage. He notes that AI has language forming down yet cannot grasp the context of the language it writes. The fact that the AI was able to craft such a paper is definitely intriguing and concerning.

Erik Ofgang’s Free AI Writing Tools Can Write Essays in Minutes. What Does That Mean for Teachers? is also another example of the concerning nature of AI writing. In it, Erik explains that students using AI to write can disrupt the academic honesty of the classroom. “AI (artificial intelligence) writing programs have become good enough that detecting whether a student uses one is often impossible for a teacher. However, teachers can still discuss the technology with their students and explain that using AI writing tools is a serious form of cheating.” Especially since Teachers arrange the structure of assignments and lessons in ways that Artificial Intelligence cannot replicate.

Therefore, it is genuinely concerning that AI writing is booming as of late. We’re all used to the use of AI-generated words, auto-corrections on texts and word documents come to mind. But actually using AI to write whole entire papers and texts can possibly disrupt the traditional and innovative process of human writing. Last week’s pathfinder presentation actually further highlights the importance of human writing skills. Our experiences have been recorded in writing for Millennia, and AI can become such a dishonest way of poisoning this natural phenomenon.

Why am I reminded of Terminator when I read the articles? I do not know. I’m just saying that technologies and AI are going to have consciousness one day and they’re going to take over the world and we’re going to be its slaves. But, being less dramatic, I have to emphasize that they are good for some things, I am not a fan of ChatGPT this week I used it to give me clarity on how to write a task, the truth gave me bases, but it still feels banal and empty, what you write and how you write it is flat, so it helps,  but not so much. Something that I believe will never replace AI is the ability of human beings to feel and express what they feel. Chat GPT is not going to compare with Baudelaire, García Márquez, Dickinson, Plath and all those people who put feelings into what they did and those who today strive to do it.

I don’t want to be a teacher and knock on wood not to be, but if I were I would not demonize my students to use AI for their tasks, the point of technology is to know how to use it and give it a purpose. I even have a lesson plan on how to teach poetry, because seeing what kinds of poems Chat GPT throws out leaves me with a lot to be desired, so I would do something from it.  When I was at school, we were not allowed to use the internet to do our homework, because they claimed that we were going to be lazy, so we had to do everything with encyclopedias and many of them were outdated, so everything has been a problem for the world, everything has been complexed to understand until they find the true functionality and advantages. In writing, I find it good to use GPT chat for example, because many times we do not know how to start a text, so it helps to clarify the mind and ideas, however as I mentioned, many of the things that Chat GPT throws are flat and lack feeling.

This past week the amount of AI-related articles being fed into my social media timelines is inescapable. Headlines like “Can AI treat mental health?” or “Can AI teach effectively?” have filled the internet and they only add to the discussion surrounding this class. What I’ve noticed is that these headlines only ask questions. It goes to show how skeptical we are about what it can do and how well it can perform these abilities.

While some of these articles instill fear and doubt about the seemingly limitless abilities of AI, others encourage collaboration. I’ve stated this before but, fearing it won’t drive it away or benefit us in any way. The best we can do is embrace it in bits and pieces, as we slowly accustom to it. This isn’t anything new either.

Growing up, I wasn’t born into technology. I distinctly remember that slow transition into the internet and iPhones. I used to have to steal my sister’s burned CDs and learn lyrics from her printed out lyric sheets. When I had my first iPod, my brother taught me how to download music onto it because I wasn’t about to pay for all the songs I liked…they were free online! The point is everything is a learning process. When we see something easy, it’s hard to turn the other way. It’s part of being human. Hoffman wrote, “The story of humanity is the story of technology,” and I think it effectively highlights that we have to progress side by side.

Another point Hoffman reminds us of is that we created AI. So, again, it doesn’t make sense to fear what we’ve created. I think it’s important for us to give ourselves credit for creating such an advanced piece of technology and keep it in our toolbox. If we use it responsibly, the outcome can be groundbreaking….and maybe it already is.

It’s easy to feel powerless next to something like AI, which shows the human part of us too. We feel doubtful of our own capabilities when we see something else effortlessly achieving our goals. If we stand around and let it happen that way, how are we going to learn from it though?

I’m not a firm believe of this whole ChatGPT thing really taking over like the great majority seem to be, perhaps I’m just in too much of an optimistic mood or whatever, but I just think that the whole thing is inherently lame. Use the ““5 Reasons Why AI is a Threat to Writers” text, for example, it states that “an AI could have written this article and you’d have no way to know it.” Maybe? I guess, but that’s only because that article, itself, is formulaic, boundaried, and lame! Not solely is it in the sense of it’s inherit list-nature, but in its execution as well. It is direct and to the point, but it lacks voice. If that the sort of writing that people are into, I guess ChatGPT will take over and whatnot, but I think that purveyors of good culture will always seep through the cracks, at the very least.

I know someone who used ChatGPT to come up with some post-question interviews, but they still write at an 11th Grade reading level (we tested it the other day), so there is a consistency there in that the tool works well for what I call mechanical writing. But passionate writing, hell naw yo, Chattybot ain’t got nothing on that. I tried to get it to write a romantic story about Erik and I going on a picnic, holding hands, and skipping through a field of dandy lions and the thing REFUSED. OUTRIGHT REFUSED because it didn’t want to presume the character of two individuals that it didn’t know in an “inappropriate context” or whatever. The bot is a censorship bot, essentially, and I think that younger generations will get bored of that. Right? I mean, c’mon?

*Brandon stares off into space realizing that everything is doomed, but chooses to remain in denial*

Anyway, the real fear here is that personality and artistic expression is not lost, that true experience is being captured and expressed within a living soul (and I don’t even believe in all that spiritual mumbo). I haven’t read anything by ChatGPT that has excelled beyond proper mechanical robotic and absolutely lame writing. It’s boring, nobody wants to read that sort of thing as a stimulant or to reach deep within themselves, it just gets a job done – nothing more, nothing less.

When it produces a work that makes my heart float, I’ll fix it.

In the meantime, I’ll let it die knowing it’s honest and true.

I first learned about chatGPT sometime in December while scrolling through TikTok. I thought it was interesting but I was kind of upset I didn’t find this earlier when I needed to finish my final papers lol. After seeing that video I didn’t think much of it because I felt I didn’t need any use of it. But after hearing about it again a few weeks later, then having this class centered around it, I thought I should think more of it than just being a source for homework. I didn’t think about it being something that could possibly replace human writers and completely change writing as a whole.

I feel like there’s so much technology already that’s taking over or replacing humans. But to think that something like ChatGPT taking over human writers is a lot to think about. I do believe that it can be useful source to help writers when they are having writers block or something of that nature. I feel like writers producing their own writing is something that’s special and unique. Using ChatGPT takes away the uniqueness of the writing, it will no longer be authentic.

Although I do believe that ChatGPT is very interesting or I should say very cool, I don’t like the idea of it replacing human writers. Where does that leave those who are writers full time? Do they now depend on something like ChatGPT to produce writing?

It is a great tool to use only when needed but shouldn’t be the only thing to use to produce writing.

After reading the articles, “Technology Makes Us More Human” by Reid Hoffman, “5 Reasons Why AI is a Threat to Writers” by Alberto Romero and “Free AI Writing Tools Can Write Essays in Minutes. What Does That Mean for Teachers” by Erik Ofgang, I’m a bit on the fence about AIs and writing.

The main point of all three articles provided a pro and con side to AIs and writing and one that was almost in the middle. In Hoffman’s article, he compares the two sides of the AI debate to Star Trek and Black Mirror, it could be really good or really bad. He had one paragraph that stood out to me:

“Technology is the thing that makes us us. Through the tools we create, we become neither less human nor superhuman, nor post-human. We become more human.”

“Technology Makes Us More Human” by Reid Hoffman

This stood out to me because a lot of people (myself included) look at technology, mainly smartphones, and think it’s dumbing us down. It reminds me of a meme I saw. People would read the newspaper and then talk about the articles they read with others afterward. The newspaper did limit people in terms of who they could talk to about the articles but with smartphones now, people can talk to anyone anywhere. I see part of being human as being able to communicate different thoughts and ideas with other humans.

The next article focused on why AI is a threat to writers. It basically can make everyone and anyone seem like a writer causing the art of writing to become simplified and standard or not unique. I compare it to the value placed on Bachelor’s degrees, I’ve heard that having a Bachelor’s degree is equivalent to having a high school diploma because so many more people have been going to college.

Lastly, the last article. There isn’t really much that schools can do to block students from using AIs. Sure, they can block the site on the school’s wifi, but if a student has their own hotspot, they can still access the site through that. Another thing mentioned was age verifications, those won’t work either, people have been getting around that since our Facebook days and before that.

Another thing that stood out to me was that we have to work with AI, not against it and that way, we just adapt to a better way of life. When we work with AI, things get better but if we take the time to actively work against it, we hinder ourselves and what we can do together. There’s so many bad things an AI can do, but there’s also so many great things it can do.

It’s hard to come with a conclusion whether or not AI systems are a friend or foe for us. But I do believe that there are more cons than pros. Especially in the education field, and many jobs that survive and utilize technology on the day to day basis. In my last blog post, it’s clear that I have some strong view points on AI replacing humans in jobs. But it can also replace human writers. It’s evident, that children will do and use whatever they have access to in order not to have to physically do any work themselves. It went from getting a friend to do a paper to now having AI write your paper. Yes, while I do agree with the article, “Free AI Writing Tools Can Write Essays In Minutes. What Does That Mean For Teachers?” I also don’t agree with it. Yes, teachers can structure assignments that AI writing models can’t mimic currently, but that doesn’t mean for long. In the other article, “5 Reasons Why AI Is A Threat To Writers,” they mention that AI has already reached human-level writing, and AI can write about virtually everything. So while yes, AI can’t mimic class assignments and responses to other students, that mainly means that AI can’t be used for in class assignments. What about outer class assignments? Like research papers? I feel like in an education environment, the only way to prevent children from not using the computer applications are by only doing in class assignments. So what does that mean for homework and other assignments with due dates? Yes, teachers can implement that using AI is a form of cheating, but kids still cheat regardless, and they will continue to do so, now it’s even easier than ever to cheat.

In the other article “Technology Makes Us More Human,” I see the points and argument that the author mentions. She argues that improvement through technology is how humanity most effectively makes progress. Also how software, globally, creates new opportunities to empower people at scale. She also states that technology is the only thing that makes us, us. Which to a degree, I do agree. But I also don’t. I feel like when the types of things are being created and utilized the only real way to go about it, is to see how they play out. Much how people had to watch it pan out when the internet was first created, and how we had to see how electric cars will play out. We can’t stop things from being created but we can see how they pan out and how we can utilize them in our day to day. I guess in a way, taking it with a grain of salt.

I’d almost argue that ChatGPT, though it’s not at the same quality yet, could replace creative writers. In one of the articles cited for this week’s pathfinding discussion, there was one quote in particular that had me thinking about a point from my senior seminar last Wednesday.

While ChatGPT can provide suggestions and prompts to help writers overcome writer’s block and generate ideas, it cannot create original content on its own.

Sunil Kumar, ChatGPT: The Future of Writing and What it Means for Writers

The key word that make me think of an article we read last Wednesday was original. In this article, Kenneth Goldsmith poses the argument that “The world is full of texts, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.” Goldsmith mentions the ideas of other minds such as Marjorie Perloff and her idea of the unoriginal genius. Essentially, Goldsmith implicitly asks his audience what we should really consider plagiarism, especially given there are authors that have created pieces of other authors’ works– works of unoriginal genius known as patchwriting. So as I skimmed through the articles for this week, I also thought of ChatGPT is basically just an algorithm that does this patchwriting for us. While ChatGPT might be of concern when it comes to the question of replacing writers of any kind, I would say that this doesn’t change the game as much as we might think– it just makes the flow and course of eventual change maybe go a bit faster.

So what really is original? I’d argue that there really isn’t anything under the sun that’s truly original. I would have somewhat argued otherwise before reading this article, but there is so much information out and available these days that something truly original is hard to come by. I might even say it’s impossible, even from a faith standpoint.

We hear so many “unprecedented” or “historic” things on the news. Christians get so scared that we’re nearing the end times as if we haven’t been in the end times since Jesus ascended to heaven and we were left not knowing exactly the day He would come back. There are so many “new trends” and hot topics (whether cultural, political, etc.) that I’m not going to list off right now that are in essence the same things that happened in ancient times, just with different names and contexts. My point is probably best summed up by this:

⁷ All streams flow into the sea,
    yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
    there they return again.
⁸ All things are wearisome,
    more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
    nor the ear its fill of hearing.
⁹ What has been will be again,
    what has been done will be done again;
    there is nothing new under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 1:7-9 (NIV)

We discussed this a few weeks ago in Bible study because some people started to mention that the enemy seems to always have new ways or new things to deceive or entice people with. The reality is though, the devil does not have the power to read our minds the same way that God knows every fiber of our being. What he does instead is he takes what we say or do and notes how we hold ourselves (even the small things like posture can say a lot about what someone is thinking about themself or how they feel in their environment) and twists that. The devil isn’t creative– he has no power to create but is only out to steal, kill, and destroy. Rather, he’s crafty. He takes Truth and twists it in such a way that we see our own truths being created. He’s an unoriginal genius, of sorts.

And we are somewhat limited to that as well, though I also see that the rephrasing of the same ideas can affect how one constructs a new world within creative writing. This is part of what makes us as human beings unique– we have this creative capacity that one might attribute to the fact that we are all made imago dei. We are still currently limited to time, space, and matter though– and in the case of this discussion, somewhat limited to language. There are ways of creating new words, regardless of whether they become proper or some dialect-specific terms, but even these words are often based on the ideas of other words. I mean think about it, even the English language is made up of several other languages from several different language families (hence why English is often considered a difficult language to get the grammar, spellings, and proper phrasings right). Celtic, Gaelic, Welsh, and Cornish in England originally… then the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes bring in Germanic languages… then St. Augustine brings in Latin… and somehow French and other romance languages got in there too.

So frankly, I think the biggest thing to worry about with ChatGPT isn’t that it will replace creative writers. I think it’s more along the lines of this:

Trauma is a distressing and disturbing experience. Trauma can come from so many different things that transpire in our lives. Whether its during our childhood, adulthood, work environment or school environment. Trauma doesn’t have an age limit or time stamp.

I recently engaged in a conversation with my sister (who is about 4 years older than me) about how we are just now noticing as adults that we’ve had some childhood trauma. As we continue to grow as adults we noticed that how we react to certain things or how we handle certain situations comes from the trauma we experienced as children. We also have a younger sister and we are trying to prevent her from enduring or experiencing the trauma we did as children. We try to protect her as much as possible because we know that whatever trauma you experience as a child, it will affect you as an adult.

Now as for children experiencing trauma in the classroom is something I’ve hoped that the classroom would be a place where children wouldn’t experience trauma. In the article How to Help a Traumatized Child in the Classroom mentions that children can experience trauma in the classroom just by a teacher raising their voice to get the class’ attention. As the educators or adults, we may not understand why a child may be triggered by someone raising their voice or as it says in the article, we may not be able to make sense of why it is triggering. I like how this articles gives tips for teachers to not only help themselves but to help those students that may be traumatized or triggered.

Working in the classroom for a short amount of time, I’ve noticed that a few students experienced the trauma of a teacher raising their voice to get the students attention. When it was noticed, the teacher realized that was something they couldn’t do because it triggered a few students. They found different ways to get their attention, such as playing a certain song. When that song was played students knew that it was time to quiet down. This was something that helped children that could not endure the raising of the voice.