FA+
Shop
What is the Essential Part of Writing?
a year ago
I was just having a conversation with one of my close friends about writing using AI Writing tools, and we ended up just disagreeing. I'm curious about what others think.
The main thing I'm focused on is, what is the essential part of the writing that a person makes that the AI isn't doing?
Someone I know put it a good way saying that AI writing tools as they stand now are just really fancy auto-complete. They use what they've learned to judge what should come next given what's already there, and keep adjusting what comes next based on what they added.
From my perspective, what they're doing is putting words together in sensible ways, and sometimes what it outputs can be inspiring, but it's not being creative because it doesn't understand what it's making. It's not an artificial mind, it's just a machine that puts the most logical word next, based on its learning model.
If I use an AI writing tool, I don't just push a button and accept what I get. It can only do so much. I have to guide it and edit the results. So, I think the essential part that I am doing is having the idea and the impetus to do make a story in the first place. The AI tool wouldn't do anything if I didn't push the button, and it's just putting words together that already exist, into common phrases that are already used. That's not going to be good enough without an understanding of why those phrases are used instead of others that mean the same thing, so I have to do the essential editing part to make the story flow and feel right and consistent. I also have to outline the plot and correct everything.
My friend insists that I should credit the tool for doing the bulk of the work, but I don't see the part it's doing as the valuable part, since it's writing words but not making them 'good'. Since it's not a person, it feels weird to give it special credit over any other tool I'm using like my PC as a whole or the language created ages ago.
What do you think?
The main thing I'm focused on is, what is the essential part of the writing that a person makes that the AI isn't doing?
Someone I know put it a good way saying that AI writing tools as they stand now are just really fancy auto-complete. They use what they've learned to judge what should come next given what's already there, and keep adjusting what comes next based on what they added.
From my perspective, what they're doing is putting words together in sensible ways, and sometimes what it outputs can be inspiring, but it's not being creative because it doesn't understand what it's making. It's not an artificial mind, it's just a machine that puts the most logical word next, based on its learning model.
If I use an AI writing tool, I don't just push a button and accept what I get. It can only do so much. I have to guide it and edit the results. So, I think the essential part that I am doing is having the idea and the impetus to do make a story in the first place. The AI tool wouldn't do anything if I didn't push the button, and it's just putting words together that already exist, into common phrases that are already used. That's not going to be good enough without an understanding of why those phrases are used instead of others that mean the same thing, so I have to do the essential editing part to make the story flow and feel right and consistent. I also have to outline the plot and correct everything.
My friend insists that I should credit the tool for doing the bulk of the work, but I don't see the part it's doing as the valuable part, since it's writing words but not making them 'good'. Since it's not a person, it feels weird to give it special credit over any other tool I'm using like my PC as a whole or the language created ages ago.
What do you think?