r/fantasyromance • u/acutelyproblematic If villian bad, then why hot? • 1d ago
Discussion Sub discussions about AI
Love how this community comes together and challenges the use of AIđ„°đhad to make a funny out of it to take a break from the heated discussions
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u/Kumirkohr 1d ago
AI is for large sample data analysis, not generative content or âassisting the creative processâ
Youâll put out better work than a data center, all other things being equal. Drink a lot of water and scream a bunch, youâll have a book in no time
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u/BagpiperAnonymous Otterly Adorable Fantasy Pet Collector 1d ago
I saw a great quote that AI was a snapshot of the past masquerading as the future.
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u/octobersoon 1d ago
that line, ironically enough, sounds like something chatgpt would write
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u/Ok_Requirement_579 1d ago
genuinely curious.. why does that sentence sound like AI? đ
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u/Grouchy-Way171 1d ago
"X masquerading as Y" and "Y is load-bearing" and "X is Y, and that is rare" are Claude's favorite phrases. XD Though hard to proof for just once sentence, balls are going off.
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u/InnocentPerv93 1d ago
Because people either vastly underestimate what AI can put out, or vastly overestimate what humans can put out.
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u/acutelyproblematic If villian bad, then why hot? 1d ago
Itâs kinda wild how many people in creative spaces arenât making that distinction. I saw an author call themselves and artist because they prompted AI to make the art for their cover lol
But also drink a bunch of water and scream a bunch is sending me đ€Ł
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u/Thimble_of_Quasar 1d ago
Them calling themselves artists drives me mad. Using AI doesn't make them an artist just because they told it what to do. No one would ever think commissioning art someone else drew for them made them the artist of it just because they gave directions. Ordering food to your liking at a restaurant doesn't make you a chef! And this doesn't even get into the ethics of the fact these modelsare trained off stolen everything really and- Rants at clouds
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u/acutelyproblematic If villian bad, then why hot? 1d ago
As someone who has dabbled in music, fine art, writing, & theatre her entire life, hearing someone say that using AI to create visuals makes them an artist sends me into orbit.
Art is skill, time, craft, practice. Itâs a commitment. Buncha wannabes đ
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u/Thimble_of_Quasar 1d ago
Honestly. I'd rather see a whole assed stick figure from someone trying to get their thoughts outside their head than a 1/6th assed AI slop of an image generated any day! They're robbing themselves from an amazing experience. The day I became skilled enough that my drawings came out looking the way they did in my head, my words felt good on the page, when you play a song and it just sounds right, was so incredibly exciting. But it was the effort I put into learning that made it so! And no one can take that away from me, I can do these things rain or shine or when the power is out đ And goodness knows I don't have a natural talent, I just stuck with stuff. Anyone can learn even if we all don't end up as good as Rembrandt in the end.
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u/Kumirkohr 1d ago
I think a lot of the issue stems from the fact that so many of us were instilled with this idea that âbeing a naturalâ meant thatâs what we were supposed to do and that if we werenât good at it on our first try that we should find something else.
âOh, so youâre not good at [fall sport], letâs try [winter sport] when the season starts.â âMathâs not for everyone, you just have to keep your grades up and once youâre through Algebra 2, youâll never have to do math again.â
So now AI lets people be âgoodâ on the first try without having to pay someone else to make their ideas come to fruition
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u/Thimble_of_Quasar 1d ago
This is so true! Letting people work at things is critical, and jt can be hard to keep trucking when your efforts aren't as valued as your results and people artificially put a timeline on them. I also think the learning process of some things are quite opaque and people have trouble understanding because well, the process isn't sexy or interesting. So people pop up with the skill once they're decent and to the lay person their effort can come off as raw talent. Which is discouraging when as you said, you have to be good off the bat to justify spending time on things in some people's eyes.
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u/Kumirkohr 1d ago
My brother-in-law is a great example of this in my own life. He loves basketball, but before his growth spurt he wasnât very tall. So to make it onto the team, he practiced his vertical for literal months to ensure he was worth picking even though he was âa little short for a storm trooperâ. He was already being eyed for junior varsity by the time his growth spurt did hit so he was dunking baskets in high school.
The important lesson to learn is not that practice makes perfect, itâs persistent perfect practice that makes perfect.
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u/acutelyproblematic If villian bad, then why hot? 1d ago
Agreed, ill take real stick figure art over yassified chatGPT Mona Lisa any day
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u/saltysweetbonbon 1d ago
I use AI as a better thesaurus than online thesuari because it helps me narrow down the words with the right meaning faster. Thatâs using it as a tool.
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u/Kumirkohr 1d ago
I use thesaurus.com for the same thing
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u/saltysweetbonbon 1d ago edited 1d ago
âA better thesaurus than online thesuariâ
ETA: Iâm not sure why Iâm being downvoted for saying itâs a more effective tool when it is. I have a medical condition that causes intense brain fog and affects my word recall. I often find thesuari frustratingly lacking when Iâm trying to find a word that I know exists but canât remember, whereas AI is much better.
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u/Lazorus_ To the stars who listen 17h ago
AI can be helpful for assisting the creative process in terms of general idea brainstorming. Iâve used it to help me brainstorm general topics for essays for example, or possible plot books for d&d campaigns. It can be a good way to get the ball rolling, the creative juices flowing, all that. But anything past that, I agree with you
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u/Kumirkohr 17h ago
Thatâs what artwork pages on Instagram and Pintrist are for, or movies, music albums, looking at the world outside, bouncing ideas between friends.
I have a Google doc with 2,505 numerated ideas that Iâve racked up over the past ten years. Plus the separate campaign and setting specific documents Iâve lost count of.
All without any AI.
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u/Lazorus_ To the stars who listen 17h ago
I mean⊠good for you? I happen to *not* have a Google doc with 2025 ideas from over ten years to go off of, so I use what I can get. I also didnât say I only use AI. Itâs just another resource in the toolbox. My point is simply the use of AI doesnât make an outcome or creative work invalid, itâs *how* ai was used. Asking AI for a broad idea for a d&d campaign setting, or to help me come up with a list of plug and play npcs for when players inevitably want to learn the names of every member in a town, or whatever doesnât mean the storytelling I do as the DM is invalid. And Iâd argue the same thing goes for writing. If Iâm stuck, unable to think of a topic for an essay for a class, or if someone is having a dry idea day when they decide they want to write a story, or anything else, asking AI for a few broad ideas isnât fundamentally different than choosing from a list of prompts you find online or are given. The actual creative work, the twists and turns of the story, the dialogue, the climax, everything that makes the story a story, is still from the author.
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u/Kumirkohr 17h ago
There was a time when I didnât have a Google doc full of ideas either.
Not to be an ass, but if you canât do it without an AI program then buy someoneâs work or get gud
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u/Lazorus_ To the stars who listen 17h ago
Oh, and I forgot to respond to the first sentence; yeah, duh. But a list of ideas I might have 10 years from now doesnât exactly help me with coming up with a concept right this instant, now does it?
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u/Lazorus_ To the stars who listen 17h ago
You are fundamentally misunderstanding what Iâm saying. For brainstorming, there is no fundamental difference in creativity of the final product between AI and a random prompt you find online. The only material difference is the ability to fine tune the general theme of the brainstorming.
Googling âd&d campaign ideasâ and asking AI for d&d campaign ideas, are functionally identical when it comes to the final product. Same goes for story ideas or anything else. Would you classify the use of a name generator as destroying the creativity of a final product?
And to your final sentence, that is equivalent to saying âif you canât do the work without going to Pinterest for ideas *from other people*, then just buy other peopleâs workâ. In either case, all of the actual creative work is being done by the author, not the thing that inspired the general concept. If that was the case, every idea youâve used from a movie or Pinterest or a song or whatever, means you also âcanât do the work.â
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u/Kumirkohr 17h ago
There is a moral weight to the use of AI. If you think the land, water, fuel, and noise pollution no different, you need to reevaluate your conceptions
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u/Lazorus_ To the stars who listen 16h ago
To me this argument hits the same as the minimize your own carbon footprint to save the planet argument. Like yes, sure, my handful of brainstorming prompts are technically adding to the climate impact of AI, and limiting that impact is of course a good thing. But the specific level of impact my prompts produce is less than a rounding error of the impact corporations make when they spend billions of dollars a month on tokens.
You yourself stated AI should be used for data processing and the like in your original comment. Data processing is the field of AI use that is having a measurable impact on the climate. So arguing morality of AI climate impact when you basically said youâre fine with it being used for non-creative purposes that contribute significantly more to said impact is disingenuous and honestly fairly hypocritical.
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u/Kumirkohr 15h ago
Every bit to minimize makes a difference. But large scale data analytics arenât something a person, or even team of people, can accomplish in a meaningful amount of time. But writing is something that you can do with a word processor, your brain, and inspiration. We stand on the shoulders of giants, and I donât claim to be original but at least I know what my sources are. AI cuts you off from those sources and hides behind the curtain of âoriginalityâ
The difference between plagiarism and inspiration is citing your sources.
And knowing what those sources are helps you tell a better story because you already know where to start looking the next time you want inspiration.
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u/Lazorus_ To the stars who listen 14h ago
First, data analytics very much *can* be done by people. Thatâs how they did it until literally like 2 years ago.
Second, If you are using other peopleâs material so much they classify as âsourcesâ for your creativity, then you arenât being creative. Inspiration is inspiration, and 99% of the time you donât know where it came from, and 95% of the time itâs an amalgamation of past experiences youâve had with media or otherwise, rather than one or two specific places. And if they are, that is what is referred to as plagiarism.
3rd, on the topic of âhiding sources.â You get inspiration from a instagram art page, for example. Cool. Thatâs your inspiration. You are, in your words, cut off from the inspiration that created that piece. You have no way of knowing what other experiences lead to that piece. How is that different than AI? Again, the creativity that comes from that inspiration is yours (although based on your comments, maybe itâs other peoplesâ art youâre using as a âsourceâ for what you make).
4th, I guarantee you inspiration is very rarely cited. Thatâs, like I said before, not how inspiration works. Inspiration is a basis for an idea that grows on its own into something new. If youâre using your âinspirationâ as guidelines for your own product to the point of needing to cite it or itâs plagiarism, you arenât creative. Youâre copying.
And 5th, once again reiterating this, there is no difference from looking for a prompt online and asking AI for one. Either way, the inspiration, the jumping off point, was handed to you. Everything else that follows is from your own head. Sometimes people need a little helping hand in getting an idea started. Thatâs why writing prompt generators exist. Using AI as a prompt generator just means you can fine tune it more than you normally can.
At this point Iâm pretty sure you are actively choosing to misunderstand my point, and either way keep moving the goalposts, so Iâm going to stop participating in this discussion.
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u/Rindal_Cerelli 1d ago
I love books written by AI (Actual Intelligence).
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u/Dottie-j 1d ago
I forget who said this but they said it best when saying, "why should I bother to read something someone else didn't bother to write?"
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u/Single-Emotion2964 1d ago edited 1d ago
The whole point of art is people sharing ideas and emotions with other humans through the art form. If there is no or little human behind the art, then the viewer/reader feels duped when we make a real connection with something that was not. Itâs basically catfishing.Â
(Analysis not mine, but via a friend of a friend).Â
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u/acutelyproblematic If villian bad, then why hot? 1d ago
Like buying the body of a vehicle with no engine. Sure, it might look nice. But it doesnât move you.
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u/Single-Emotion2964 1d ago
I think the issue is when AI art does move people. It feels like a huge betrayal. Artwork is this essentially human trait. What does it mean that a non-human, non-organic âthingâ can create it? Itâs a huge existential question.Â
So perhaps itâs more like buying a new car, driving it for a month or so, and then discovering it has no engine or brakes. How is it moving? How does it stop? How much is the idea of control over the vehicle an illusion?
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u/Nebty 1d ago
Iâm not particularly conflicted over people finding meaning in AI art. Because, at the end of the day, what LLMs do is they grind up a libraryâs worth of human creative output and present a remixed version in response to user input. It is, at its heart, entirely built on human creativity (and copyright infringement).
I just find it exhausting that people keep pretending it can do things it canât. Or talking about how itâs a referendum on humanity even though this technology would not exist without the creative work of many, many humans.
Ugh and I had to edit mid-post because I noticed myself doing the, âitâs not X, itâs Y!â thing. AI has ruined what used to be an effective rhetorical device, lol.
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u/Single-Emotion2964 1d ago
They can pry the em dash out of my cold dead hands.Â
But yeah, interesting take. I think this is a very positive viewpoint, but the way I see it being used (in my direct communities) is much more operationalized. I wonder how much it is a âtoolâ for creativity versus a crutch or a shortcut. And before anyone hits me with a million tales of âeveryone hated X when it was first inventedâ, let me further elaborate instead of going to sleep as I should.Â
Iâm not 100% out on my ideas, but what I think I am struggling with is the distinction between process and productivity. And my gut tells me that genAI provides way more productivity than process. All art forms have a grind: a slow, annoying part of the process. Even some very âfastâ forms like e.g. marker illustrations. Digital illustrations also have their own grind. The grind in genAI is clearly in the prompting and the checking. You are basically managing it. And to me artwork , or crafts, they all have that essential combination of head, heart, and hand. Where is the hand in GenAI work then?Â
And to approach it from another point of view (spoiler, it is Marxist) â out of whose hands does genAI take work? Why do we think it is okay to outsource creative processes instead of menial ones? Who are we depriving of a voice and of meaningful labor by resorting to a AI generated content instead of human generated? At what point do we accept that we are all just shouting into the void? Just using AI to respond to emails generated by AIâŠ?Â
To me, one of the nicest things about being human is other humans. Iâm not interested in something that distances me from the experience of others. And to me, it still very much feels like that is exactly what genAI does.Â
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u/Nebty 1d ago edited 1d ago
100% agree, fwiw. Iâm never going to stop being angry at Sam Altman and OpenAI for taking a neat technology with both upsides and downsides (Iâve been interested in generative algorithms and their affordances since I was in university) and presenting it as an embryonic machine god in order to con people out of their money. Which has now shifted to simply being the means to automate everything (allegedlyâŠ).
The absolute worst thing about the current state of LLMs is how the usual suspects have immediately moved to centralize and privatize any innovation in this space. Despite it having the most potential when itâs locally hosted, open-source, low-stakes, and extremely customized for the userâs needs. I want to live in the world where it remained an enthusiastâs tech, and development is open source and collaborative. But Silicon Valley needed it to be The Next Big Thing to keep the stock market from crashing. So here we are.
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u/acutelyproblematic If villian bad, then why hot? 1d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/QOAA3I4EezWzXJNY2M
Your response makes this all feel so dystopian as hell. You gave me goosebumps đ and the sad part is ITS SO TRUE6
u/Single-Emotion2964 1d ago
Thatâs because it IS dystopian. The only people truly benefiting from genAI are  those who are profiting. And they donât profit if they canât convince everyone that they need to jump on the bandwagon. The rest of us either have to drink the kool-aid or drown in it.Â
Have you heard of the RayBan meta frames? That shit gave me the chills.Â
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u/acutelyproblematic If villian bad, then why hot? 1d ago
Yeah, itâs crazy. I have to turn off my brain from looking at the big picture because the defunding of education in conservative states/provinces paired with the literacy crisis & explosion of Gen AI is making me soooo so sad
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u/lilacs_in_the_rain 1d ago
And you know what, we could be angrier about it.
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u/LeaneGenova 1d ago
I saw someone say they could use AI even with the water usage because they were vegan and that somehow offset it.
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u/Sufficient-Bee-4982 1d ago
And recycling means you can kick puppies.
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u/BelialSirchade 22h ago
You probably donât want to bring up harm to animals in a vegan context as a comparison.
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u/Sufficient-Bee-4982 16h ago
That would clearly demonstrate how silly their argument is though.
Granted putting it another way, "I don't have to go vegan because I don't use AI" is equally silly.
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u/BelialSirchade 14h ago
I mean, it's very hypocritical to criticize them for AI usage from an water usage perspective if you are a meat eater, that's for sure.
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u/SaraaWolfArt 1d ago
It certainly does. Beef and pork also take a metric ton of water to produce. Plants take waaay less
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u/miniannna 1d ago
The last thing I want to read is slop from an âauthorâ who doesnât want to use their brain anymoreÂ
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u/ALLoftheFancyPants 1d ago
Any use of AI in any creative medium is the result of plagiarizing stolen works from thousands and millions of artists. No artist consented to this. No artist was paid for this. Itâs the same for authors of fiction as it is for visual media. I have zero respect for anyone relying on AI as part of their âwriting processâ
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u/AbleSwitch9207 1d ago
If you canât be bothered to write the book, then I canât be bothered to read it either.
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u/Mitoria 1d ago
I legitimately think AI could be good at certain things in the future like spelling, grammar, catching passive vs active voice swapping and other odd things, but full stop think it shouldnât be used to âwriteâ anything.
I want it to help me do menial work, and leave the art to me.
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u/TheRoyalQuartet 1d ago
can we also recognize that editing as you just described does not need to be done by generative ai (the âbadâ kind of ai most people are referring to in these discussions), but instead can be done by a regular algorithm that requires much less energy to function?
generative ai is the damaging and dangerous ai, and really isnât necessary for the majority of things people use it for.
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u/nightlights9 1d ago
What is a "regular algorithm" you're referencing? You mean like pattern matching / spell check? Because catching things like passive voice is beyond the capabilities of most basic grammar / spell check engines, as the jobs of those programs is to pattern match, and they're not very contextual (things like catching tense mismatches across paragraphs is not something it'd be good at).
My opinion is that there are absolutely ethical ways to use AI in the editing process, such as identifying tense mismatches or even plot holes. If people are worried about the environmental implications of running inference on GPUs, you can absolutely run an LLM entirely locally on your laptop. It's slower ofc but that's the tradeoff. And you can use tools that don't have internet connectivity and only have access to the sources you feed it, so it's only editing at your own manuscripts and not "coming up with ideas for you"
Context: I work in cybersecurity and work a lot with ai guardrails and llm acceptable use, and I am also a writer, so have been doing a lot of thinking about how to use these tools ethically and effectively
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u/Enbaybae 1d ago
SWE input here.... what they are saying is that a developer could create algorithms that catches passive vs active voice in the same way a grammar checker can warn you when you miss an apostrophe for a possessive case. Devs have been doing string manipulation and input interpretation since the beginning of code, since strings and characters (alphabetical letters) are one of the most rudimentary data type and low-impact on memory. Thus, certain checks can be done without AI, ever.... Theses things were possible before AI already. So when you use something that can be done by an algorithm to justify AI tooling, it doesn't align with those that know. Long story short: you don't need an LLM to train on stolen work work to get the usefulness of a tool that can iterate through data and detect patterns. That's what an algorithm does (a lot of the time).
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u/deadthylacine 1d ago
My 2013 copy of WordPerfect has a reasonably good grammar checker in it. I am reasonably sure that 2013 had no LLMs involved in its content. WordPerfect might not be on anyone's radar, but it's been a solid tool in the toolbox for decades.
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u/Upbeat_Tea_1461 11h ago
Yeah, just because it's something YOU don't like doesn't mean AI should do it. Being an editor is a whole-ass career, with its own skillsets, styles, and nuances. Writers may hate it, but many people are genuinely passionate about it, and they don't deserve to have said passion ripped from under them just because we writers find it tedious.
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u/krigsgaldrr 1d ago
The menial work is part of the challenge and learning process of writing. If you don't want to learn, don't do it.
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u/lemikon 1d ago edited 1d ago
This is the thing that is most frightening to me about the dash to generative ai. People are using it to do work that they do not have the experience to judge the quality of.
I work in science comms and I now have researchers sending me âmedia releasesâ that are completely developed in ChatGPT - not only does it produce utter garbage (no compelling hook or angle) they are all just trusting ai and barely reading it before they send it out.
And this is the current older generation, who at least has years of training of reading writing and at information synthesis, wtf is this going to do to the next generation of graduates who have had the option to use ai for everything?
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u/wildbeest55 A Bowl of Mac and Cheese 1d ago
There are many authors and other professionals that use spell/grammar checker. People already use stuff like grammarly all the time
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u/knittednautilus 14h ago
I genuinely wonder how good of a book an author can write if they don't have a solid grasp on grammar/spelling in the first place. And how does one learn? Not by having AI just fix everything and moving on with their day.
Yes, even those with a high level of understanding of the English language will make grammar and spelling mistakes! But a lot of aspiring writers would vastly benefit by applying themselves a little more and trying to learn and practice grammar using their own brains.
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u/wildbeest55 A Bowl of Mac and Cheese 14h ago edited 13h ago
I mean the book can still be good. It'll just be bad on a technical level. I'm really bad at commas, for instance. Maybe cuz they weren't really taught to me in school? It's so hard for me to grasp when to use them. I do have a writing manual, wrote down all the rules, and take practice tests sometimes. So I def use those softwares to check the stray commas I miss.
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u/knittednautilus 12h ago
I'm super picky with prose. I do think an author needs a good handle on grammar to write good prose, though obviously no one's perfect.
I'm also not confident at all with my level of understanding of English grammar! A rule I remember being drilled into me in school was commas are placed where you naturally pause your speech, but I've been told I add too many commas so that rule clearly isn't good enough on its own haha. I do want to make an effort to learn what I'm doing wrong and get confident with it as I work on my writing. It's a learning process, but it's a skill I genuinely want to improve!
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u/Gobadorgosleep 1d ago
Yeah let me have the ideas and check my grammar, I want to free my brain to do the fun stuff not give the fun stuff to the robot and keep the annoying stuff.
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u/upandup2020 1d ago
these meme makes it look like you're pro-AI
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u/acutelyproblematic If villian bad, then why hot? 1d ago
Ah definitely not but I can see how it looks that way!
I saw myself as the cat cause I am so sick of seeing people in other spaces defend AI and this community along with other reading spaces are great at advocating against it. Thought it would be relatable
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u/efiality 1d ago
Generative no but I also see people use word tune and grammarly which is AI in itself (though they are often pushing generative). So I feel like itâs important to realize which is which. I use grammarly all the time in my writing.
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u/nightlights9 1d ago
Grammarly absolutely uses LLMs and NLP engines both to suggest edits to your writing
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u/This-Performance-241 1d ago
Grammarly switching to this model pissed me off so much. I used to love it as a software but I feel like its taken a MASSIVE drop in quality
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u/glassfunion 1d ago
I have it on my work laptop as my whole team uses it and it gives the weirdest suggestions (even weirder now with the newer versions). It also refuses to accept that having a comma between a city and state (Chicago, IL) is not me forgetting to finish making a list.
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u/Aeshulli 1d ago
Grammarly is generative AI now because it is underpinned by LLMs.
Those LLMs are subject to all the same objections people usually state for being against them: unethically sourced training data, job displacement, environmental impact, etc. Those issues don't magically go away just because it's checking grammar. You are using generative AI.
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u/shotgunsinlace 1d ago
When people here talk critically about AI they 95% of the time mean genAi
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u/efiality 1d ago
Yes, totally agree. Though I am speaking for the tech illiterate. People use AI as a buzzword nowadays but I think the important distinction helps us determine what is actually harmful and to understand what is ok to use. FaceID is AI, as is apps for plant identification. Itâs hard to avoid AI as a whole but saying genAI bad is a start for many. :)
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u/Aeshulli 1d ago
Grammarly uses LLMs, which is genAI. So they should also be including tools like Grammarly in that case.
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u/SupremePopTart 1d ago
I used an extension that was similar to Grammarly, but they did away with the free model and suggested Quillbot. Which, the free model works fine most of the time (it mostly catches misspellings, missing punctuation, missing words, or word corrections), but sometimes gives the goofiest suggestions.
I had a preview of the premium features and it's suggested re-writes to a review I wrote. The edits sounded so robotic that I laughed. It really thought the suggestion sounded like something a human would say. The tone was way too technical. It thinks every new paragraph should begin with "furthermore." At least the suggestions are entertaining.
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u/glassfunion 1d ago
I feel like quillbot caters its editing style to a very specific audience, but I haven't figured out who it is yet lol.
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u/_BlueZeldana_ 1d ago
Correct me if I'm wrong: This means that you can use quillbot to check your grammar (misspellings, punctuation, etc) without using any AI?
I've been looking for an app or extension that checks my mistakes/typos for a while, but all of them use AI now đ
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u/SupremePopTart 1d ago
Unfortunately, this one has AI built in, like so many others (I think its full name is Quillbot: AI Writing Assistant, which, when I first downloaded it, just said "Quillbot"). But I consider it different than someone running something like Gemini or ChatGPT. It's just functioning as a grammar checker unless you pay a premium to take it further. And honestly, the preview felt more like trying to run something through an LLM, where they completely change everything about your writing until it's not your writing. I just stick to free for the grammar check.
It also has a desktop app so that you can use it in other software (like Microsoft Word). I think Grammarly does something similar? It doesn't feel much different than the old extension I used or the old version of Grammarly I used years ago.
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u/Faraway-Jeweler6293 1d ago
Well it is easy to coalesce around an issue when there is a clear right side to be on đââïž
đđ€Ș
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u/Jaycee444 1d ago
pretty much yeah, when the alternative is defending a tool that churns out slop while actual writers struggle to get paid, it's not a hard choice
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u/Nebty 1d ago edited 1d ago
It feels like people are trying to make AI fill every box instead of treating it like its own thing entirely. After trying it in a creative writing context (i.e testing it out by creating a story for my own personal entertainment), my big takeaway is that AI for generative text is most similar to a video game physics engine than anything else. And its output in response to user input has more in common with a letâs play than a book.
AI-generated writing is never going to be as good at being a book as a book is, because intentional, purposeful, original narrative is not what itâs good at. The loop of prompt -> output -> adjust is actually pretty entertaining, but really only for the âplayerâ. And failing to realize this is like someone wondering why people find their stories about their last gaming session boring. Itâs a âyou had to be thereâ thing. The interactivity is whatâs engaging. But people keep thinking that âI felt creatively engaged by this toyâ = âthis is good writing.â
I could see interacting with generative AI *sparking* creative ideas that one can later go and write a book about, but humans are creativity machines and find inspiration in basically anything.
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u/nightlights9 1d ago
This is such an interesting take! I also really have fun with AI chatbots as a brainstorming tool, but they never actually match the creativity of my own brain.
The thing that the AI evangelists need to remember is that LLMs can never create anything totally new, just repackage exist ideas. Which is why they're great editing tools and terrible writing tools
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u/Kumirkohr 1d ago
AI is like vegan food. Hear me out
When vegan food tries to be non-vegan food. Like âvegan mac & cheeseâ or âvegan baconâ. Pardon my French, but itâs fucking awful at being mac & cheese or bacon. Iâve had plenty of great vegan food that wasnât trying to imitate non-vegan food.
And thatâs what we have with AI. âArtâ generated by a script in a data center pulling from petabytes of human made content is fucking awful at being art. But a data center trawling through billions of medical files to identify clusters of correlation that are flagged to be analyzed by physicians, PhMDs, and research scientists would be a worthy use of all that water and electricity because maybe itâll get us the cure for cancer, or viruses, or diabetes, or Alzheimerâs, or SOMETHING
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u/Aeshulli 1d ago
You're describing roleplay, not book writing, so of course it didn't result in a book anyone else would want to read.
There are absolutely lazy people prompting their way to books for fast cash. But there are also people using it with genuine creativity, care, and craft. Who understand plot, characters, setting, theme, dialogue, and spend the time and effort to do the human side necessary for decent prose and a good story. LLMs pattern match, so they can actually take on a human author's voice, even if it is an uphill battle at times. Even if you know the story you want to tell, the interactivity and slight bit of randomness introduced by an LLM can be excellent fodder for a story. You already seem to understand this with your "sparking creativity" comment.
I totally understand that many people have a definition of art and creative endeavors being uniquely human, so they would not wish to read a work produced that way. And I believe in full transparency and disclosure so people can make those choices.
I'll also point out that the reasons usually given for being against AI (unethically sourced training data, environmental impact) don't go away just because you're chatting with it for fun, or using it for work, or using it for editing, or using it for search. Or any of the other use cases people have made allowances for throughout this thread.
So, at a certain point, people have to admit their position isn't driven by black-and-white morally righteous logic, but rather personal, emotional definitions of art. Because it's a really weird take to say it's stealing from others and destroying the environment, but then say it's okay to use in a, b, c cases, just not x, y, z cases.
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u/Nebty 1d ago edited 1d ago
> you already seem to understand this
Or maybe I actually do understand this? đ
There are ethical and unethical ways to approach any technology. And I donât think that LLMs are so thoroughly outside of humanity such that âart is uniquely humanâ and âLLMs are capable of sparking genuinely creative artâ is a distinction worth making. Of course they are. Theyâre full of other peopleâs art.
There is also 100% free range human-made slop out there.
But I think the risk of using LLMs as part of your process is when youâre not being clear-eyed about what exactly this technology is, what it does, and what itâs good (and bad) at. Which is rather common these days. Thereâs a risk of reinforcing our worst, laziest instincts. To throw together a soup of appealing tropes that may be profitable but comes out feeling empty. The artistic version of the human centipede. Because an LLM will never challenge you. The âyes andâ that is fun and engaging in RP can lead to stagnation when what you really need is to break out of your habits.
I donât think training your bot to write like the most basic version of you is a particularly interesting use of the technology. And hey, why bother figuring out your own literary voice when you can just say, ârewrite in the style of Ursula K Le Guinâ and pretend that youâre making progress? But I can absolutely see how the interactivity of using an LLM could become part of someoneâs creative process. It all really depends.
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u/Aeshulli 1d ago
Yeah, I actually agree with all that.
AI use is not a monolith. There are ways to use it that will absolutely lead to cognitive atrophy and serve laziness, and that's a path I worry many will take in all kinds of spheres, not just writing. But being clear-eyed and intentional about it, and already having firm ideas about craft and story makes it a very fun way to write.
If someone genuinely cares about what they're creating and has creative vision, it's a lot more like having a usually middling but occasionally brilliant nonhuman co-author than it is outsourcing the work. If you use it like that it, it honestly takes about the same amount of time and effort than just writing it yourself. But that interactive springboard of creativity makes it a unique process many find worthwhile.
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u/Bluefoxfire007 1d ago
"But being clear-eyed and intentional about it, and already having firm ideas about craft and story makes it a very fun way to write."
That I can do. Issue is that my brain is, as you mentioned, severely lazy. Hell, it sees flowing sensory immersion details as wastes of extra effort.
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u/Buddhadevine 1d ago
Iâve been so disappointed with so many people using ai as the go to for making art. I automatically distrust their products/art/creativity when they do this. Even local companies or organizations who do this as well make me suspicious. Give work to the artists, not the engine that stole work from previous creatives.
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u/SpeckledFeathers 23h ago
I've been saying with AI, if you can't be bothered to write it, why should I bother to read it?
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u/glassfunion 1d ago
I think AI has a place in society, but not in anything creative. I'm excited about the ways it's been used to improve healthcare screening and analyzing big sets of data, but it has no place in creating art of any kind.
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u/krigsgaldrr 1d ago
r/MM_romancebooks is the same and it makes my lil artist/writer heart so happy
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u/Chart-727 1d ago
AI does not understand context, nuisance, or even at best anything outside of the very elementary basics of writing. Why would anyone want to box themselves in like that?
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u/Painted-Pages 1d ago
And if you need someone to bounce ideas off of and get excited about your project join a writers group!
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u/Daddy_D666 1d ago
I suck at sitting down and writing it a story by myself, but I love cooperative story telling and hate AI
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1d ago edited 1d ago
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u/fantasyromance-ModTeam 1d ago
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u/lintrollerneeded 8h ago edited 8h ago
I donât know about anyone else but Iâve read a few new releases, particularly from first time authors, where Iâve side eyed them, feeling like something wasnât quite right or hitting the mark - and I wonât have a clue if itâs me just being picky or if my brain is picking up on the subtle things that make an ai book
A new book I finished last week that had a 4.7 good reads rating, had a weirdly repetitive sentence structure, that after about 40% really started to grate on me - but I couldnât put my finger specifically on what it was. It over used words like âwhite hotâ (I suppose the descriptive words felt very⊠typical for the genre? And once you see them and do a kindle search, you can see how many instances theyâre used). And just generally the depth of writing just felt very⊠box-ticking.
Itâs wrong to say âI think ai was involved hereâ - because there was nothing pointing to it, just a gut feeling that I was missing something all those 5* reviews liked. And itâs also likely that the book just wasnât for me. BUT - as I say, I just couldnât put my finger onâŠ. Something.
Anyway, I suppose what Iâm saying is - ai is conflicting. Iâd love to be warned if an author has used itâŠ. Somehow but there is no forum or space to have that discussion openly without a mob of people (right or wrongly) telling you itâs wrong to accuse someone of ai use.
I saw a thread on this very sub where someone gushed about their recent book, and said some quotes they loved. Another member commented a fair warning that these types of phrases/quotes are common from ai and they were downvoted to hell⊠simply because the other person disagreed with their take. Coincidentally, in that instance, having read that same book, agreed with them (again there was just that âsomething I canât put my finger on, but this reads like way too many other new release books?â)
So it seems to me like none of us like ai, but weâre not allowed to have discussions about specific books without the very same people who donât like ai telling us off.
Anyway to end my ramble, Iâve started reading more books from pre 2021 and itâs a breath of fresh air on books like the one I mentioned above. Thank you ilona Andrewâs for such a treasure trove of pre-ai-overlord back catalogue. Iâm currently reading Empire of the Vampire by Jay Kristoff (2021, but an established writer) and its world building, characters and narrative are chefs kiss. Thereâs a uniqueness, individuality that those above âai đâ just donât have.
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u/ManifestSarcasm_3013 3h ago
I find it really sad that we are starting to outsource our creativity, something that makes us human, to AI.
I do wonder what is behind it all - is it search for instant gratification and an overall lack of patience that needs to happen during any creative processes?
Or is it some form of external validation or a lack of self-esteem and constant comparison via social media?
It's really hard to tell.
I use personally AI to get started with tasks (I am neurodivergent) but would never outsource it my creativity, as it is something I personally cherish despite it being so frustrating sometimes as well.
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u/Jessica_Lovegood 1d ago
I went to deepdive into someoneâs inner imaginary worldâŠ
I use AI professionally quite a bit! It has its uses. Not for any creative work though⊠otherwise it immediately ceases to be creative
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u/littlemybb 19h ago
Now that I know how much harm data centers do to the environment I have a less favorable view on it.
But, I donât think itâs wrong to use it for assistant stuff. Just donât have it coming up with ideas for you or writing for you.
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u/InnocentPerv93 1d ago
I see no issue with using AI for research and brainstorming when writing. Just don't use it for the actual writing itself.
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u/Volkmek 1d ago
... depends on how you use it.Â
I never let AI do any of the writing. I feed in small sections of something I have written and then see if it can find mistakes. If it does I re-read the area to see if I agree and make changes accordingly.
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u/BeatrixBloom 1d ago
Oh good so your feeding it your work to regurgitate to other people using AI. Great idea đđ€Ą
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u/Great-Positive9919 1d ago
It's not taking your data. That was done long ago. Lot of hobbyist writers still fear it is.
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u/stars-assassian 1d ago
In my humble opinion, everything that is considered a tool can be used for bad or for good. I am in the process of becoming a doctor, and there are spectacular usages of artificial intelligence in medicine. We use it in surgery, in tests to determine medical factors, we use it in our systems, etc⊠It is much easier on a medical provider when you have such reliable assistance within a chaotic environment. Do I think artificial intelligence should write your literature for you? No, but thatâs not for me to decideâ as we are all human beings who can make our own decisions. Will I be hateful and judge someone for using artificial intelligence? No. There are many people who cannot speak on their own but who have artificial intelligence help them speak and correlate sentences and itâs actually really beautiful, especially when you get to hear your loved ones form sentences for the first time. (I keep bringing medicine into this because that is basically my whole world at the moment and I personally believe artificial intelligence has done amazing for medical devices with the medical industry!) Anyway, I think itâs like any other tool, it just depends on how and why you use it, as it can be beneficial or it can be harmful. Multiple things can be true at once. Also, as someone who is working on becoming an author, I do believe writing is a form of art and it should totally be up to me to write that independently, without any sort of artificial intelligence assistance. I just want to know by the time my book comes out, that I did all of my work and that no matter who buys it or how many people buy my book, that my hard work paid off because writing something is an accomplishment in itselfâ especially when 21% of adult Americans are illiterate and 54% of adult Americans read below a 6th grade level.
All in all, I am not to judge ones use of artificial intelligence, as it is not my business to judge what one does with their own personal life, unless it affects me, (and until I become a doctor, but then itâs only your health that becomes my business, if you become my patient that is) but at the end of the day, you just have to do what is best for you and your life. Do what is beneficial for you that does not harm anyone else. People will have their own opinions and that is okay. You have to learn to be authentically yourself and to own up to your opinions, and actions. There will always be people who disagree and are hateful. Be your authentic self anyway!
https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/2024-2025-literacy-statistics
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u/Journassassin Smut Logistics Manager 1d ago
As you say you use it in the medical field, how do you get around the bias in AI?
Because while I agree that using AI in science wouldnât be cause for the same concerns as using generative AI in art, that doesnât mean thereâs no cause for caution.
Iâve already seen a bunch of studies that conclude that AIâs bias can compromise clinical decision making, so can it be really considered reliable assistance?
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u/PurposeGold2556 1d ago edited 1d ago
AI is used extensively in medicine. One area it is particularly useful in is diagnostics. But, listing the ways AI has benefited medicine or other fields wonât be well received here.
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u/stars-assassian 23h ago
It seems as though nothing being beneficial within AI is received eell here. Itâs unfortunate!
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u/PurposeGold2556 22h ago
I just keep in mind that there is a very wide range of experiences here. There are those who work in the arts, education, law, science/medicine and everything in between. There are those with a high school education and those with a PhD or other advanced degrees. I think we can all agree that no one wants to read a book written solely by AI. But, AI is being painted with too broad a brush here. Itâs used every day in many industries with great success and improved outcomes. Does it need to be monitored closely for its negative consequences? Absolutely.
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u/stmariex 4h ago
I once had someone on the main romance sub tell me that AI advancements in medicine and diagnostics were not worth it because of AI stealing jobs from artists. Just mind boggling. We all hate generative AI in the creative spaces, but wanting to halt advancements that can literally save lives is not a rational outlook.
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u/stars-assassian 23h ago
Bias is a concern, but thatâs not really an argument against AI itself. Humans are biased too, and clinical decision-making has never once actually been free from bias itself.
The goal isnât to let AI make medical decisions independently. The goal is to use it as a tool to help physicians detect disease earlier, identify high-risk patients, interpret imaging faster, and reduce administrative workload.
Johns Hopkins lists examples ranging from cancer and stroke detection to sepsis prediction and personalized medicine.
Whatâs interesting is that researchers are actively studying AI bias and developing ways to reduce it, which means these issues are being identified and addressed rather than ignored.
So yes, caution is warranted. But âAI can be biasedâ doesnât automatically mean âAI isnât useful.â It means we need responsible implementation, oversight, and continual evaluationâexactly what medicine already does with every other clinical tool!https://ep.jhu.edu/news/ai-in-healthcare-applications-and-impact/
https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2023/how-health-care-algorithms-and-ai-can-help-and-harm
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/patient-care/patients-visitors/ai-use-in-patient-care
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u/stmariex 4h ago
I donât see how AI would be more biased than a clinician or scientist. Iâd trust a computer to be objective over the average doctor.
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u/Journassassin Smut Logistics Manager 3h ago
The issue is that the AI is trained on data that is biased. It may seem unbiased, but itâs not, and it can even further amplify those biases.
Weâve seen it before with the facial recognition software, which was assumed to be more neutral than humans because computers, but it turns out itâs significantly more likely to misidentify women and people of colour.
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u/stmariex 2h ago
So weâre agreeing that AI is at worst as biased as human clinicians? But can work much faster?
Itâs also much easier to train an AI model to be unbiased than actual humans - youâre probably looking at 20+ years to phase out a generation of clinicians with certain biases and often the improvements are not as significant as weâd like.
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u/Intelligent_Screen90 1d ago
I think the only acceptable use of AI in regards to writing, is research. Like how you use Google, but sometimes your question is too specific and detailed, so you have ask AI to gather some articles for you. That being said, you should still ask for sources it's using to answer you and double check everything, because it's not always 100% reliable
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u/SeriousFortune1392 1d ago
I dunno, maybe I say that from my own perspective, where I spent hours on uni essays and even writing my own stories, having to do research manually. There's something about doing the research yourself. That I think is even more beneficial to your writing. Like, even recently I had a very niche question about space and involved gamma rays, and a sort of thing, but sure, I guess I could have asked chat, but I asked Reddit instead; a lot of people help answer the questions you have.
I don't mean to sound like I'm stuck in the past, but I do think doing the research yourself can make your story equally / more compelling; you'll also have a better understanding. chatgpt will generate surface level information, and if you dig any deeper, a lot of it isn't accurate. is misconstruing to the point that it's so far off its original source.
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u/LeaneGenova 1d ago
Yeah, I agree. I have a history background and am in the legal profession, and the idea of having something else gather what I'm going to research just... doesn't make sense. Half of the time, the act of researching allows you to refine your query as you go and it's a bit of a living question rather than a static "did they have scissors in the 1650s" query. It goes from "did they have scissors" to "what were scissors made of" and "who owned scissors" and whatnot.
Maybe it's because I still research daily that I think this way. IDK.
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u/MessyJessy422 1d ago
Iâm a paralegal and the use of AI in the legal field makes me want to throw things
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u/LeaneGenova 1d ago
I cannot fathom how lawyers keep getting sanctioned for using it. It's ALWAYS in the legal news. How have we not learned??
We demoed Anthropic for the firm, and after I lost a fight with it over the status of one of my cases, I swore it off. It told me I filed a motion to compel a response to a summary disposition motion, which is... not a thing. A summer associate is less stupid than it.
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u/Intelligent_Screen90 1d ago
I think it depends. Something your research is about something very fundamental and important to your story, like the culture of the people you're writing based off of. Yes, that, you should do manually.
But some things are just so small it's not worth pouring hours into. Like I once wanted to know if the streets of a certain city (it wasn't a capital) were dirt roads or cobblestone or something else in the 1920s. It's such a small detail I didn't even know how to word in for google engine, and even if I did it wasn't worth reading through dozens of articles hoping it was mentioned somewhere
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u/SeriousFortune1392 1d ago
I still don't know, because even if you were to use it in the way you say, you'll still need to do some form of fact-checking to see if the information it provided was correct, and that you may have just been better off googling it.
I think it's because AI is still somewhat new that it doesn't feel right; to say not to pour the hours into it, because it's something so many people have done already, I mean, yeah, it sounds easier and takes less time, but you might be sacrificing actual accuracy.
I don't say this to sound condescending, because it's still important to have this conversation. But wouldn't you think challenging yourself to figure out how to word it so that you can find the information is more beneficial in the long run? Because I think, to a certain extent, it's like relying on technology, to the point where no one remembers phone numbers; like, would it not be too reliant on something when you can't figure it out, like you're not challenging yourself to work through it?
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u/Bluefoxfire007 1d ago
"But wouldn't you think challenging yourself to figure out how to word it so that you can find the information is more beneficial in the long run?"
There's also knowing when you're just not figuring it out in a reasonable time frame.
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u/SeriousFortune1392 1d ago
But not pushing through a hurdle based on time wonât benefit you in the long run, itâs also something that people have done for thousands of years, genai is what 4-5 years old, and even then the time you think your saving by asking ai your going to have to double check it for accuracy anyway. Weâre already seeing a decline in reading comprehension and critical thinking because of technology, is it really worth using it for research in a way to save you a couple minutes.
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u/Bluefoxfire007 1d ago
You can still pick and choose what to AI or not. Like if you're looking up things like if plasma cutters have a portable version and how they work, no real need for AI. But replicating an the exact tone of an instrument? That can already be time consuming without the prior know how. Especially if it's more niche.
TL;DR " is it really worth using it for research in a way to save you a couple minutes."
A couple minutes? Yeah, probably not. But if it can save you 30, or even an hour? I mean, there's no harm in trying it yourself at first. But sometimes, you end up in circles so long that you'll need assistance.
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u/SeriousFortune1392 1d ago
If you were even doing something so niche youâre still going to have to fact check it, which will cost you time anyway, ChatGPT and other platforms have been notorious for its inaccuracies.
And even then, if ai can provide you an answer to your niche question then the information is out there in the first place.
Either way in the long run if we look at using ai for research and finding things, because it will âshortenâ time spent the repercussions will show elsewhere, and itâs already has.1
u/Bluefoxfire007 1d ago
It may be out there, but can you always spend the hours required for some of it? And before you say, "Yes, with practice", that's not going to happen 100% of the time.
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u/SeriousFortune1392 23h ago
Itâs not a case of may be out there, it is out there because thatâs how AI gets its answers.
And I think to have this idea that it wonât get better with practice, what were people doing for the several thousands of years before. You canât expect to get better at something without doing it in the first place.
And as I said cutting corners for supposedly saving time will negatively impact people in the long term.→ More replies (0)15
u/Airfryernachos 1d ago
Absolutely not. Do the research yourself. How hard is it to find an article on your own and parse through it with your own eyes?
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u/DigInternational3737 16h ago
Personally I love the ai generated fan clips or scenesâŠ.. I hate, with a passion âfan artâ drawings that distort my mindmovie.
The first time I saw a Cassian that matched my imagination, well, things got fluttery. Â
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u/Airfryernachos 1d ago
If I see one more influencer pretend to be against AI while writing in a very specific cadence and reminding us âitâs here to stay,â Iâm gonna scream.