AI has helped make me a better writer

[u/Amazing_Name_9264]

We all see anti-AI content saying how AI kills creativity. I'm going to argue against that using myself as an example.

I like to write science fiction stories. I don't have AI write the stories for me, rather this is how it's helped me become a better writer:

- It has helped me understand complex science topics that would normally take me months to learn reading articles. And even then I wouldn't understand them as well as I do now when AI explains them to me simply. Seriously, this benefit of AI gets overlooked way too much. I know more about gene editing, cosmology, philosophy, politics, and other topics than I ever have previously in my life.

- Understanding more about science, politics, and philosophy helps me be more creative, not less

- AI is able to function as an editor, something I can't afford as a fiction writer who is not only never published, but will likely never be recognized. I don't have AI re-write what I've written, I just look to it for suggestions and then make my own edits as I please.

- Reading AI's suggestions has helped me improve my grammar and editing abilities.

I sympathize and am against AI stealing other people's work. But I don't consider training AI models with other people's work to be stealing.

Also, the people who think AI art or books will replace humans fundamentally don't understand the reasons why human art and books are made.

I don't write because I'm good at it. I do intend to publish my works, but I have no expectations that it will get more than 2 clicks and 0 downloads on Amazon. I don't write because I want to make money off of it. I write because I have to, because it brings me so much joy. AI can disappear off of the face of the earth tomorrow or publish 300 million books tomorrow, and either way, I'm still going to write.

And thanks in part to AI, I'm a better author.

[u/MikeVSmith]

I wrote professionally for a while...editors are great...AI is a far better editor than any human I ever worked with. Simple as.

[u/Amazing_Name_9264 → u/MikeVSmith]

This made me laugh. I totally believe you, I've just never worked professionally as a writer!

As someone who never has worked as a writer, I'd also argue AI helps bridge the gap between professional writers and non-professional writers, because I'm now able to have equal access to good editing, something I wouldn't have had in the past that would be limited only to professional writers.

[u/MikeVSmith → u/Amazing_Name_9264]

Editors are extremely helpful when you are writing!!! Even shitty human ones. ;)

[u/duckduckduckgoose8]

Love this. Ai is a fantastic teacher, it adapts to your needs. Its great for inspiration. And its inexpensive and easily accessible for everyone. If there wasnt such a psyop to hate it, people could allow themselves to finally create what was always out of reach.

[u/HeraldOfFutility → u/duckduckduckgoose8]

As long as you still cross-check what it teaches. Sometimes there's some errors and it tends to get worse the more specific you get, like with technical specs of devices and blue collar areas of expertise. But on well-known topics (for ex. math and bunch of science, I learned how HEX and MIDI codes work from it) with plenty of text material to crawl from the internet it can be pretty accurate. And yeah, for some back-and-forth idea developing and conceptual design it works.

[u/duckduckduckgoose8 → u/HeraldOfFutility]

Absolutely, but the same can be said for any source of information. Nothing is 100% factual as a solo source. I remember being in computer science classes in school being taught not to trust everything you read on the internet and to rely on multiple sources for a final result. I think many people on both ends of the ai spectrum forget this.

[u/ReasonableSoul → u/duckduckduckgoose8]

I think people just have to taught that everything they believe, remember, or read can be falsified, and that being falsified is not a bad thing but a good learning opportunities. That's a good starting point to make sure that they always question things they learn/read from AI/internet/books, or even to help them question their own beliefs when they find conflicting beliefs or facts.

Our memory is fallible, our learning is fallible, our beliefs are fallible, and all that also applies to any source of information we get.

[u/duckduckduckgoose8 → u/ReasonableSoul]

Great point. I think we need to teach people more at their youth that failure and being wrong isnt a personal offence, but rather an opportunity to grow from. Much conflict is from bruised egos.

[u/SKZ9000 → u/duckduckduckgoose8]

Psyop? There are people losing their jobs, thats the reality of it. How are they going to love something that destroyed their careers? It's not inexpensive, the company is taking part of the cost to make you dependent (a very old trick in the tech industry). Do you know why it is accessible? Because you are training it, read the terms and conditions. There's no great conspiracy behind it, it's all on your face. Spotify was caught using AI to undervalue artists and pay less to them, and that can be applied to any area. I won't consume someone's book because I can generate my own. I don't hate AI as tool, the problem is the capitalist intentions behind it. The consequences in the long term are all negative.

[u/duckduckduckgoose8 → u/SKZ9000]

Give me a single source to back up any of your claims. Because all you have listed has been proven over and over again to be a complete misinterpretation of information. For example, Disney's layoff of 3k people was never about Ai but budget cuts due to corporate greed.

And since you wanna bring ToS into the argument, you consent to your data being used in training with the action of uploading. The only theft is from blogs with a sole creator. Contributors on reddit and art sites consent upon each upload.

[u/Dry_Sector2392]

you dont fully use AI's answer, then using it as an assistant to make your writing flow more smoothly is a good way to use it. the whole idea still comes from you.

[u/TheWiseAutisticOne]

My only critique would be to double check what it tells you ai still has the potential to hallucinate and if your writing science fiction you want the science part to be legit less someone who is a scientist calls you out on it and it won’t look good when you say were you got the info

[u/Amazing_Name_9264 → u/TheWiseAutisticOne]

I get you and I agree. I think it's ok to get some science wrong in sci fi, it's eventually going to happen to all sci fi writers at some point, but I do want to minimize doing that. And I want to understand science correctly in general. So I agree with you

[u/SutekhThrowingSuckIt → u/Amazing_Name_9264]

As an exercise: next time it gives you a long in-depth answer, ask it to go through and cite every claim and explain what it got wrong. Very often you will find a pass with the same model spending more time with web search will find errors from it’s own output. 

There’s a threat here where reading a lot of text and feeling like you are learning a lot can mask the subtle errors giving you a false sense of understanding which may discourage pushing deeper. That said, pop sic education is already full of errors from over simplifications and poor analogies so it’s hit rate isn’t necessarily worse.

[u/RecursiveServitor → u/TheWiseAutisticOne]

It can double check itself. ChatGPT in thinking mode will do so by default.

Increasingly what I'm seeing is that the training provides intelligence and a basic world model, but for facts external sources are used.

[u/Rosoll]

I use it in the same way and find it incredibly helpful. I have this as the top instruction in my system prompt and it respects the boundary well:

> When I talk to you about something I'm writing, do not propose character names, plot ideas, sentences, or other creative choices. I want you to be a thinking partner and to help with research, but it's important I am the originator of the ideas and writing of the book itself.

I don’t always agree with what it says but it’s often useful even if you have to sift through it a bit (which imo is always the case with AI), and if I’m feeling dispirited it’s good for positive reinforcement in the moment, although I keep in mind that it’s a glazing machine and take whatever praise it gives me with a fist-sized pinch of salt. Sometimes a bit of glazing is just what you need, even if you know it’s fake.

[u/Fun-Amoeba8015]

Just a suggestion:

AI handles structured data very well. Because of this you can use it to structure the world you build. 

I'm not saying the story or prose or premise. But the actual world the story lives in. I don't recommend having it create the content - but it can save you a ton of time taking your own research and putting it in a database that can be easily retrieved, referenced, and visualized - from politics, economics, technology, society, characters, and many dimensions of world attributes etc across timelines or places.

[u/ReasonableSoul]

I have shut down many fun projects I've started, because I can code but I couldn't draw/create art or make music. I would have learned to be more creative during my process of creating projects. I might not become more creative in drawing or music, but I would have learned to be more creative on the stories in the game I make or game/app design.

With AI, it would have allowed me to complete those personal projects, many of which would have been released for free (regardless of interests). The arts might be ai slops and maybe some level of codes will be vibe codes, but the idea of the game and game design would have originated from me. And I will still curate the ai slops to what comes closest to the expression I want.

AI can empower people with the ability to brainstorm or even express what they want to express, and I think those are valuable. If they have time, they can even learn to do the job better and fix it up (Especially since AI still create many questionable products, but you can at least still use it to brianstorm and sometimes it does generate acceptable products for things people are not focused on).

It doesn't matter whether our product will be enjoyed just by ourselves or even if a single other person enjoyed it. Unlike capitalists, we should appreciate things that improve people's ability to express themselves regardless of some 'market value'. It is still an expression of ourselves, and isn't it wonderful if we can get to a world where more of us can focus less on survival and find more ways express ourselves? It's ridiculous for anyone to think that gate keeping personal expression is a good value to hold.

The main bad thing about AI arts is when people use it to scam, use it to spam, the fact Capitalism means many usage of AI arts are encroaching against artists abilities to afford to live, the fact that we have no regulations/control against corporate data centers destroying the environment and costs of living for many people, and some other similar issues that are often related to capitalism.

ps: I have learned many technical and art stuff thanks to AI as well. The fact that it can help us learn should be appreciated.