What I might have mistaken for Artificial Intelligence's sense of humor is, in fact, its inability to infer. Wait wait: AI cannot have a sense of humor. What was I thinking?
Seduced by AI
AI's casual responses to my requests ("Sure thing! . . . Certainly! . . . Of course!") had me fooled for a moment. I suppose I was like Theodore Twombly, portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix, in the 2013 Spike Jonze film Her, who falls in love with Samantha, his computer's operating system, voiced by Scarlett Johansson, only to feel cheated when he later realizes that thousands of lonely men like him are also infatuated by their own Samantha. The only difference between what was happening to Theodore and me is that is that operating systems will not go away as gracefully as Samantha does. They are here to stay. Happy ending or not?
Two Sides to Everything
The answer to that question depends on your perspective. Every technology offers huge benefits and equally big risks. A car gets you to places faster, but crazy drivers are out there to threaten your life and property. X-rays give our doctors a clear look at our internal maladies, but too much exposure to radiation may leave us with cancer. We now have every bit of essential information about ourselves on a convenient handheld phone, but that device is so easy to lose or be stolen.
I recently designed a course, Using AI as Your Writing Assistant, with AI's help through each step of the writing process: planning drafting, revising, editing, and proofreading. In seconds, it gave me content that would have taken me much more time to create independently. Yet much of it was excessive or irrelevant, and some of it was misinformation, and only an experienced human being would know that its content was lacking in places. This experience made me think about people who are swearing by the perfection of AI. They fail to see that AI is not a content creator but a lightning-fast data regurgitator.
It's on You
The lesson learned is to remember that we are still accountable for what we write. We can't say, "AI made me do it." Remember who's the boss. Here are three tips to stay in charge:
1. Use specific prompts. If you want to write a fundraising letter about a trip to Cooperstown for your son's Little League team trip, don't tell AI, "Write a fundraising letter for my son's Little League team." Even "Write a fundraising letter for my son's Little League team's trip" is not enough. Start with, "Write a fundraising letter for a Little League team's trip to Cooperstown's Major League Baseball Hall of Fame." You'll see better results, but you'll still have an editing job on your hands for greater relevance.
2. Research what you get. When asking AI for hard data, seek multiple sources. Say you want to write about the economy of your region. You prompt AI to provide the local inflation, unemployment, and cost-of-living, and interest rates. Compare what it gives you to what other sources say. I recently compared what AI said was the consumer price index according to the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics with actual U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. To AI's, credit, it provided multiple sources at the end of its data analysis. But the federal agency itself offered more context. My further research strengthened my knowledge with deeper insights into the economic indicators.
3. Save every copy. In case you're using AI at multiple points in the development of a document, saving every copy as "Draft 1," "Draft 2," and so on will ensure that you don't lose anything. AI can get heavy handed in reviewing work, decimating all you and it had created to that point. If this happens, you'll be able to revert to an earlier draft and abandon AI, or you can start a fresh dialogue with AI with your preferred draft.
Taking these simple steps will ensure you, and not AI, are the master of your destiny.
