Tag: blog

July 2024 Blog

Welcome to my new look website for the second half of 2024. Not sure where the first half went! I think I was a little too ambitious before and life always gets in the way! My aim is to bring you a blog at least once a month, with additional articles when I can.

I would really like the new-look website to be more inter-active. So please do send in your comments about my blogs or suggest any topics that you’d like to read about.

For this month, I thought I’d have a go at explaining AI – Artificial Intelligence.

AI: what is it and should writers be using it?

AI – Artificial Intelligence – is the system by which computers are doing things that have been and are being done by humans. AI has been compared to the Industrial Revolution when machines took over traditional roles such as weaving.

You are probably reading most days about the latest AI applications: smart systems in our homes, enhanced diagnoses in healthcare, face recognition, driverless cars – the list will undoubtedly continue growing. And already, such well-known products as Google, Siri and Alexa are all examples of AI.

AI works by having access to all the digital information that is out there in the world – an almost inconceivable amount of data. But it means that AI is dependent on what has gone before, whether it is true or not. (A bit like Wikipedia whose entries can be written by anyone and are not necessarily factchecked.)

Schools and Universities

There has been a lot of debate over the use of AI in schools and universities. One of the major concerns is that students are using AI to write their essays and dissertations. It follows that we, as creative writers, could well use AI to write our short stories, articles and novels!

In fact, at one of my writers’ get-togethers, one member did offer a short story which, after feedback, he confessed had been written by AI. It wasn’t bad and I even remember complimenting the “writer” on his use of a tri-colon! Even so, his self-written story was definitely better.

So, should writers use AI?

The Pros and Cons:

Pros

• An AI application, such as ChatGPT, given a few guidelines, can write a story, a poem or an article in mere seconds.
• The application can be used to suggest titles, ideas, plot outlines and character profiles.
• AI can be a very thorough script editor – picking up typos, spelling and grammar mistakes; and producing a detailed analysis of such things as sentence length and frequency of certain words.
• Because it has access to millions of novels, poems etc, AI can suggest trends and patterns in writing, and audience preferences.
• Research can be done so much quicker and more comprehensively using AI.

Cons

• You cannot rely on the veracity of AI “facts”.
• You are not using your own research techniques and filtering out what you do and don’t need.
• Information overload.
• It is not YOUR writing.

My verdict

AI can be used very effectively in checking a piece of writing for errors. But when it comes to creative writing, let’s make sure it is we human beings who are being creative, not the machines.

If you have any comments, please do send me feedback on the form below, plus suggestions for future posts.

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Happy writing!

Linda