My Opinion of Artificial Intelligence

by Valerie Fuqua

Please welcome Valerie Fuqua to the Writer's Journey Blog with her take on AI.

MY OPINION OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

by Valerie Fuqua

AI. It’s a pretty hot-button topic these days, isn’t it? Lots of polarized opinions, lots of anger and vitriol, and a lot of conflicting claims as well!

Personally, I like to stay well away from the fight. I like to talk to people on the phone. I prefer to hand my money to a human being. I avoid dealing with any kind of automated response system. This is just not what I need in my life.

I’m also very disappointed in the fact that they’re using a lot of hidden sources to train AI. Instead of controlling what we put into it and making sure it’s right, they’re taking random people’s data and dumping it in.

Well…random people kind of suck at writing. We’ve all seen those posts where half the words are misspelled, everything is in lowercase except a random cap in the middle of a word, and the second half of the sentence doesn’t work with the first half. And you just stare at that thing and go, “Um…what? Is that English?”

Adding to that the fact that many people did NOT agree to have their creative and intellectual property dumped into AI to train it and give it a database to pull from when creating or altering a written or designed piece for you. This further complicates the situation and makes me wonder just how helpful it’s going to be for you to use this.

Could you get sued over this? Lose the house? I don’t know. The legal implications of using AI are still pretty nascent and transient, but authors and other creators are fighting like hell to get laws changed to protect their ownership of their own works. I really wouldn’t recommend stepping into the middle of all this. I’m pretty sure that’s going to take some time to figure out, and they may go back and forth on several issues before they settle on something. I would be ready for legal to become illegal and vice versa several times before we’re through!

   The moral implications are really what I try to focus on. These are consistent. They shouldn’t change. It’s either right to let stolen words populate for you, put together by a machine that doesn’t know an expression from a grammatical error, nor York from New York. Yes, AI has flagged York as spelled wrong because it thinks we forgot the ‘New’. So…until we’re ready to edit England out of the history books, I don’t think it’s time for AI to be making any real decisions on anything.

            I would like to share that I don’t think AI is entirely useless or bad to use. I’m sure there’s plenty of use one can get from it, beyond just messing around with it a bit. I see nothing wrong with using AI to alter existing works, like making your painting a charcoal drawing. Or fixing the grammar of your story so that it doesn’t sound quite so bad. My grammar isn’t great either, and I’m iffy on punctuation. Just bear in mind, AI literally doesn’t know the difference between snow and fur, or two characters named Alexa, so it’s best to always check its work and redo anything that isn’t right yourself.

I also strongly recommend that anyone using AI to edit NOT allow AI to decide on any changes for you, and assume anything it suggests could be wrong! Go through each one, approve individually. If you don’t know the answer, ask a human. AI doesn’t know the difference between fixing grammar and changing voice either. It’ll take you right out of your writing, if you let it! Be aware of its faults and failings, and do not trust it blindly to know more than you do; just treat it like an extra pair of eyes to catch what you might not.

            Alternately, I’m aware that a lot of people use it like a toy. I think this can verge on some dangerous territory if you have a decent project evolve out of that and you want to take it further. I wouldn’t. I sat down, thought things through, and considered what I would want done if it were MY writing or artwork being given to people. The answer I got…

I wouldn’t like it if this were happening. I wouldn’t like it if people use it for fun and personal use, but at least it wouldn’t hurt me because it’s not being posted publicly, shared anywhere, or published for money that should’ve gone to me since I did the work. I WOULD be very upset if people made it available for anyone to see, and it’s a combo of my work and others, thus misrepresenting my abilities, or just my work, and thus stolen. So, when I use AI, it’s just for spell and grammar check and to get some images for inspiration to write a story about. The images are just for me, no one else sees them, and I just describe the stuff in it that actually works for my story, chuck the rest.

            This is my line. I set it up this way so I wouldn’t be tempted to cross it and compromise someone else’s work or expose myself, legally. However things turn out, I know I’m okay and I haven’t hurt others. I believe others should do the same.

            It’s important that we remain mindful of the fact that AI is still pretty new. It’s a child. It’s still learning, and like our own children, it may show some skills with things and the ability to take some of the workload off your hands, but it’s also just as capable of really messing things up on you!

BIO: Valerie is an autistic artist who enjoys bringing beauty and imagination into a plain and boring world. She draws, paints, sculpts and many other things, turning anything she touches into a beautiful decoration. She has spent many years writing, editing and learning to connect with readers as an autistic author. Find her at: https://buymeacoffee.com/wildcard999