Does anybody know what kind of use ChatGPT is, other than a source of amusement for the rich? I've been writing stories and poetry for 30 years. Now my dad is telling me that he can't understand the dialogue I've written, and suggesting that I let ChatGPT write me a story. The dialogue I've written is between two farmers -- and I did my research, by listening to UK farmers and other rural folk speak on YouTube, and then basing my farmers on the dialects used in rural regions like Suffolk, Dorset and Gloucestershire. Granted, these are difficult to hear if you're not familiar with them; but after all, my characters are farmers, not professors or BBC newsreaders. I can't have them talking in RP (Received Pronunciation). I can't believe it. 30 years I've put into this business, and that's what I'm reduced to? A glorified assistant to a jumped-up artificial intelligence? I tried explaining all this to my dad, and he pulled the old "guilt trip" on me, saying that if I don't want to listen, I'll never learn anything, blah blah blah. Sigh ... don't get me wrong, I love my old man, I don't want to fight with him, but seriously. I'm trying to write a Norse saga-type story, set in the year 1000, in Iceland. Meanwhile, ChatGPT can't even answer a simple question about Thora Hákonsdóttir. Sorry, AI fans. You'll have to come up with something a little more accurate to help me. I'll go back to my Encyclopedia Britannica. Let me know when you come up with something that actually works. What have your experiences with AI been like? Feel free to share.
I just signed up for chatGPT's paid service, so I'll have to get back to you, but I suspect some of the trouble users have involve questions that aren't specific enough or may be about a subject the LLM hasn't 'learned' yet. AI is a WIP.
ChatGPT is a multi-purpose tool. It's used by a lot of the general population (sadly) and isn't just amusement for the rich. It's hard to comment on the conversation with your father because every story has two sides but in general, writers should do the majority of the writing. Otherwise, they're just not the writer. To be a writer, you must write. And for me, the ideal is 100% involvement with 0% AI. That's what I do. But another big part of being a writer is feedback. Your father's suggestion to use ChatGPT, regardless of whether its bad or not, is rooted by some kind of dissatisfaction. Have others read your story? Did they leave similar feedback? Try to weight your father's feedback against other feedback and see if its worth considering. Even if nobody else has mentioned it, he might still have a point, so cast ChatGPT aside for a second and try to understand why he gave you the feedback that he did. Is your dad even a reader? Or does he simply read your stories because they're yours? My experience with AI so far is that its garbage. It's kind of good for programming but for creative stories? It's no good. I asked it to type a couple of stories back in the beginning of the craze and none did justice to what I had in mind. It wasn't hard to understand that the only one who can do justice to those visions is my head is me and me alone. Hell, maybe not even another human can. Let alone some poor imitation of the human mind. I also tried AI models for art and had the same experience. I've got specific visions of my characters, worlds, etc. AI disappointed me and did zero justice to what I had in my head. I suspect the only way to satisfy those would be to learn how to draw myself, but images aren't necessary for writing so I don't plan on it at least for now. We also used AI in class to generate random data for a database project. It had this weird tendency to repeat patterns in the data and straight up not listen to you, even after you've asked it to correct something several times. In the end, I gathered my own data from various sources in Google and it was faster than that thing.
Replacing humans and their brain skills in virtually all sectors of business and applications of creative thought?
I've got a very full-body, full-mind, full-soul understanding of human beings - things AI doesn't have. Art can only be made by humans. AI is for "writers" that cannot write.
After using it a bit, I've realised what I can use it for, an advanced thesaurus. Many mentioned how the prose was too flowery if you ask it to rewrite an entire paragraph, but if you want some input on a single sentence that you know needs a word change, you know there's another word, but it's stuck on the tip of your tongue what that better word is, plug the line in chatGPT. Ignore the purple prose rewrite, pick out the improved word, assuming it is better (if not ask chatGPT to try again) and replace the word in the original sentence. And has anyone tried it as a basic editor? Ask it to critique your work, I did but i;m not sure how accurate it's critique is.
Sorry, chatGPT can't help me. I know how to put words together. My struggle is with how to get meaning on the page, and chatGPT is not going to help me with that.
Why not just right-click on the word and click "look up (word)"? When I do that the options I get are Dictionary and Thesaurus. Much simpler than needing to have ChatGPT open and transfer a word into it.
I'd ultimately rather do my own research. At least wikipedia cites its sources. I think it's natural to explore a new tool, play with it, test its limits, but I frankly don't see any use for it. I also got stuck on creating a makefile for a programming project, and had heard that GPT can mend code. I tried it, but it just told me more incorrect things. In the end it was the good old 'discover an idiosyncracy via 6-year-old forum post' that saved me.
Something to keep in mind when using generative AI in any capacity is that when you are submitting short stories or novels to agents and/or publishers, they now ask you to assert that you have not used AI in any capacity in the creation of your work. They mention that they utilize technology that detects the use of generative AI, and I can imagine they will tell their friends about you as well as banning your future submissions if they get a red flag. To be safe, and to be honest, I'd suggest not doing any of this, but that's just my opinion of course. If you're self-publishing, well, that doesn't seem to be an issue (as yet). I don't think what you've described would set off any alarms, but the best choice of a word or two in a given sentence is probably best decided by a human who can actually understand the emotion, context, nuance, etc. in that sentence. Is that the best word for that character? That narrator? Generative AI can't know that, only you can.
I actually did that with a witch story I wrote back in March of 2023, and all it did was review my story and give some half-baked opinions. I was very active in the workshop at the time (both in receiving and giving critique) so I very much had an eye for what useful critique was like. ChatGPT's review of my work was shallow compared to what real members with actual reading and writing experience gave me. It's also really funny because that witch story finally exposed my weakness enough for me to see it. Certain members did a wonderful job in the workshop explaining it all in detail and all that advice turned out to be super valuable. Of course, ChatGPT mentioned nothing anywhere near as important or insightful. Don't ever let that thing replace critique from real human beings. ChatGPT is a bit like a fake diamond. It looks just like the real thing at first glance, but take a closer look and it's all too obvious that its a cheap imitation worthy of little attention.
ChatGPT, (and AI, will never replace any artist.) ChatGPT can be a useful tool for studying foreign languages, English, French, German, I have similar utilities. I don't understand dialects either, if a book is full of sentences in dialect, I don't read it, but I would never dream of telling the author to change it, because it's my problem. I would push the author not to change anything. ChatGPT, and AI, are used incorrectly, personally, I hate them more and more every day.
No experience at all with AI-generated text (except for the confounding idiosyncrasies of Google Translate), but I may have an insight into your dialogue problem. There are dangers in attempting to portray some dialects in too great detail. I've heard Sir Patrick Stewart recite some things in his native Yorkish dialect, and they were unintelligible to my Yankee ears. The trick is to compromise, keeping some idioms that can be understood in context but are characteristic of that dialect. but dialing back on rendering the actual pronunciations. After all, it would be hopeless to reflect the actual differences in pronunciation when we have a dialogue between, say, an English lord and a Mississippi sharecropper. They both speak a variant of English, and will have phrasing that is characteristic of that variant, but it would be useless to accurately describe each speaker's individual pronunciation of words... that would just get in the way of the flow of the dialogue. In Our Marvelous Native Tongue, Robert Claiborne explains this better than I can when he explains the difference in the speeches of a London "docker" and "longshoremen" from New York, Boston, and Norfolk (note the two regional names for the same occupation): When you're writing that dialogue, using "he don't" will skirt that issue and keep the prose moving. It's already understood that each speaker will be using his own pronunciation. I guess I should dust off that famous quote of Mark Twain in his introduction to Huckleberry Finn:
Sure. I don't try to use too much detail in dialects, for exactly that reason. But the farmers greet each other with a friendly "How then", and one of them - on being told that his son has been misbehaving - tells the other that "if 'e got yer gel in t'family way, I'll take off me belt and--" Hopefully this is completely understandable?
I dont use ChatGPT for writing at all. Point blank. I draw the line. I will use it, however, periodically for very specific questions i have that Google isnt helping with. For example, i wanted to know what color t-shirts KB Toys employees wore in the 90s (for some reason, i remember orange). Another time ive used it, was to ask it to give me a list of most affordable portable DVD players that would have cone out between 1999 and 2003. (And then from there, i googled the DVD players and brands for more information... But i just needed a starting point because Google was giving me current stuff and buyer trends) Ive had a boss tell me what your father told you, btw. It pissed me off to no end! He suggested i use it to write my emails for me. And then added "you can even to use it to write your stories... Didnt you say you were a writer?" I Said "yes. And i enjoy the process of, you know, actually writing and coming up with MY OWN stuff" (he and i didnt quite see eye to eye on a lot of things but at least this was a non-work thing i had no issues getting smart about)
Part of our job as writes is to evoke an emotional response in our readers. How can a bunch of circuits critique an emotional response? I can see AI being a great help for astrogation, where complex calculations need to be done quickly and efficiently. Or engineering, simulations and other such math complex operations. Online gaming would be another application. But creative efforts like music, art, and such no. AI can mimic human creativity, but lacks that creativity itself.
"The "How then" is perfectly fine, since it's understood that it's a greeting. Western Yanks might use the word "howdy" instead, but the intent and usage is clear. As for the other sentence, I don't think the issue is not clarity but flow. "'e" and "t'family" create stumbles in the scansion... instead, I might write" if ye got your gel in the family way" it might lose a little flavor but the reader might be spared a little effort in understanding. And as Kurt Vonnegut has pointed out, reading is not easy for some people, and the writer has to go out of his way to make the process as painless as possible.
Sometimes it wouldn't be what you're looking for. As a recent example i had this sentence, "She moved her hand forward." It's a horrible sentence, and I know there's a better replacement for the word moved but my brain sometimes get's these, tip of the tongue moments quite often, and if you were to just use thesaurus.com or the word's thesaurus it won't find it because it's not taking the context of the sentence into account. Plug it into chatGPT and it might come out with a flowery sentence but it also replaces the word with one that takes the context of the sentence into account and came up with the word "extended". That was it! That was the word I wanted. Ignore all the other rewritten nonsense, I just took that word and plugged it in. If you were to ever submit the work to an agent and they asked if they used chatGPT would that count though? Maybe I'd just deny it. It's only word replacement, like using a thesaurus, not a passage wholly written by chatGPT.
Is not the same thing. I use dictionaries, both paper and online, and when I don't find what I'm looking for I prefer to ask real people. I'm sorry, but to me if you deny using ChatGPT, it's like cheating. I know I'm very harsh on this topic, but I'm tired and angry of hearing people comment on what I write with phrases like «It's nice, I like it, but you didn't write it, did you? Did he write ChatGPT?”, phrases of this type are often heard, due to the fault of those who cheat using ChatGPT. Sorry for the outburst, but I'm tired, but I spent money on books, because I can't afford a course, I strive every day to improve, and see all my efforts thrown away, because of those who cheat using ChatGPT, it makes me angry. It's not fair to those like me, I have painters, musicians, who strive to create real art.
Profiting aid make suggestions like that if you set it up to do it. Sorry to say it but the issue with the thesaurus.com sounds like what some in IT call a pebcak error, problem exists between chair and keyboard.
but you can't ask someone about every little thing, like my above example, that'd just be tiresome for both you and the person. You also wouldn't credit a dictionary or a thesaurus in your book. It's different if you were using chatGPT to write something for you but is the difference that huge to asking chatGPT to replace a word, and just a singular word change, that A. you knew needed a change, and B. you actually know what the word is but it's just stuck in your head, which we all get occasionally, when compared to asking a person or checking a book or googling?
What's the Profiting Aid thing? And yes of course it's a, what you call it, a pebcak error, it's a braindead moment, but I could sit there musing for 10-20 minutes going through thesaurus.com trying to figure what the exact word was that I wanted to use, or I could ask chatGPT to find what the word I already knew, was. Me and chatGPT would eventually reach the SAME conclusion, whatever chatGPT came up with would have been what I have wanted in the first place, but sometimes the human brain can just go nah, not today.
I think that was supposed to say 'Pro Writing Aid' and his phone 'autocorrected' it (which seems rather ironic in this situation—it's automated interference by an AI that's supposed to be helpful but often is just the opposite). I'm not going to keep telling you not to use AI. It's your choice obviously, that's always the case. I think I've made my position clear, and it's entirely your decision what you want to do as a writer.
Oh yes, Pro Writing Aid, I might want to invest in that properly. I am geniunely curious though, given my examples, as to why chatGPT would be considered cheating if we were just using it like a thesaurus. Though as it stands, and as some people have pointed out above, the dangers of chatGPT, especially in a professional setting, I will keep it down to a minimum. I still use thesaurus.com for the majority of my word searches
