Friday’s post was not as controversial as I anticipated. I was hoping for a vigorous defense about albums I missed or long rants about an undeserving inclusion or even a — deserved — interrogation about decades-long gaps between some of the chosen albums. But none of that came to pass, save for Spencer replying with his own well-thought-out list. Which leads me to conclude my list, like the albums on it, is definitely, completely perfect. So, let’s move on to something potentially more controversial: artificial intelligence.
I’ve been reading a lot of articles and opinion pieces about the rise, use, and fears around AI, specifically text-generating bots. And with today’s announcement of Google’s public entry into the text-generating AI playing field, I thought it might be the right time to talk about how I think these services will change writing on the web, and how I’m feeling about that. In a word, I’m excited.
Now, I completely understand the reservations people have about technology coming for their jobs and livelihoods. But that worry isn’t new. Technological advancements have forced people to adapt since the invention of the wheel. Today’s worries, I think, are just specific to a set of craftspeople who haven’t had to worry about their roles being automated out of existence ever before. Potentially. These advancements shouldn’t be feared, though, they should be embraced. Writers are so much more than sentence generators, which is — essentially — all these emerging technologies are. And even if we only use them to create sentences, there will always be a need to make them better. Or more targeted. Or even used as inspiration. And that’s the part which has animated me recently.
I’ve used a few of these posts to talk about creativity. It is the only part of me I know I’ll never run out of. I’m not saying that to brag, it’s just, at the very least, each day brings many new opportunities for me to make something new. Today, it’s this post. But some days, it’s a simple doodle. Or a guitar riff. Or even an impromptu bedtime story for a very discerning nine-year-old. And it’s that creativity I’m looking forward to putting to use with all of the AI that is emerging.
Most of my creative endeavors, I’ll admit, are made better with a collaborator. As a writer, I’m much better working with an editor. When I was in bands, the songs that we came up with as a group at practice, or as the result of bouncing ideas back and forth rather than bringing in a finished tune, were the ones which proved more popular and endured in our live sets longest. And when I was focused on UX problems, especially at Twitter, my work and our solutions were much better thought out (and simpler to implement and use) when I had a designer and researcher to collaborate with on solutions. Thinking about the future of my work, or even ideas I have for personal projects, I feel almost overwhelmed with opportunities to work with these different text generators. Essentially, they are more than tools; they’re like collaborators which never sleep.
The key to using them as more than tools, and not simply fearing that they’ll replace me, goes back to the creativity I need to employ to turn a potential competitor into a collaborator. Sure, I can plug something simple into the prompt, get the results, and call it a day. But what I’m looking forward to is using the prompt as a starting point on a journey to something entirely unique. All powered by me, working to make both the prompt and the resulting answer better and better until the final product is something decidedly new and unexpected.
Let’s say I wasn’t to create a new story for bedtime. I could simply ask one of these services to, “Create a bedtime story for a nine-year-old girl.” But with a little imagination, I could start a little further down the path to something more interesting, like, “Create a rhyming bedtime story about a pair of cucumbers who get stuck in a museum elevator while on their way to see their friend’s show about floral arrangements.” No matter what comes out, we‘re already into brand new territory as far as bedtime stories go around here. And, depending on what the result is, I get to take that as just a starting point for the rest of the pair’s journey.
Basically, I want to spend all day typing prompts into all the text generators, coming up with new ideas for stories or writing prompts or just flights of fancy. It all sounds much more interesting than updating my résumé. Say, that gives me an idea …
Jerry Garcia’s Finger
06 February 2023
Stuck in a pickle.
Friday’s post was not as controversial as I anticipated. I was hoping for a vigorous defense about albums I missed or long rants about an undeserving inclusion or even a — deserved — interrogation about decades-long gaps between some of the chosen albums. But none of that came to pass, save for Spencer replying with his own well-thought-out list. Which leads me to conclude my list, like the albums on it, is definitely, completely perfect. So, let’s move on to something potentially more controversial: artificial intelligence.
I’ve been reading a lot of articles and opinion pieces about the rise, use, and fears around AI, specifically text-generating bots. And with today’s announcement of Google’s public entry into the text-generating AI playing field, I thought it might be the right time to talk about how I think these services will change writing on the web, and how I’m feeling about that. In a word, I’m excited.
Now, I completely understand the reservations people have about technology coming for their jobs and livelihoods. But that worry isn’t new. Technological advancements have forced people to adapt since the invention of the wheel. Today’s worries, I think, are just specific to a set of craftspeople who haven’t had to worry about their roles being automated out of existence ever before. Potentially. These advancements shouldn’t be feared, though, they should be embraced. Writers are so much more than sentence generators, which is — essentially — all these emerging technologies are. And even if we only use them to create sentences, there will always be a need to make them better. Or more targeted. Or even used as inspiration. And that’s the part which has animated me recently.
I’ve used a few of these posts to talk about creativity. It is the only part of me I know I’ll never run out of. I’m not saying that to brag, it’s just, at the very least, each day brings many new opportunities for me to make something new. Today, it’s this post. But some days, it’s a simple doodle. Or a guitar riff. Or even an impromptu bedtime story for a very discerning nine-year-old. And it’s that creativity I’m looking forward to putting to use with all of the AI that is emerging.
Most of my creative endeavors, I’ll admit, are made better with a collaborator. As a writer, I’m much better working with an editor. When I was in bands, the songs that we came up with as a group at practice, or as the result of bouncing ideas back and forth rather than bringing in a finished tune, were the ones which proved more popular and endured in our live sets longest. And when I was focused on UX problems, especially at Twitter, my work and our solutions were much better thought out (and simpler to implement and use) when I had a designer and researcher to collaborate with on solutions. Thinking about the future of my work, or even ideas I have for personal projects, I feel almost overwhelmed with opportunities to work with these different text generators. Essentially, they are more than tools; they’re like collaborators which never sleep.
The key to using them as more than tools, and not simply fearing that they’ll replace me, goes back to the creativity I need to employ to turn a potential competitor into a collaborator. Sure, I can plug something simple into the prompt, get the results, and call it a day. But what I’m looking forward to is using the prompt as a starting point on a journey to something entirely unique. All powered by me, working to make both the prompt and the resulting answer better and better until the final product is something decidedly new and unexpected.
Let’s say I wasn’t to create a new story for bedtime. I could simply ask one of these services to, “Create a bedtime story for a nine-year-old girl.” But with a little imagination, I could start a little further down the path to something more interesting, like, “Create a rhyming bedtime story about a pair of cucumbers who get stuck in a museum elevator while on their way to see their friend’s show about floral arrangements.” No matter what comes out, we‘re already into brand new territory as far as bedtime stories go around here. And, depending on what the result is, I get to take that as just a starting point for the rest of the pair’s journey.
Basically, I want to spend all day typing prompts into all the text generators, coming up with new ideas for stories or writing prompts or just flights of fancy. It all sounds much more interesting than updating my résumé. Say, that gives me an idea …
See you tomorrow?