Blinking cursor of shame
People like to say that inspiration isn’t necessary and that in order to write well, you have to put words on the page and do it even when you’re uninspired. One can only wonder what life is like for people with fascinating thoughts constantly running through their heads, like a ticker on the New York Stock Exchange.
I’ve personally stared into the abyss of a blank document for more hours than I care to admit, bored to tears by my own lack of inspiring internal dialogue. It isn’t a surprise to anyone that large language models like ChatGPT brought a sigh of relief for me and most other people who find themselves at the crossroads of the Age of Content and the technology revolution.
The moment came when I finally had my Pro account. I started asking the AI questions! And what did it return? The most bland, uninspiring, almost unworkable material that could have been straight from a free template website. I’m the roadrunner, and Artificial Wile E. Coyote just ripped the road from under me. The joke is obviously on me!
AI-thentically me
Naysayers tend to be either fearful of AI ᅳ which there are good reasons for ᅳ or dismissive of its possibilities. It is easy to boil down AI usage in our everyday lives as overblown hype, producing inauthentic nonsense with no human value. “People who use AI are lazy, unoriginal, thoughtless.” But this brings out the question of the proximity effect. The novelty of the technology causes a lapse in perspective of all the other ways we use prebuilt, collectively utilized tools daily to achieve our goals, create, and explore. “Has any other invention ever equaled, in power and glory, the common noun?”
We already have programs and algorithms we live by in our daily lives. We’re already acclimated to knowing our language and syntax, knowing how to read, and knowing our social milieu. It’s difficult to separate where we end and the outside world begins. Some ubiquitous technologies we use daily have been around for centuries. Had we been around at the inception of writing, we might have found it as bewildering and curious as we find AI today. Nevertheless, using AI in my own daily process can still feel like cheating. Is it really as valuable if I haven’t spent days awake, covered in coffee stains, bug-eyed, scrounging from the ground up?
Tinker, tailor
After my misguided first steps and a few Google searches later, I figured out the basics of Prompt Engineering. AI actually follows the universal laws of learning, effort, and life: You get out of it what you put into it. People who aren’t putting in the effort to generate exciting, thought-provoking, and unique outputs with AI tools are also not doing these tasks in an exciting, thought-provoking, and unique way without AI. Everyone with access to AI now has an increase in mileage, but just because we have a new tool, it does not follow that the person using that tool is more intelligent or thoughtful than before.
When I interface with AI, all of my words, thoughts, and directions are an expression of my own personal experiences and values. When I formulate my prompts, I take the time to explore the possibilities. I course-correct when I get an unwanted output, or else I embrace the result when the output is even better than what I could have hoped for. The results of my efforts are always infused with my own personal touch, and the AI is limited by my own intelligence, knowledge, and imagination. AI will not be able to replace me in my lifetime, but how I use it and what I create with it is undoubtedly a reflection of who I am.
Shifting perspective
Authenticity isn’t measured in obstacles but is directly related to honesty and effort. Can you translate your thoughts and feelings in a way that connects to others? Are you able to communicate your goals and expectations to find answers to your questions? If an AI tool helps you articulate your inner voice or solve complex problems, it does not make that expression or achievement less valuable or honest. Our integrity should not be questioned because of the use of AI in our daily lives. If you desire to be creative and unique in any field, from music to STEM, AI is a fantastic and immense tool that can help you achieve those goals regardless of others who use AI in a bland and predictable way.
“Doubtless the invention of writing was met with a long and holy opposition, as
something calculated to undermine morals and the race. An Egyptian legend
relates that when the god Thoth revealed his discovery of the art of writing to
King Thamos, the good King denounced it as an enemy of civilization. “Children
and young people,” protested the monarch, “who had hitherto been forced to
apply themselves diligently to learn and retain whatever was taught them, would
cease to apply themselves, and would neglect to exercise their memories.”
Will Durant, The Story of Civilization
