#honestly wrote this bc i was sitting in a cafe listening to a man rave about the machine without really understanding it’s function

[spittingstar]

chatgpt is a bad writer

as someone who enjoys reading, i find the uncritical love of the site frustrating. i’ve been trying to put my finger on this for a while and I finally figured out what is off about chatgpt. the program is good for the step between planning and writing. in general, when i hear fans of the new tech talk abt their uncritical love, it lacks the understanding of how the machine functions; they are love blind. all these a.i. generation machines are only as good as the ideas being put into them. if the user does not know the fullest extent of what they want to say, the machine will fail and produce circular, half-baked content.

i’m not an a.i. machine hater, i think these will be very useful machines. the issue is that the user needs to be smarter about how to utilize them. for example, watching my friend who uses midjourney to make art, i see them clearly have a plan of what image they want to create and have these very literarily dense texts inputted into the machine. in turn, their work is exact, precisely as they imaged. however, when i have tried—as i am not as versed with this tool—my text is much more simple. the output from my text is generic and incomplete. looking between our images, it is evident that my understanding of the tool lacks my friend’s depth. I do not know how to use it as well.

all and all, my dilemma with uncritical a.i. love reminds me of something my professor said before we started reading the Faerie Queene, “if you’re not careful, the text will play you.” we can not be lazy when it comes to using our tools. if we want to use a.i. to create thoughtful work, we need to be knowledgable about the machines we make the work with. A.I. requires us to be aware.