Using AI for writing?

[Shadow Wolf]

One of the computer science teachers showed me a 90 page piece of work that he had generated using AI. Impressive stuff.

It was generated. Not written. And I have yet to see any example of AI written literature that is actually good and better than mediocre.

 

[Nimos]

But this person did not actually generate it, did they?

Just wondering, if AI was used to help create medicine etc. Would you oppose that as well? Obviously not the medicine as it would help people, but would you think less of it because it was using AI.

 

[Nimos]

I would rather quit art than use AI. As it is human it will never be able to understand or appreciate the human experience, it will never truly understand how we think, and as they are creations that run on pure logical they will never be able to replicate or surpass the human emotion in art.

I don't think AI can replace art, for the very reason you mention. Art is not something you do to create a product, it is a process and for the most part a personal one. Obviously, there are people paid for making sculptures etc. But if it was just about making a product, you might as well do it on a machine.

But not everything that is created is meant to be art, it could simply be because you think it looks cool or it serves a purpose, like a commercial etc. And does it matter in those cases?

 

[Nimos]

It was generated. Not written. And I have yet to see any example of AI written literature that is actually good and better than mediocre.

Could do a blind test, if interested and see if people can tell the difference? Did it with music and most either got it wrong or at least couldn't tell the difference (Unfortunately not a lot participated in it)

 

[Nimos]

One of the computer science teachers showed me a 90 page piece of work that he had generated using AI. Impressive stuff.

Was it purely written by AI? Because I personally have issues with it staying consistent, it often forgets things or mixes them together, so you have to correct it quite a lot.

 

[Eddi]

Just wondering, if AI was used to help create medicine etc. Would you oppose that as well? Obviously not the medicine as it would help people, but would you think less of it because it was using AI.

I only oppose generative AI

The use of AI in science could do a lot of good

I read that it can be used to predict cancer, for example

Generative AI is dishonest and anti-human

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Could do a blind test, if interested and see if people can tell the difference? Did it with music and most either got it wrong or at least couldn't tell the difference (Unfortunately not a lot participated in it)

So far I've been able to tell, but I also have a background in music and can tell when it's a drum machine being used rather than a human drummer.
Art, AI art just has a "haziness" to it that you don't see in pictures made by humans.
And literature, even there I've just been able to tell when someone gives me something to read that was AI generated. Not to say its all bad, and @Father Heathen tricked chatGPT into writting a sexually suggestive story full of innuendos and it was pretty funny. But the writing style itself was average, mediocre and without style.
However, I do have to admit it does well with academic writing. But I'm not surprised as that is essentially proper grammar and restating research. It's not creative, and I believe this is why it does this incomparably better than creative tasks.
And the music? At least on Sunno the AI doesn't realize that death metal growls are a human voice and it will have artificial growls that last for way longer than what a human could do.

 

[Nimos]

So far I've been able to tell, but I also have a background in music and can tell when it's a drum machine being used rather than a human drummer.
Art, AI art just has a "haziness" to it that you don't see in pictures made by humans.
And literature, even there I've just been able to tell when someone gives me something to read that was AI generated. Not to say its all bad, and @Father Heathen tricked chatGPT into writting a sexually suggestive story full of innuendos and it was pretty funny. But the writing style itself was average, mediocre and without style.
However, I do have to admit it does well with academic writing. But I'm not surprised as that is essentially proper grammar and restating research. It's not creative, and I believe this is why it does this incomparably better than creative tasks.
And the music? At least on Sunno the AI doesn't realize that death metal growls are a human voice and it will have artificial growls that last for way longer than what a human could do.

Im not a music expert, so I would be easily fooled by it.
I do however have experience with images, and to me at least I think those are the easiest to spot and probably also the worst part of AI at the moment.
I writing is probably more difficult, because you can't spot this from just a few sentences. But if it was purely written by AI, I think it would be easy to spot though.

I asked Claude to just write a short story, that sounded like it was written by a professional writer and not AI.

The Forgotten Lighthouse​

The old lighthouse stood sentinel on the jagged cliff, its paint peeling like sunburned skin. Sarah traced her fingers along the weathered door, feeling the grooves etched by decades of salt and wind. This place held secrets, whispers of a past long buried beneath layers of neglect.

She pushed the door open, wincing at the rusty creak that shattered the coastal silence. Dust motes danced in the shafts of light piercing through boarded windows. Sarah's footsteps echoed as she climbed the spiral staircase, each step a countdown to... what?

At the top, the lens room awaited. Grime-covered glass refracted the afternoon sun, casting prismatic ghosts across the floor. And there, propped against the defunct beacon, was a leather-bound journal.

Sarah's heart quickened as she opened it. The faded script told a tale of love, loss, and a keeper's lonely vigil. On the final page, a single line:

"The light may fade, but memory endures."

She closed the book, feeling the weight of unspoken stories. Outside, waves crashed against the rocks, a timeless rhythm. Sarah smiled, knowing the lighthouse's secret was safe with her – for now.

----
If you read this, obviously it is a very short story, but I don't think I could spot that it was an AI, I don't know what I should look for. Especially if a human went over it afterwards. At least to me it seems pretty well written. So what about it, do you think sounds average, if you can point it out in this example?

 

[an anarchist]

Does anyone use AI for writing and if you do, which are you using and what experiences have you made from it, good and bad?

I use ChatGPT for creative fiction.

Don’t let it write the prose. It’s awful at it plus that’s the part you should be doing anyways.

I use it to get feedback on passages. I also have used it to develop a neat list of all of my plot points as well as a chapter list. I just had to feed it all of the plot details.

I’m pretty sure the AI is coded to butter you up as well. So if you are feeling down, feed it a passage and it will highlight the positives of your writing.

 

[Nimos]

I use ChatGPT for creative fiction.

Don’t let it write the prose. It’s awful at it plus that’s the part you should be doing anyways.

I use it to get feedback on passages. I also have used it to develop a neat list of all of my plot points as well as a chapter list. I just had to feed it all of the plot details.

I’m pretty sure the AI is coded to butter you up as well. So if you are feeling down, feed it a passage and it will highlight the positives of your writing.

Do you use Novelcrafter or just the normal one?

 

[an anarchist]

Do you use Novelcrafter or just the normal one?

I haven’t heard of Novel crafter, I’ll check it out. I’ve used Creative Fiction Coach as well as Book Creator Guide. I’ve liked the Book Creator Guide for outlines and the such.

Do you have any ChatGPTs that you recommend?

 

[Nimos]

I haven’t heard of Novel crafter, I’ll check it out. I’ve used Creative Fiction Coach as well as Book Creator Guide. I’ve liked the Book Creator Guide for outlines and the such.

Do you have any ChatGPTs that you recommend?

Sorry "Novel writer" it is called, it is part of ChatGPT, you just have to activate it. You can find it in the left side under "GPTs" and then just search for "Novel writer".

Given how ChatGPT works, you only have a limited amount of interactions with the GPT4-o, so I only interact with it, when that limit is reset every few hours. This works fine as I do most of my writing else where and then paste it to it and have it look through it and suggest things etc.

Claude as I posted an example of above seems very good as well, but it has even more limited uses than GPT has, so don't really use it.
But so far I am really impressed with Novel writer.

 

[Quintessence]

Agree, but this has been true forever, AI is just yet another tool with that purpose. So agree, that it is a cultural issue more than anything, which is linked to the competitive society in which we live. I don't think humans have ever really appreciated working together for a greater cause, rather it is always how can I get ahead of you, and you are thinking the exact same thing.

I don't agree with your assessment here, but this isn't really a debate area so I'll leave it at pointing out you're grossly underselling how important cooperation and altruism have been throughout human history and societies. Maybe because I work in service I just don't get this cutthroat nonsense - I do not and have never wanted any part of it - and I see that in the folks I work with too on a routine basis. When I made the mistake of trying to work in corporate? Yeah, there was a lot of that nonsense and I despised it. Left for public/nonprofit sector ever sense where that nonsense is more or less absent. And there's a lot of public/nonprofit sector workers.

 

[Secret Chief]

But this person did not actually generate it, did they?

Yes. I saw it.

 

[Secret Chief]

It was generated. Not written. And I have yet to see any example of AI written literature that is actually good and better than mediocre.

I confess I didn't read the whole 90 pages, but it read like a knowledgeable text.

 

[Secret Chief]

Was it purely written by AI? Because I personally have issues with it staying consistent, it often forgets things or mixes them together, so you have to correct it quite a lot.

He said he'd asked it various questions, that was all. I'm guessing the questions indicated he wanted in-depth answers. The subject was computing (well above my pay grade!). He said it would be useful.

 

[Nimos]

I don't agree with your assessment here, but this isn't really a debate area so I'll leave it at pointing out you're grossly underselling how important cooperation and altruism have been throughout human history and societies. Maybe because I work in service I just don't get this cutthroat nonsense - I do not and have never wanted any part of it - and I see that in the folks I work with too on a routine basis. When I made the mistake of trying to work in corporate? Yeah, there was a lot of that nonsense and I despised it. Left for public/nonprofit sector ever sense where that nonsense is more or less absent. And there's a lot of public/nonprofit sector workers.

I don't mean on an individual level.

Good and effective service for a company can be a competitive factor. If your service is bad, people might choose another company. Very few companies, I think have altruism as a key value, you might find it in certain organisations like the Red Cross etc. However, a company is not bound to serve anyone who is not a current customer or a potential one.

 

[Arnaud1221]

The AI is writing very well. You can make though a reality in writing. I did this but I don't do it often anymore.

 

[Nimos]

The AI is writing very well. You can make though a reality in writing. I did this but I don't do it often anymore.

Im judging it based on not being a native English speaking person, so maybe one that is can see things I can't. I have tried to make it write in Danish, and it does struggle a little with that, often writing things that you wouldn't say, but might be because I told it to translate from English to danish and it has a rough time doing that. And I assume that it is because it lacks training data here.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

If you read this, obviously it is a very short story, but I don't think I could spot that it was an AI, I don't know what I should look for. Especially if a human went over it afterwards. At least to me it seems pretty well written. So what about it, do you think sounds average, if you can point it out in this example?

I would guess it's AI or an author who isn't a good writer. Such as, notice we aren't fully immersed in the scene. What is Sarah smelling? What about the tower makes it forgotten and not just everyone's away and it hasn't been cleaned in awhile? The ocean doesn't even get mentioned till the last sentence. What really did she read other than a super generic story description? How did it make her feel? Her heart quickened? With excitement? With aprehension?
Compare that to the Wave Passage (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S Thompson)

“Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . .

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bull****, but even without being sure of “history” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that. . . .

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”

Notice how the descriptive language helps to put the reader in the mind of Raoul Duke to the point you can see exactly what he was wearing, what he was riding, even feel what he felt as he conveys the emotions and wonder felt as he reminisces about not only his past but a collectively shared past.