1MerryWriter
Dreamer
(2/3)
To be clear, I am not against a writer using AI in any way they see fit. I do not use it when I write creatively but I have been testing it more and more to receive critique and to bounce ideas off of. For someone with my background it is a "godsend" (or is this "humansend"?). Before I share one more point of view, I should briefly introduce myself and I guess I will head on over to the intro thread and do it there too.
I am not a native English speaker, I am from India but I don't live there anymore. I used to be an academic and I was on track to get a Ph.D. (climate science, urban planning) in the pre-covid world. The pandemic caused a fair bit of havoc in my life and over the last three years I moved to Europe, worked a bit harder than I thought I would have to; to get into an MBA program and I am looking to become a published creative writer (possibly traditionally published). I have not made the call on whether the first book attempt will be a historic / medieval / magical fantasy or a sci-fi fantasy. I enjoy reading and writing both and I have published a bit of an 'urban fantasy' short story in my native language. Other than that I have about seven academic publications related to my previous field of research, mostly as a co-author, all in English. Some in reputed journals and as chapters in books but that does not mean much if you know what academia is really like. It is more about who you know than what you write or what you have worked on. No shade on anyone I worked with, it is just the way of the world. This is also where I started to ghostwrite research and non-fiction (naturally pre-AI). I have earned at least some of my keep this way but this is again not saying much because it was in India where writing an academic paper in English can be an ordeal and I am one of the few privileged enough to have been given access to a higher standard of education than most kids my age at the time and place where I was.
Back on topic
If someone prompts lets say ChatGPT for "Write an article on/ Outline for a chapter / Outline for book" etc. and goes in what is a straightforward approach to using AI, they are going to generate terribly cliched and pretty much stale output. There are better prompts and oddly enough it takes about as much work as maybe researching and writing a book, to find out what kind of prompts people are using and why they work. Only thing is, once an interested person learns what is needed in a prompt, they can easily fit that template into any non-fiction writing task and get an outline. Once again, on Medium and elsewhere there are writers with over 100k followers sharing "glimpses" into how to use AI correctly.
Why do I know this?
As mentioned, I need critical feedback on my drafts (three of them at various stages) and I am not yet at a point in my life where I can put it in front of an editor without thinking that I am wasting their time. So I use the next best thing for now - AI. All kinds out there. ChatGPT, Bard, Co-Pilot are the more popular ones that I can name. A place that I sometimes work for has access to a couple more proprietary ones that I am currently given free reign of.
It is clear as day. I am not as good as the output that someone who prompts AI well can create. Quite a lot of the writers I used to read and write with both in the academic and the SEO / blogging circles have the same feeling. There is a new competitor in town and they are legion. The hustlebro hivemind gold rush of AI writing on Youtube / Tiktok (or any other platform with mindshare) has not yet really taken off. It is at its early stages where the more polished influencer is currently getting the views. There will be the flood of better quality books at some point and not necessarily by someone who can actually hold a conversation about that topic for more than 15 minutes.
I am not saying that a good writer is going to be pushed out but a good writer is going to have to cross one more hurdle and it might necessitate some help from AI tools for many to even consider making an effort. (End of 2/3)
To be clear, I am not against a writer using AI in any way they see fit. I do not use it when I write creatively but I have been testing it more and more to receive critique and to bounce ideas off of. For someone with my background it is a "godsend" (or is this "humansend"?). Before I share one more point of view, I should briefly introduce myself and I guess I will head on over to the intro thread and do it there too.
I am not a native English speaker, I am from India but I don't live there anymore. I used to be an academic and I was on track to get a Ph.D. (climate science, urban planning) in the pre-covid world. The pandemic caused a fair bit of havoc in my life and over the last three years I moved to Europe, worked a bit harder than I thought I would have to; to get into an MBA program and I am looking to become a published creative writer (possibly traditionally published). I have not made the call on whether the first book attempt will be a historic / medieval / magical fantasy or a sci-fi fantasy. I enjoy reading and writing both and I have published a bit of an 'urban fantasy' short story in my native language. Other than that I have about seven academic publications related to my previous field of research, mostly as a co-author, all in English. Some in reputed journals and as chapters in books but that does not mean much if you know what academia is really like. It is more about who you know than what you write or what you have worked on. No shade on anyone I worked with, it is just the way of the world. This is also where I started to ghostwrite research and non-fiction (naturally pre-AI). I have earned at least some of my keep this way but this is again not saying much because it was in India where writing an academic paper in English can be an ordeal and I am one of the few privileged enough to have been given access to a higher standard of education than most kids my age at the time and place where I was.
Back on topic
If someone prompts lets say ChatGPT for "Write an article on/ Outline for a chapter / Outline for book" etc. and goes in what is a straightforward approach to using AI, they are going to generate terribly cliched and pretty much stale output. There are better prompts and oddly enough it takes about as much work as maybe researching and writing a book, to find out what kind of prompts people are using and why they work. Only thing is, once an interested person learns what is needed in a prompt, they can easily fit that template into any non-fiction writing task and get an outline. Once again, on Medium and elsewhere there are writers with over 100k followers sharing "glimpses" into how to use AI correctly.
Why do I know this?
As mentioned, I need critical feedback on my drafts (three of them at various stages) and I am not yet at a point in my life where I can put it in front of an editor without thinking that I am wasting their time. So I use the next best thing for now - AI. All kinds out there. ChatGPT, Bard, Co-Pilot are the more popular ones that I can name. A place that I sometimes work for has access to a couple more proprietary ones that I am currently given free reign of.
It is clear as day. I am not as good as the output that someone who prompts AI well can create. Quite a lot of the writers I used to read and write with both in the academic and the SEO / blogging circles have the same feeling. There is a new competitor in town and they are legion. The hustlebro hivemind gold rush of AI writing on Youtube / Tiktok (or any other platform with mindshare) has not yet really taken off. It is at its early stages where the more polished influencer is currently getting the views. There will be the flood of better quality books at some point and not necessarily by someone who can actually hold a conversation about that topic for more than 15 minutes.
I am not saying that a good writer is going to be pushed out but a good writer is going to have to cross one more hurdle and it might necessitate some help from AI tools for many to even consider making an effort. (End of 2/3)