You said perfectly what I’ve been thinking. A week or so ago I read a post about how you could copy one of your own essays and plug it into ChatGPT with the provided prompt and it would spit out 30 perfectly curated Notes. So, having never used ChatGPT before, I tried it. Sure enough, in seconds I was provided with a beautifully written Note per day for the next month. I was impressed at how perfect they were. But I was simultaneously horrified at what I was seeing: my own work morphed into plagiarism. I quick shut the program as if I’d been looking at porn. Then I started wondering how many of the perfectly written Notes I read in a day are generated that way. It feels like an invasion.
Yes! I read the same post and I think it was part of what triggered this; I felt the same things you're expressing. So tempting, and yet such a slippery slope...if we go there, what's to stop us from using it to help us write the posts? If we can't figure out what the nuggets are in our own posts, are we really paying that much attention to our own work? (And if we're not, why are we expecting others to?)
And it reminds me of the analogy of performance enhancing drugs -- if I do this, I'll have an advantage over all the other writers who don't crank out 30 easy Notes per day. What a deal...
It also seems so disrespectful to the reader (this is me, thinking of other things I should've added in the post...!) because if we're asking them to take the time to read it, we should have put the time into making it worthwhile for them, rather than asking a program to do it all for us.
Thank you, Shannon. It feels like the heart and soul of writing is lost when these tools are used. Our spirits kind of sense that something real and true is missing. And yes, we honor our Creator God when we create to please Him.
Yes! And content with the heart and soul stripped of it cannot expect to be worth a reader's time. I mean, if the content creator isn't going to put the time into it, why should the product consumer even consider it?
Hi Shannon. Great piece and advice, especially to Christian writers but also the ethics of misrepresentation applies to all content creators.
I have an even bigger issue with how people use, and consider yruthful, what any AI tool may tell them. When we use a dictionary to look up synonyms or antonyms we are trusting that Mr.Webster, as an expert in English words, chose correctly.
But AI? Trained on who-knows-what trillions of texts that are factual, false, opinion, or conjecture, I don't trust it's contents as far as I can, well, throw it.
To get inspirations for a turn of phrase, or a clever combination of words, perhaps it's a useful tool, like a thesaurus. But for me it smacks of inauthenticity like a photograph of a Monet painting printed on canvas. Nowhere even close to an original. 🎨
Just IMHO.
Peace and Blessings to you and your whole family. Thanks for the fine post!
Thanks for this. It articulates so much of what we've been feeling. What a weird world it's becoming.
At the same time, God by his eternal wisdom has mysterious, unfathomable ways of using the worst of human corruption for his glory and our good. I think we ought to be praying that he will show us the good in this circumstance so we can recognize and lean into it.
I don't mean that the effects you mention are good in themselves. But the darker the darkness gets, the more clearly and discernibly the light can shine.
Perhaps we haven't really understood what a precious gift God's breath in us is as we will when surrounded by cheap imitations. Authenticity, integrity, and hard work in the act of creation becomes that much more precious. May God grant us great discernment and a greater love for Him and what most closely reflects his nature.
I love your point that we are made in the image of our creator and so we are wired to create. Using AI doesn't count. As a writing teacher I have such a deep-seated horror of using it. I can't even imagine putting content up on my sub stack that was written by AI. All the joy of expression would be gone. I can't even bring myself to use it for the grammar but I realize this is a slippery slope for many. My mom always calls me and points out all my punctuation or syntactical errors and I fix them AFTER already pushing my posts out to subscribers. Wouldn't it make more sense to catch them earlier? Not with AI! I just can't bring myself to use AI in any form. Thank you for all your insights and for leaning on Scripture.
Thank you, Abigail! I find many of my typos after hitting “publish” too…or worse, sometimes I find them a week or two later when I’m recording the audio version of those posts. 🤯😫😅
You said perfectly what I’ve been thinking. A week or so ago I read a post about how you could copy one of your own essays and plug it into ChatGPT with the provided prompt and it would spit out 30 perfectly curated Notes. So, having never used ChatGPT before, I tried it. Sure enough, in seconds I was provided with a beautifully written Note per day for the next month. I was impressed at how perfect they were. But I was simultaneously horrified at what I was seeing: my own work morphed into plagiarism. I quick shut the program as if I’d been looking at porn. Then I started wondering how many of the perfectly written Notes I read in a day are generated that way. It feels like an invasion.
Yes! I read the same post and I think it was part of what triggered this; I felt the same things you're expressing. So tempting, and yet such a slippery slope...if we go there, what's to stop us from using it to help us write the posts? If we can't figure out what the nuggets are in our own posts, are we really paying that much attention to our own work? (And if we're not, why are we expecting others to?)
And it reminds me of the analogy of performance enhancing drugs -- if I do this, I'll have an advantage over all the other writers who don't crank out 30 easy Notes per day. What a deal...
It also seems so disrespectful to the reader (this is me, thinking of other things I should've added in the post...!) because if we're asking them to take the time to read it, we should have put the time into making it worthwhile for them, rather than asking a program to do it all for us.
Thank you, Shannon. It feels like the heart and soul of writing is lost when these tools are used. Our spirits kind of sense that something real and true is missing. And yes, we honor our Creator God when we create to please Him.
Yes! And content with the heart and soul stripped of it cannot expect to be worth a reader's time. I mean, if the content creator isn't going to put the time into it, why should the product consumer even consider it?
Hi Shannon. Great piece and advice, especially to Christian writers but also the ethics of misrepresentation applies to all content creators.
I have an even bigger issue with how people use, and consider yruthful, what any AI tool may tell them. When we use a dictionary to look up synonyms or antonyms we are trusting that Mr.Webster, as an expert in English words, chose correctly.
But AI? Trained on who-knows-what trillions of texts that are factual, false, opinion, or conjecture, I don't trust it's contents as far as I can, well, throw it.
To get inspirations for a turn of phrase, or a clever combination of words, perhaps it's a useful tool, like a thesaurus. But for me it smacks of inauthenticity like a photograph of a Monet painting printed on canvas. Nowhere even close to an original. 🎨
Just IMHO.
Peace and Blessings to you and your whole family. Thanks for the fine post!
✨️✨️🕊🙏🎊✨️✨️
Thanks so much, Paul! Great thoughts. Super great point about trusting it as far as we can throw it. 😁
Thanks for this. It articulates so much of what we've been feeling. What a weird world it's becoming.
At the same time, God by his eternal wisdom has mysterious, unfathomable ways of using the worst of human corruption for his glory and our good. I think we ought to be praying that he will show us the good in this circumstance so we can recognize and lean into it.
I don't mean that the effects you mention are good in themselves. But the darker the darkness gets, the more clearly and discernibly the light can shine.
Perhaps we haven't really understood what a precious gift God's breath in us is as we will when surrounded by cheap imitations. Authenticity, integrity, and hard work in the act of creation becomes that much more precious. May God grant us great discernment and a greater love for Him and what most closely reflects his nature.
Yep! So true, Roy. Great thoughts.
I love your point that we are made in the image of our creator and so we are wired to create. Using AI doesn't count. As a writing teacher I have such a deep-seated horror of using it. I can't even imagine putting content up on my sub stack that was written by AI. All the joy of expression would be gone. I can't even bring myself to use it for the grammar but I realize this is a slippery slope for many. My mom always calls me and points out all my punctuation or syntactical errors and I fix them AFTER already pushing my posts out to subscribers. Wouldn't it make more sense to catch them earlier? Not with AI! I just can't bring myself to use AI in any form. Thank you for all your insights and for leaning on Scripture.
Thank you, Abigail! I find many of my typos after hitting “publish” too…or worse, sometimes I find them a week or two later when I’m recording the audio version of those posts. 🤯😫😅