POSTED: 16th JUNE 2024

Intro:

The world has changed a lot over the past decade or two. I mean, this is obvious, as is evident in every account of history. What is interesting, though, is how technology has grown, exponentially. Take any other decade in the history of the human race and compare it to the last ten years. I find it mind-blowing how rapidly the tech world is evolving. I could imagine what the next ten years would yield - but I know I’d still be surprised by what comes to pass. 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is something that everyone will have read in some form of article or opinion piece. In particular, the ‘apocalyptic’ types, those who imagine a world with robots calling the shots, have a field day with the topic. I think I’ve read a claim that AI is taking over every job going, by some lunatics with impressively bold comments. I have to admit that this topic is quite new to me. I’ve covered a lot of research on the human mind in my past and AI in that context, but in terms of modern-day application, I’ve been pretty naive. Until now! This article examines what is going in with AI at the moment, in the context of writing and the publishing industry

Artificial Intelligence: The Question?

This latest phase of conversational topics seems to be everywhere. I mean, I’m not surprised by every journalist's post on some aspect of its intelligence. As with anything I write, I do some research on the topic. It’s usually how I get started with a topic. I usually stumble across something, somewhere, that makes me think of some kind of question.

However, this article came from a family member. When you spend a lot of time working on a novel, there are some things that you don’t want to hear. However, I know this question will not just be something that the writer community gets. I’ve seen it thrown at pretty much every job going. The apocalyptic folk and anti-digital age people, the conspiracy theorists, and all of ‘those’ people seem to love this question: can’t AI do that, instead of you?

Admittedly, it’s not always a question that is pitched maliciously. Some people are genuinely curious about a great deal of things. When it’s the little parts of someone’s day-to-day job, that's fair enough. When it can calculate all your finances and does so even faster than you, well, that’s to be expected. I've worked in the data industry - an industry that really utilises AI and is a required skill. But when you spend a hell of a lot of time planning and bringing together all the elements of a novel, you spend all of the time making it sound as you desire; the characters have pages of notes on their identities, and the draft after the draft that you edit. Imagine all that and how you feel—so very proud of it. That polished and finished version is designed for the reader’s pleasure. And then that question comes along: can’t AI do that for you?

That’s just plain rude!

Research?

I did not know a great deal about this topic. Only that which I’ve come across myself, which is very limited. When you’re writing for pleasure or to build something of your own, it would not make sense to use AI. This said, I use an application that helps with spelling and punctuation. It’s a very well-known name—probably a household name by now. It’s not that I need it; it’s more the case of ‘why not’ use it? Especially as it only aids what I decide to write. If it were to come up with some material of its own, that would be different.

Our modern-day technology does the same thing, on my iPhone, for example. Everyone uses such technology to some degree. And those that don’t? I fear that they would be at a disadvantage, for no good reason. The past decade has seen a massive increase in this corrective technology. (See Ref) There has been quite a lot of research done on what this means for learning and language development. Understandably, the studies show that predictive technology can cause individuals to go through education without learning how to spell a lot of words. (See Ref). Words that many would consider to be basic and necessary, ones that will come up on a day-to-day basis.

Most word processors can even suggest words that could come next, based on the content of the words that have been used. (See Ref). Because individuals are using these devices over and over, instead of reinforcing the spelling, they aren’t learning how to spell certain words. Because of how this works, which we all know, the spellings we know least will never get learned, and those that we know may be forgotten (See REF). This isn’t news, of course, as it’s technology that many have been using for over a decade. It provides some context and an introduction to the evolution of this technology, into what is currently AI-generated content.

There are various ways in which this problem has been tackled, especially in schools. When tested, unless they have some reason, they are without such technology. As you would expect, they rely on their brain alone for the answers. For many years, there have been media reports claiming that even university students have poor spelling. To some degree, this is what we would expect. We live in a digital age, for better or for worse.

A Solution?

As with so many things in life, it seems to be about moderation. Use these corrective solutions, but not all of the time. A key solution—one that can completely prevent and even reverse the effect of long-term correction—read plenty of material. Not just books and not just educational texts, but gain real insights, for applied things in life, from a variety of sources (see ref).

Colour Coding: Some research has suggested that certain types of colour coding, with presented corrections, can aid in the learning of correct spellings. This is in comparison to a line beneath the word. Rather, the entire word is highlighted, with some promising results and growing popularity (Arif, 2016; Ref 1). A study compared writing errors from the digital era to those from 20 years prior, with some interesting results: papers were longer, employed new genres and cross-genre topics, and contained new error patterns. Put simply, the mistakes of the past are gone and replaced with new ones (Lungford, 2008; Ref 2). Essays typically are more complex, show less conformity, and are innovative in style and context.

Merely the Change of Time?

We could attribute things to the changing of things over time. But, while this is often the root of many educational trends, the same can not be said for writing skills. Just over 50 years ago, spelling was significantly better, in the UK. However, if we look back 100 years ago - it was worse. A lot worse. Since the digital age, according to a study from a decade ago, 2/3 of UK adults are dependent on spell-checkers (Ref 3, 2012)

Detection?

A surprisingly large number of people, from those I’ve asked, do not know that AI detection tools are available. Just as the likes of ChatGPT are there and ready to use, so is the AI detector. It’s something that schools and universities use frequently, as you would expect. And, of course, publishers will do the same.

There are several free options, such as QuillBot (see ref). If you’ve messed about with generating text, as I did for this article - the writing that it produces has a certain 'style’ that I would wager I could spot easily. So I imagine that publishers and well-practiced authors can spot AI-generated writing a mile away! The larger the body of text, the greater the accuracy of the detection. At 1000 words in length, many claim to have 100% accuracy, which is quite impressive. 

This means that the use of AI for generating any kind of formal writing is never going to happen. Or rather, not entirely. No one would likely purchase a book if it were written entirely by an AI programme. But in reality, as people forget, an AI won’t just wake up one morning and write a book. It is nothing, arguably, without human input.

ChatGPT Can’t Chat!

I tried to get ChatGPT to put some dialogue in the sample that I generated. If you have used it yourself, you will have undoubtedly noticed this: it speaks like a robot. Of course, you can get it to alter it and even try to tell it to throw in emotion, accents, etc. No matter what I tried, it simply could not write dialogue without sounding like a talking robot. It tries to write in the simplest and optimum way - which is not how we speak.

To use or not to use—is that even a question?

There’s a lot of judgement about using AI, of course. It is the main topic that is usually discussed: is it okay to use AI? In education, this has been one of the main topics of the past few years. Educational establishments see it as tainted, when it comes to learning, and cheating when it comes to testing someone's ability. In the writing and publishing world, it is frowned upon. I can see why, to some degree. It encourages questions, as I mentioned at the start. It questions the ability of the writer. Should a ‘good’ writer need to use AI? It’s debatable.

Can AI write a book? No, of course, not without the human. And if they rely too heavily on it, it will show. The creative intellectual property is what writing a book is all about. It is the writers creation, from their imagination, brought into reality. As long as this notion is not violated, I don't see the harm in AI. Personally, myself and a group of writers that I talk to use it for brainstorming ideas. But it never comes up with an idea that I would never have thought of myself. I enjoy forming the details and plot of a book and I would not want something else to do this for me. Pleasure in what I am doing is what it is all about - this is usually transfered from writer to reader. 

I am writing a second part of this article, which will be online within the next week:  ‘How Can AI Assist Writers?’

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References:

1.   https://doi.org/10.1145/2992154.2996790

1.   https://www.jstor.org/stable/20457033

1.     https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/05/auto-correct-not-ruining-spelling/327785/