The summary of my stance on AI is this:
I, personally, don’t use it.
There’s a lot I could go into, but it’s nothing you haven’t heard before. On the writer side of things, I refuse to entertain the idea of AI in any way, shape, or form. If I need to bounce ideas, I’ll do it off of a human. (I’m not saying that this is why I married my husband, but he’s a very good person to talk to, so it’s been an exceedingly good bonus.) I do not develop ideas with AI, I do not let AI near the writing process, I do not edit with AI. Every dumb mistake is mine and mine alone.
From the Sarah, the person, not the writer side of things, I still don’t use AI if possible. (Full disclosure: The only time I use it is for my part time retail job, where they have us send out AI draft emails to customers. I think it’s gross, not particularly time saving, and doesn’t sound like a human wrote it, but I don’t have a choice.)
Many of my friends and extended family use AI for various things. My generalized stance is I think using AI for anything where you’re going to pass off the work as yours and monetize it, is gross. If you want to use it to do research or edit a letter or (fill in the blank), that’s up to you. I think each person needs to take the good and the bad and decide for themselves what their threshold of comfort is. I hope as a society, we decide that we don’t want to lose the ability to think critically and we like having water more than data centers, but I’m also not particularly mad that someone used it to proofread a letter.
I’m also pretty annoyed that, while writing this post, it keeps giving me the option to ‘ask ai’ about it.
While I’m here, I also want to touch on social media, as it pertains to being a writer. The summary on that one is: *flailing noises*
As an elder millennial, I’ll say that social media has gotten, if not scary, at least uncomfortable. I remember years ago, reading that social media was free because our content was the product. (Also the fact that they’re constantly advertising to us) I feel that more viscerally these days. It also feels like, culturally, the more time we spend interacting behind a screen, the more we forget that people are on the other side. (Unless they’re bots, which you shouldn’t bother arguing with anyway) We’ve gotten meaner, more quick to toss out (often non-sensical) insults, rarely engaging in good faith.
For personal use, I post cat photos, as the internet is intended for, and occasionally share photos of my husband for his 90 year old Grandma. (He talks to her every week and I think that’s adorable.)
As a writer, I haven’t figured out social media. I don’t have anything to promote, and finding a community is difficult. It feels like writer accounts are either happy self-pubed authors or authors way beyond my paygrade. (Notice me, senpai!)
What I do know is this, at some point, I’ll have to engage more professionally on social media, but I want to spend more time in a space I can control. I don’t want to share all my thoughts where a billionaire monetizes them. So I’m hoping to spend a little more time over here and build content I can be proud of.
I guess this is all a long-winded way of saying, “Wow, the internet. Weird place, right?”