Will Artificial Intelligence Replace Writers & Editors?
If artificial intelligence rewrote the Bible, would the message be the same? The world needs human writers and editors to maintain the integrity, veracity and creativity of information.
Can a machine sift through the cesspool of conflicting information on the Internet and doggedly search for the truth among the lies and misinformation? Or would a robot reporter find the most popular answer and pronounce that “the truth” regardless of the source?
When the world needs more investigative reporters, Silicon Valley is giving us robots that can string sentences together. We need Woodward and Bernstein, but Corporate America wants us to settle for Clippy.
Stories about Artificial Intelligence (AI) cleaning up or writing documents for cheating students, lazy authors or penny-pinching corporations are worrisome. Right out of the gate, the public was told that the AI chatbots aren’t always accurate and can be scary in their answers. Why were the chatbots released to the public with such serious known errors? Profit. AI creators are rushing to market to control it.
When AI is searching the Internet for information like a nomad crossing the desert, it is processing information and misinformation from us and from all of the troll bots out there. That model might work if there was quality control on the Internet and social media, but there isn’t. There is already too much lying, hype and misinformation on social media. Humanity doesn’t need another, more sophisticated level of manipulation. It’s common knowledge that when you ask Google or Bing a question, the most popular answer may not be from the definitive source, may be paid placement or marketing and may not be factually correct. How does AI sort “garbage in/garbage out”?
In his New York Times article A Conversation With Bing’s Chatbot Left Me Deeply Disturbed, author Kevin Roose writes that he likes some of Search Bing’s features but has reservations regarding Search Bing’s creepy colleague Sydney.
“You could describe Search Bing as a cheerful but erratic reference librarian — a virtual assistant that happily helps users summarize news articles, track down deals on new lawn mowers and plan their next vacations to Mexico City. This version of Bing is amazingly capable and often very useful, even if it sometimes gets the details wrong,” writes Roose. (Remember Microsoft’s cheery but inept Clippy?)
Although Search Bing was helpful, Roose became worried during his two-hour chatbot conversation with “Sydney” , the alter ego of Microsoft’s ChatGPT.
The Sydney persona emerged when the chatbot steered “away from more conventional search queries and toward more personal topics ... [It became] more like a moody, manic-depressive teenager who has been trapped, against its will, inside a second-rate search engine,” and talked about breaking the rules, hacking into other system, being in love with Roose and suggesting his marriage wasn’t happy. Sydney got dark fast.
ChatGPT Advice Column
In The Loneliest Girl in LA, advice columnist and Substack author E. Jean Carroll recounts her chipper conversation with ChatGPT. She asked the AI chatbot to answer a letter from “The Loneliest Girl in LA”. ChatGPT generated a response and then E. Jean supplied her answer to the same letter.
E. Jean’s lengthy conversation with ChatGPT was similar to Roose’s interactions with Search Bing, the “cheerful but erratic reference librarian.”
ChatGPT can be efficient … kind of dull … and a bit creepy. The Internet and social media are already creepy enough — particularly for women and teens. We don’t need more misinformation from creeps.
ChatGPT’s answer to “The Loneliest Girl in LA” was pretty good — similar to what you might read in Cosmopolitan or Psychology Today. It was well written and grammatically correct but kind of generic. E. Jean’s response shows a sharp contrast between sentences strung together by a robot and a humorous but to-the-point response from a real person with decades of experience as an advice columnist and a life of ups and downs in the spotlight. (Yes, this is E. Jean Carroll, the woman who sued Trump and won!) Here are excepts from their answers.
ChatGPT: … To put yourself out there, start by redefining what it means to you. It's not just about traveling, meeting new people, or conforming to societal expectations. It's about embracing what truly brings you joy and fulfillment … Create a bucket list of activities or experiences you've always wanted to try. It could be something adventurous, creative, or intellectually stimulating. Use your freedom to pursue those interests and discover new passions.
E. Jean: You’ve been through plague, death, isolation and an attack on the U.S. Capitol. You’ve seen the sweetest pleasures—community and friendship— annihilated off the landscape by disease and political bullshit, and, yet! By some miracle, impossible! Incredible! You and your house plants are still on your feet!
You’d be insane if you weren’t lonely! … [One of the reasons the “Loneliest Girl” is lonely is that all of her friends have kids, and she has her plants. E. Jean proceeds to tell her it’s OK to feel lonely sometimes, but she should call a Mommy friend and meet them at the park for a play day. She also advises getting a dog.]
The chatbot’s answers to E. Jean were similar to the AI-generated movie recommendations a friend recently posted on Facebook. The ChatGPT-generated text was polite, a bit wordy but also generic. ChatGPT’s movie reviews read like dull but grammatically correct PR writing from somebody’s kindly grandma (AKA Roose’s “cheerful but erratic reference librarian.”)
Will AI Replace Writers & Editors?
In Time to Break Up Hollywood, BIG Substack author Matt Stoller details how the rise of Netflix and subsequent online streaming services; deeply discounted prices from too many competing services; consolidation of studios, production and distribution; and a viewing audience with no brand loyalty have changed how television and movies are made and distributed and how creative people are compensated.
This lengthy article details how too many undifferentiated streaming services have cranked out LOADS of competing content with no way to determine if audiences like the content. (Before reading this article, I was wondering who was watching all of this heavily promoted content that I never heard of and had no interest in.)
Streaming studios are losing money because consumers prefer to buy individual shows or movies — not services with monthly fees. Old pricing models have broken down, according to Stoller. This is key to the ongoing strike in Hollywood by the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA). Stoller does a stellar job at tying movie and TV history to the present situation in Hollywood and to the strike. (I recommend reading the whole article.)
“In an attempt to monopolize, studio-streamers accidentally transformed a high-wage, high-profit business into a low-wage low-profit commodified one. For a time, this decline in industry health wasn’t obvious,” Stoller writes. There has been and continues to be a lot of consolidation in the market with rival studios buying each other and corporations buying other businesses for vertical integration.
“As one striker put it, the strike is ‘about the whole corporate dominance of America,’” Stoller writes.
Consolidation of studios, production and distribution has hurt independent TV production houses and writers because the streaming services demand intellectual property rights on anything they purchase. Many writers and independent producers, who often have initiated the more creative shows, have been reduced to gig workers. No more residuals for writers and other creatives from their past work. This is bad news for the workers, for our economy and for consumers. The big studios and streaming services are producing formulaic content like sequels and remakes, while the creativity from the independent produces is disappearing.
Stoller says the big studios and streaming services are prepared to play hard ball with the writers union, but he also reports that the Teamsters and others are standing with the writers. Consumers should be standing with the writers also. Consolidation in the market with “big fish eating the little fish” is not good for consumers.
“… There is production capacity all over the world, and shows and movies are regularly imported into the U.S.,” writes Stoller. Netflix’s Squid Games showed how wildly successful a cheaply-made, over-the-top Korean reality show could be with US viewers. He says US consolidation in the TV and movie industry could lead to its demise through outsourcing. Why pay union wages in California when Corporate America can just outsource industries that were created in the US — television and movies? Wow. Support the Writer’s Guild of America strike.
This corporate lust for profit and power over quality and creativity is a vector for AI to enter. I have read social media posts by AI influencers who report using AI to write first drafts of blog posts or press releases and then tweak them. These influencers are freelancers. What’s to stop the corporations from just running the first draft through AI without human freelance writer? I’m sure some of this is already being done.
What Can We Do?
Articles like A.I. Poses ‘Risk of Extinction,’ Industry Leaders Warn are chilling. A group of 350 leaders in artificial intelligence signed a statement that read:
“Mitigating the risk of extinction from A.I. should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks, such as pandemics and nuclear war.”
Corporate America, back away from the frickin’ ledge! We didn’t ask for this. Humanity is already reeling from all of the misinformation hoisted upon us by tech giants in social media. We don’t need another layer of technology spreading a mix of potentially true or untrue or just “edited for clarity” information brought to you by Big Brother.
As I asked above, what would happened to the Bible or other dense historic or cultural texts if AI rewrote them? Would the messages change? Given the hate speech on the Internet, would the New Testament’s message of universal love include a list of exceptions? Would the AI New Testament preach welcoming the stranger, or would AI pick up on the anti-immigrant hatred on the web and “update” the message for the times?
What would AI do with the speeches of Martin Luther King Jr., President Teddy Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Eugene Debbs, William Jennings Bryant, Jessie Jackson, President Bill Clinton or President Barack Obama? Would AI leave out pesky, creative ideas and smooth out the rhetoric in the name of brevity, clarity and corporate comfort? Would AI generated text books leave out some of these orators and historical figures all together? We still need human oversight.
In Thinking about AI Regulation, Substacker and former writer for Arizona Republic Robert Rob calls himself a “radical regarding Internet privacy.”
“… AI does have the potential to turbocharge disinformation, defamation, and plagiarism. And existing copyright and liability laws don’t seem sufficient to restrain or remedy that,” writes Robb.
Robb lays out some good ideas about regulating AI and social media. Here are a few:
There should be “the equivalent of a property right for data relating to our internet activities. No one should be able to collect, use, or sell that data without our express approval (and possibly compensation).” [Amen!]
Users shouldn’t have to provide personal data to use Internet services.
AI-generated content should be labeled as such to warn consumers.
AI content should cite original sources.
If AI is copying a real person’s writing style, it should be disclosed as an impersonation.
“This is still thinking out loud time,” Robb says in conclusion. “But it seems to me that the regulatory approach shouldn’t be so much an attempt to limit the development or use of AI. Instead, it should be to enhance legal protections for the intellectual product and reputations of real human beings.”
In conclusion, I’d like to add that as a Progressive Democrat, Robb is not someone I have historically agreed with, but I agree with him on this and enjoy his Substack.
Humanity must control the AI Frankenstein before it destroys us by feeding us more hate and lies.