I've just written a LinkedIn post about being authentic in writing, and not relying on AI to do the writing for you. For those of you who aren't registered, here's the actual posting too.
I want to post about authenticity today because I see the threats to that all around me. For example, I just watched some media coverage of Tilly Norwood. Never heard of her? Well, there's a link below to just some of the coverage of this AI-generated actress, who looks so real that there's even talk of her getting representation by an agent.
So to get back to the issue of authenticity, I have become more and more concerned in the past couple of years that the individuality and uniqueness of each person is less and less valued. The Greek root word for authentic means "one acting on one's own authority" and I'm anxious that so many of us are abandoning our own thoughts and words because we are accepting the authority of AI.
I don't have a lot of apps on my devices, but it's more and more common now for a pop-up to suddenly interrupt my work and offer me some kind of AI assistant (with a fancy name) to help me create a sentence. The old "use it or lose it" adage applies to thinking and writing, just as much as anything else, so if we're tempted to let a robot replace our own words, won't we lose the ability to formulate and express an authentic idea?
In particular, this worries me, and many educators, as we see the effects on students who are turning to AI to write their papers for them. Of course, there are others will say that AI will stimulate higher thinking that will solve more problems, just as the calculator has allowed greater access to higher-level math. But we've all been at checkouts where assistants can't do the calculation in their head to make change without a calculator, and I'm worried that AI will also affect the ability of those same workers to think and speak for themselves.
No doubt, there will be many who will ridicule my thoughts and remind me of the many benefits of AI, and I don't question the applications to medicine, science, and efficiencies in routine procedures in all fields. I'm not a Luddite. But the ability to express an authentic thought is fundamental to being human, and the world will suffer if the ability to do that is not valued and encouraged in everyday life.
In the meantime, how should we react to Tilly Norwood, who copies human behaviour, but is incapable of doing anything authentic? Our reaction will either signal another step towards acceptance that Hal (2001: A Space Odyssey) is actually running things, or show that human originality continues to be essential.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/ai-actress-backlash-1.7647478