Wednesday, February 7, 2024

AI -- Making Reading Less Interesting

The more content I read these days, the more of this odd syntax shows up. A word or two, just odd or out of place will tell you that the content was AI generated. I've used Chat GPT for small bits of text that I don't want to write myself. It will churn out bland text that is grammatically correct. Things like book blurbs for 200 words or less. Hand it 500 words, and it cuts 300 out. But it doesn't produce interesting text. Servicable text. Useful text. Yes, but do we haunt the internet for that kind of text? Now, ask ChatGPT to produce text for gaming, and it will turn out a monster stat block with lightening speed. This is a great help, but it isn't fiction. Yet I keep hearing that authors are using AI to write their fiction books. I can't imagine what kind of vague, oatmeal-textured fiction it might be. But I can't imagine it being great, engaging fiction. Oatmeal is great stuff. I eat it for breakfast, when I need fast food and a lot of it. Something that will stick around until lunch on a busy day. Oatmeal flavored fiction might fill an e-book, but it won't engage a reader. This last month, I've clicked away from a number of articles on various websites, because the text was bland and uninteresting. I think it's possible that AI produced text is going to slowly make general internet surfing uninteresting. Which might be a good thing in the long term. The less time I spend online the better.

The Enthropy in Travel

Oh the pretty cabins! Pretty, pretty cabins! I'm gonna travel to a national forest and stay in a pretty cabin with all the fun things a ...