Do you REALLY care if AI is a danger to our craft?

[Mrswargamer9dash1]

My thoughts on AI

Well, until an AI can show me how to make Operation Sealion work and show me an OS that doesn't need an update 5 minutes after it is finished...

I use Grammarly a bit. Mainly because my grammar sucks. It's worse than you are seeing here.

But when I see the hate-filled content of social media, from any side of any discussion... AI doesn't look as scary.

I love to type out my thoughts, currently on Bluesky. I'm not talking to people on Bluesky, though; I'm just using it as a release. I get the occasional pleasant response.
I'm finding that YouTube is saturated with enough AI content that I try not to reply to anything at all. My last comment was to tell a person I thought their brushwork on painting a model tank was outstanding. I have seen some really wonky-looking AI stuff, though. I just can't figure out why so many don't use their own voice. But my level of fluency and ability to articulate, I am told, is unusually good. I guess there are not enough 'mes' out there.

But nope, I am so not going to go and try and contribute content to YouTube. Too much like work, and the day is not long enough. And I bet they would think I was an AI

Grammarly just fixed 10 mistakes, mostly where to use or not use a comma.

 

[StillStunned]

Do I care? Why yes, I do!

Because AI is illegal and unethical, and it's putting me and my colleagues out of work because clients don't care about quality, only cost, and it's desensitising people to really awful writing.

 

[MrPixel]

​

Do you REALLY care if AI is a danger to our craft?

Yes. Dilution, for one thing. The last thing we need is somebody using ChatGPT/whatever who puts-out title after title with a minuscule amount of creative effort on their part, generating content directly derivative of preexisting material.

We have plenty of human-written dreck already. We don't need scads of robot-generated garbage in the system clogging the pipes, making it that much more difficult to find and access quality creative writing.

 

[StillStunned]

Grammarly just fixed 10 mistakes, mostly where to use or not use a comma.

Why do people insist on using Grammarly instead of just learning grammar? It's not that hard. I mean, seriously, small children learn grammar. People whose native language isn't English learn English grammar.

I'll admit that English spelling is a nightmare, but grammar?

 

[SimonDoom]

Not really. It's inevitable, it can't be stopped, and there's no point in fretting too much about it. It will bring many negatives, but it will create more positives.

I tend to be sanguine about change and the future even when it makes me feel more like a dinosaur with every passing day. We're all dinosaurs. Enjoy this brief time and get turned on while you still can.

 

[AwkwardMD]

I'll care more about it on the day that Lit's AI detector can't tell anymore.

 

[HordHolm]

The problem with AI is that it is a crutch. People will use it for simple, basic things. They will come to rely on it. And then, when they come to the point that they want to create something 'from the soul' they will find it that much more difficult/virtually impossible, because they used AI for the basics rather than learn to do it for themselves. So then, they will use AI instead. The skill will be lost to create top end products, because the learning experience necessary will have been skipped.

 

[SmilingLez]

My thoughts on AI

Well, until an AI can show me how to make Operation Sealion work and show me an OS that doesn't need an update 5 minutes after it is finished...

I use Grammarly a bit. Mainly because my grammar sucks. It's worse than you are seeing here.

But when I see the hate-filled content of social media, from any side of any discussion... AI doesn't look as scary.

I love to type out my thoughts, currently on Bluesky. I'm not talking to people on Bluesky, though; I'm just using it as a release. I get the occasional pleasant response.
I'm finding that YouTube is saturated with enough AI content that I try not to reply to anything at all. My last comment was to tell a person I thought their brushwork on painting a model tank was outstanding. I have seen some really wonky-looking AI stuff, though. I just can't figure out why so many don't use their own voice. But my level of fluency and ability to articulate, I am told, is unusually good. I guess there are not enough 'mes' out there.

But nope, I am so not going to go and try and contribute content to YouTube. Too much like work, and the day is not long enough. And I bet they would think I was an AI

Grammarly just fixed 10 mistakes, mostly where to use or not use a comma.

AI removes the essence of human creativity/imagination.

 

[onehitwanda]

AI is the great leveler. It's just that, instead of raising everyone up, it is instead going to pull everyone down. Why pour heart and soul into your art when a shitty statistics engine can do "better" in a fraction of the time?

Fuck AI. Fuck it with a rusty spoon, sideways. It destroys everything that is precious about us and replaces it with an iteratively worse version.

 

[SmilingLez]

AI is the great leveler. It's just that, instead of raising everyone up, it is instead going to pull everyone down. Why pour heart and soul into your art when a shitty statistics engine can do "better" in a fraction of the time?

Fuck AI. Fuck it with a rusty spoon, sideways. It destroys everything that is precious about us and replaces it with an iteratively worse version.

That's exactly the reason why people, mostly male, "fall in love" with their AI "girlfriends".

 

[HordHolm]

Grammarly just fixed 10 mistakes, mostly where to use or not use a comma.

And how do you know if it got it right?

 

[StillStunned]

“Listen, I don’t understand. You and my brother are both mighty wizards, you wave your hand and you mutter and the thing is done. Why do you get hungry then? When it comes to suppertime at sea, why not say, Meat-pie! and the meat-pie appears and you eat it?”

“Well, we could do so. But we don’t much wish to eat our words, as they say. Meat-pie! is only a word, after all… We can make it odorous, and savorous, and even filling, but it remains a word. It fools the stomach and gives no strength to the hungry man.”

- A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula K. Le Guin

 

[dirk2024]

I'll care more about it on the day that Lit's AI detector can't tell anymore.

Won't it be too late to care at that point?

 

[AwkwardMD]

Won't it be too late to care at that point?

Rephrase: I care now. I'll be irate then.

 

[MillieDynamite]

@StillStunned AI isn't illegal (it's against the rules here). Also, it isn't unethical to use it for specific things; writing isn't one of them. I think one would work harder on editing and rewriting than on achieving time savings in a first draft, making the completion longer, not quicker. From what I hear, AI has poor memory, can't follow the outline worth a shit, and writes people into corners they can't get out of.

 

[Mrswargamer9dash1]

And how do you know if it got it right?

That is a question with no real possible answer

 

[stickygirl]

Quite apart from integrity I’m appalled by the vast amount of energy it uses. AI will soon consume as much power as the Netherlands . It requires about 1.7Wh of energy to generate a single image = 20 kettles of water

 

[TheDok]

Anybody can create a story by asking AI to do it for them. That doesn’t make them an author, and on this site it makes them a dishonest cheat.I switch off Grammarly when I write for Literotica. It is intrusive and annoying and at least my mistakes and my story are my own and I have created something however crappy it may be.

Inevitably aAI will be able to replicate a Dali, a Picasso, or a Michelangelo but it will not make them one.

For me, at least writing, is limited by the authors human ability and experiences. One day AI will have virtually limitless ability and experience’ but what it writes , even when it is undetectably AI composed will have no humanity in its total perfection

 

[HordHolm]

That is a question with no real possible answer

Au contraire... if you know your grammar, you can tell whether it has correctly corrected. Of course, in that case, you have no need of it. Otherwise, you are taking it on trust.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I agree with much of the sentiment here. It's funny how perspectives change though. Once upon a time, we thought of AI with wonder and awe, and today we dread it.

I'd say that the decay of humanity that will come with the increasing presence of increasingly more capable AI is inevitable.
But it's not the AI's fault. It's the fault of the greatest of human sins, and the cause of much of the misery worldwide - greed.

The funny thing is that we could so easily prevent the decay. The only thing that needs to be done is a hard lock on the services AI is allowed to provide. And an international consensus to enforce it.

Imagine disallowing AI (and when I say disallowing, I mean AI being hardcoded not to fulfill such requests) for any artistic use - writing, composing, painting, all of it. That way, the slop that the AI-generated art is would simply cease to be. And it would even resolve the issue with all the copyrighted art that was unlawfully used for training. Humans would be the only ones capable of creating art once again.

Imagine disallowing AI to write scientific papers, essays, reviews, homework, all the cheating bullshit it's being used for now.

Imagine AI being used only as an encyclopedia and a learning aide. Imagine it being used only to advance our progress and knowledge in medicine, physics, and science in general. AI could have been a truly awesome thing. But we are who we are as a race, and greed will forever rule us.

 

[poppypopper]

It's like digital photography agains negative or slide film, the art has been removed, HDR, Photoshop, etc. has removed the art of taking a good photo. AI is the same, makes people look good with no ability. Rant over xx

 

[Erozetta]

I know people who use AI for various things and it is disappointing to me to see them do it. But their choices are not mine to police. It's the same as people using phrases and words I don't like. It irritates me and will color my view of them, but their words are not mine to police.

I have messed with AI to see its capabilities and I was not impressed. I played with AI "art" generators a few times, but walked away after learning more about how they work and realizing I can't stand against AI for writing because I think it lessens the craft then use it for a different medium without the same principles applying. But others using it for such is up to them, I'm not going to try to control what others do, particularly when they know the argument and choose to do it anyway.

AI rejection or acceptance is an all or nothing thing to me. You either support it, or you don't. If you support it in even one medium, you support its existence because you are giving it reason to exist and adapt to other mediums even if you don't support it in those mediums.

It's why I've switched my avatars to images I've taken myself or images I've made and am reasonably certain they weren't created with AI. If I'm uncertain, I might use it, but it's going to bother me and eventually I'll change it to something I'm certain isn't AI based.

So, yeah, I care. Art of all types is a human medium. So I cannot accept the use of AI in art of any type. And that opinion has shifted over time from "I can see the appeal" to "no, not appeal, but temptation for convenience sake."

I'm combatting AI by learning the human skills it tries to emulate. That's the best I can do to stand against it.

 

[CalBishForNow]

I'd be a lot less opposed to AI if it actually did what it was advertised as doing.

Right now you can ask AI a question of fact, i.e. who won the Crimean War or how the fluid dynamics of stannane differs from water. Maybe the answer you'll get will be correct, maybe it'll be ridiculously wrong, maybe it'll be wrong in some subtle detail. You can ask it for a picture of a person and it might be good in some respects but it'll almost definitely have artifacts like extra fingers or weird shadows. You can ask AI for a story about a given character and plot and you'll probably get something that's grammatically correct and technically includes what you asked for. Maybe it'll be good enough to get 4 stars in most categories here, but then again maybe it'll have the character you asked for in exactly the opposite role in the plot you expected, maybe it won't make linear sense at all, or maybe it'll be copied from an existing story so directly that a human doing so would be considered plagiarism.

And there's no way to tell until it's too late. If you ask an AI a question of fact and want to verify it, you'll have to check it with something written by a human eventually. AIs are good at detecting plagiarism and other AIs, I gather, but not at telling if a protagonist is likeable or if nonlinear storytelling is a stylistic choice or just word salad.

Maybe someday that won't be the case, and AIs will be able to meaningfully synthesize new content and/or have higher reliability about the facts than a human who's educated on the subject. At that point it would be an interesting question about whether to consume entertainment generated from AI. But that's hypothetical. (Also, that's just for fiction and entertainment, not even getting into legal economic issues like firing people and replacing them with chatbots.)

 

[SkyBubble]

Why do people insist on using Grammarly instead of just learning grammar? It's not that hard. I mean, seriously, small children learn grammar. People whose native language isn't English learn English grammar.

I'll admit that English spelling is a nightmare, but grammar?

English grammar is different enough from other languages, even related ones, that it can be difficult. From teh ay a lot of people speak and write, it gets tricky even for native speakers.

 

[StillStunned]

@StillStunned AI isn't illegal (it's against the rules here). Also, it isn't unethical to use it for specific things; writing isn't one of them.

It's built on plagiarism and copyright theft on an unprecedented scale. It's harmful to the environment. That's enough for me.

I won't deny that people have used it for some useful things. But writing a story because you're too lazy to do it yourself? Drawing pictures just to see your imagination brought to life on screen? Having your search engine default to AI because it presents the answers in an easy-to-read format? It would take some very powerful arguments to convince me of the ethics of that.