Ways Of Working With AI

Introduction

We are currently plagued with AI and feel rightly threatened by the ones who use it it publish "original" stories. Vocal introduced an AI indicator button, and that just flags it as a story not to be read for me. This has spread to self-published books and further afield to art, music and more.

We want AI to clean our houses, empty our bins, not write our stories, create our music and paint our pictures that we hang in our homes.

As I have said before, it is Artificial but not Intelligent. Computers can do things very fast, and given the right instructions, can help us do our jobs and even create things.

We are writers, so I will be concentrating on that aspect, although I will refer to others.

The music is "Robbery, Assault And Battery" by Genesis from "A Trick Of The Tail", appropriate for how we feel from the flood of AI stories on Vocal.

"Why should I read something you couldn't be bothered to write?"

How To Use AI Rather Than Be Used By It

AI is a computer program that does something very fast. A computer can do calculations and take actions based on those calculations and instructions very quickly.

If I go back to my childhood, I would use encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri, and calculators to help me with my work. When working with my dad, I would use jackhammers and drills to dig holes more efficiently.

We use tools to make our lives easier for us and do work more quickly; we tell the tools what to do, not the other way round.

I work with computers, and usually I am given a starting point and a desired result. I then design a path, and the result is attained. One could say that I am using AI, and it has taken my job. Well, if I were not there to tell it what to do, it would not do anything, but there are cases where companies are replacing workers with computers, but computers cannot cope with the unexpected.

We want computers to follow our instructions, not do what they "want". We expect results as you would with any tool.

I find the Suno music creator very worrying, because it is so good, if soulless, but I could imagine Spotify generating its future output like that, and most Spotify users would be fine with that.

I want my music to be able to be played live by a band or audience.

While I use AI Art, I would never use that to pit myself against real artists (although some would).

Now, back to writing, you can get various AI programs to write your novel, but that completely negates why we write.

There is a word game called "Weaver", apparently invented by Lewis Carroll, where you transform a word into another word on letter at a time.

I found an app that would solve it for you, but I thought, seriously, what is the point of that? You know the start, you know the end. The fun is finding the way.

I think the sort of people who would use that app would use AI to write stories.

AI can be used for documentation, but the final output would still need to be checked by a human.

Then there are stories like this:

Conclusion

Use AI as a tool. Do not use it to create things that could detrimentally affect other creators. It can help us, but should not replace it. We want it to do the washing up and cleaning up, not to replace us as creators.

Thank you for reading.