Hi Helen--I count myself a cynic where AI is concerned (tech bros working hard to keep making money off of us...) but I also teach college students and will dip into your new series as I'm thinking through how to discuss this new tech with them come the fall semester. I'm revamping the pitch I've been making to them for the past two years to build their own voices and skills through doing their own reading and writing rather than leaving it to the technology...
Thanks for your comment, Pennie. Even if we choose not to engage directly with GenAI ourselves, we're surrounded by other people — including, in many cases, our own students and colleagues — who have come to a different decision, for all kinds of reasons. There's a wide middle ground between "doing our own writing" and "leaving it to the technology," which is precisely the terrain that this series will explore.
Everyone has to make and live with their own choices.
Please understand that choosing to avoid Gen AI and do our own thinking, reading, writing, and creating is not about putting our heads in the sand. It is focused resistance to the authoritarians who are willing to stiff writers and artists so they gain even more control over our lives. In the US we have a front row seat for this show of power and greed.
Sam, Jeff, Mark, Elon - all stand by Trump. Have you heard a single peep out of any of them while Trump dismantles research, attacks education, cuts funds to libraries, public media, and museums? Fires the head of the US Copyright office? Not to mention literally taking food and doctor visits from kids in order to give billionaires a chance to buy another yacht, or snatching people off the streets and deporting them to foreign gulags. Apparently from the tech titan view it is all "very good." Do you seriously think they have our best interests at heart when they push AI into every software product? When they tell us we should "rewrite with AI" because what we had to say would somehow be better if it they mashed it with words stolen from other writers?
Then there is the human cost on workers in Africa and elsewhere, whose invisible servitude allows AI users to "save time." Oh, and then there is the environmental costs.
And what do you get for setting your integrity aside because everyone is doing it? AI slop.
We can still say no. It is a choice based on a belief in the power of human intelligence and creativity.
Dear Janet, thanks you for your comments. I will be addressing many of these concerns in my opening module, “The Cynic,” and offering a whole slew of reasons, both ethical and intellectual, why one might reasonably “say no” to using GenAI tools in one’s own writing practice. The metaphor of “putting one’s head in the sand” does not in any way refer to people who, like you, have already made a thoughtful, considered decision regarding their own engagement with GenAI tools. Indeed, the whole purpose of my 6-part series is to help other writers make this kind of informed decision for themselves.
Hi Helen--I count myself a cynic where AI is concerned (tech bros working hard to keep making money off of us...) but I also teach college students and will dip into your new series as I'm thinking through how to discuss this new tech with them come the fall semester. I'm revamping the pitch I've been making to them for the past two years to build their own voices and skills through doing their own reading and writing rather than leaving it to the technology...
Thanks for your comment, Pennie. Even if we choose not to engage directly with GenAI ourselves, we're surrounded by other people — including, in many cases, our own students and colleagues — who have come to a different decision, for all kinds of reasons. There's a wide middle ground between "doing our own writing" and "leaving it to the technology," which is precisely the terrain that this series will explore.
Everyone has to make and live with their own choices.
Please understand that choosing to avoid Gen AI and do our own thinking, reading, writing, and creating is not about putting our heads in the sand. It is focused resistance to the authoritarians who are willing to stiff writers and artists so they gain even more control over our lives. In the US we have a front row seat for this show of power and greed.
Case in point:
Sam Altman Heaps Praise on Donald Trump
"President Trump has been very good."
https://futurism.com/sam-altman-heaps-praise-donald-trump
Sam, Jeff, Mark, Elon - all stand by Trump. Have you heard a single peep out of any of them while Trump dismantles research, attacks education, cuts funds to libraries, public media, and museums? Fires the head of the US Copyright office? Not to mention literally taking food and doctor visits from kids in order to give billionaires a chance to buy another yacht, or snatching people off the streets and deporting them to foreign gulags. Apparently from the tech titan view it is all "very good." Do you seriously think they have our best interests at heart when they push AI into every software product? When they tell us we should "rewrite with AI" because what we had to say would somehow be better if it they mashed it with words stolen from other writers?
Then there is the human cost on workers in Africa and elsewhere, whose invisible servitude allows AI users to "save time." Oh, and then there is the environmental costs.
And what do you get for setting your integrity aside because everyone is doing it? AI slop.
We can still say no. It is a choice based on a belief in the power of human intelligence and creativity.
Dear Janet, thanks you for your comments. I will be addressing many of these concerns in my opening module, “The Cynic,” and offering a whole slew of reasons, both ethical and intellectual, why one might reasonably “say no” to using GenAI tools in one’s own writing practice. The metaphor of “putting one’s head in the sand” does not in any way refer to people who, like you, have already made a thoughtful, considered decision regarding their own engagement with GenAI tools. Indeed, the whole purpose of my 6-part series is to help other writers make this kind of informed decision for themselves.