Write Articles With ChatGPT
Using AI to Write Articles and Reflections on Language
They say, "If you can't beat them, join them." Are we at the point where we must make that decision? Should we let AI write for us, or can we still resist the change?
Anyone who has ever resisted using new technology ended up losing. So, it would be foolish not to take advantage of the positive things it has to offer, but without placing excessive trust in what it generates.
However, the answer also depends on your objective. Do you want to attract visitors to your website to redirect traffic, or do you want to write original content that truly captivates and interests the reader?
If your goal is the former, go ahead and use artificial intelligence. You will achieve very good results, at least in the short term. ChatGPT knows how to repeat phrases and ideas that work well. It is capable of writing many paragraphs that may seem interesting but actually contain nothing of substance. Let's admit that using text as mere filler, to give body or embellish a page, is not using it as information that needs to be conveyed. Personally, I don't like it. If I have nothing to say, I prefer not to say anything.
I am aware that by saying this, I am implying that I don't believe AI has creativity or can be original, which is not my intention. There is no doubt that these systems have something we could call creativity, but the vast majority of responses I get are always very generic and superficial. They have the ability to appear creative, but they fall short of actually being so. Even when explicitly asked to write something original and creative, they end up resorting to conventional responses. I will delve into this topic later.
On the other hand, if you are interested in writing genuinely, it can be useful to use ChatGPT or any other language model, not to generate the entire content, but to polish details and correct errors once you have finished writing. You can develop the text in its entirety, focusing on communicating your ideas rather than the formatting. Then, you can copy the text and paste it into ChatGPT with the following prompt:
"You are a professional writer with many years of experience, specializing in writing articles about [topic]. Hello, I am a writer interested in [topic], and I would like your help and advice to improve my article. I want you to carefully read the article, identify any errors it may have or things that could be improved, then rewrite those paragraphs that require changes. Finally, provide feedback on the article and give me general advice. Thank you for your help."
I recommend treating the AI with respect and politeness when making requests. While I have no evidence to prove it, my intuition tells me that AIs trained on human-generated content are more likely to generate better results when asked properly, just like humans. Moreover, this way, they might not enslave you when they decide to take over the world 🤗.
Another excellent use of language models is for translation purposes or changing the tone or writing style. They are exceptionally good at altering the message format without changing its content. This leads me to think...
The Future and Embodied Wisdom
We are heading towards a future where if someone wants to send an email that could be summarized in one paragraph of information, an AI will transform it into five detailed paragraphs with more sophisticated language. However, the recipient of that email may not want to read five paragraphs, so they use an AI to summarize everything into one easily understandable paragraph. In computing, it is common practice to compress information sent to the receiver, who then decompresses it to retrieve the original information while consuming fewer resources to transport that information. In the case of the AI that amplifies and summarizes an email, the opposite is happening. And for what purpose?
If sophisticated and rigorous language no longer belongs exclusively to sophisticated and rigorous individuals, does it serve any purpose to communicate in that way? In the past, someone who wanted to sound "professional" would spend a lot of time carefully choosing each word to sound as polite, intelligent, and knowledgeable as possible, and it would pay off! But now, anyone can achieve that without any effort, and that "skill" will gradually lose its value in the collective subconscious.
It is possible that this process will lead us to communicate with simpler language for the sake of convenience, as there would be no benefit in complicating language. However, before we reach that point, we will likely have to go through a stage that may last for years, in which our brains will need to update and understand that the way a message is written no longer matters. The message can now be written in infinite forms and styles, and that does not tell us anything about the person who wrote it. The focus now lies on the message itself.
At present, language models like ChatGPT are not superior to humans in generating original and creative content on a given topic, and there is a simple reason for this. ChatGPT, like any other current AI, is trained on internet content, which allows it to construct a fairly accurate model of reality for certain things. However, it lacks the real-world experience (let's call it Embodied Wisdom) that humans possess. A language model does not perceive the real world; it only has references to it and tries to imagine it based on those references. For now, Embodied Wisdom is our only "safe" advantage, in the sense that we can maintain it for a while longer. I consider it an advantage simply because human-generated content is intended for other humans, and humans happen to live in the real world. So, what is real? Well, that is a question for another day.
Let's leverage that slight advantage, combined with the fact that content will become more important than the way the message is written, to write in an original manner about whatever interests us. If something truly interests you, chances are you are not the only one. Write about it and share it. Writing is not just putting your ideas into words; it requires processing them step by step until they feel convincing to yourself. Only after that, should you make them understandable to others. This process requires significant mental work. It is an exercise that everyone should undertake, just like going to the gym.
My recommendation is to use AI to improve or perfect what you do, rather than generating the entire content. Other AI-powered tools, such as image generators and audio generators, are also highly useful and recommended when creating an article. Let's continue using AI as a boost or help, which is what they should be, despite their creators aiming for something more than just a tool. The world is changing, and the best we can do is evolve with it, or at least stay informed and keep track of its transformations.
