I simply couldn’t resist using this Red vs Blue clip as an intro

This isn’t an overview of what generative A.I is, nor is it something that glorifies A.I./ChatGPT as “The New Big Thing.” This is also not about any of the people who created it, and it is especially not written using A.I. This is my honest take on the idea of using A.I to capture and write the essence of what I do in the way I do it (spoilers, it won’t). Because what I do isn’t just writing.

Yes, these are words. Yes, A.I could generate some words with my own instructions, but the words generated by A.I wouldn’t be mine. It’s not just about words, though. This is about my word choice and what’s behind them. The choices I make are based on my own thought processes. They come from my growth as a writer, commentator, person, and as someone who loves going into my head to pull from the things that have influenced and inspired me.

A.I doesn’t have my way of thinking. And it never will.

Finding My Voice

I started this blog by doing impromptu entries written in a loose conversational style that captures the immediacy of my stream-of-conscious approach in expressing myself. I would later come up with a name for these entries, calling them Mingled up Musings. Sometime after that, I wrote this thought piece that details what inspired me to express myself in that way.

To make it short, many things I absorbed throughout my childhood and later years affected the way I express myself (both, in written and spoken form). As I continued writing and also speaking via voice recordings, I found that I was tapping into underlying personality traits that started to shape me. I continued writing and expressing myself with those newfound traits in mind, breathing more life into my voice as well as my overall sense of self. I was tapping into something that helped me discover what I look at as my ideal self.

A.I can’t do that.

Despite enjoying the human aspects of expressing myself, A.I has been on my mind. I get that someone with a busy schedule might want to use ChatGPT to create blog entries (especially if they can’t afford a freelance writer). I also get that someone could edit and revise whatever ChatGPT outputs until it takes shape, resembling something they would write. But the idea still doesn’t sit right with me. If I were to do that, my own sense of immediacy wouldn’t be the source of some of the more spontaneous thoughts & ideas that otherwise could’ve been written by me. Even my more focused writings (thought pieces and essays) benefit from that aspect because it still plays a crucial part in my own word choice and overall voice.

Thus, as a generative-text “writing” tool, the inclusion of ChatGPT makes no sense to me. For others, it could be useful, but it could also become a crutch one relies on too much in creating something simply for the sake of creating something, rather than putting their own human touch and passion into something they should actually want to create. Using ChatGPT to create blog posts would create nothing but many missed opportunities that would be better seized by instinctual human thoughts.

Learning and Doing

As an analysis tool, I do understand ChatGPT’s usefulness. I also see that it could be useful as a supplemental tool for research, able to pull apart topics and sub-topics (as well as underlying concepts for those topics). In this instance, I really like the fact that ChatGPT can be valuable for in-depth research (though unless it can scour the web like Microsoft’s Copilot A.I, sources may have to be double-checked for verification).

For me, with my love of expression, I like that I can ask it questions I may have about someone’s style of speaking and/or writing. I can definitely figure out surface elements myself, but more specific things I may want to take apart do benefit from ChatGPT prompts. I’ll ask it questions like, “I get a feeling of this person being off-kilter in a snarky way that’s oddly funny to me from the following text. Explain how and why I may get that feeling by analyzing this text to see how any aspects of voice, style, word choice, and irony may play a part in that.” And after that prompt, “You mentioned X thing about how (specific words) create an ironic effect and why that provokes interest, how would it look in another context?”

Being a nuts-and-bolts type of person who loves deep diving, I really like this way of using ChatGPT. I also have fun using my own notes (I mention these notes in the Expression thought piece I linked) to flesh out in-depth prompts for better research and results. After I take it all apart, I’ll make additional notes, feed those into ChatGPT to see if they make sense, make any possible suggested changes if the notes can benefit from them, and then exit out of ChatGPT. Once that is done, I’ll do my thing and just write whatever I feel, letting the research as well as my own instincts fuel my uninterrupted thoughts and overall flow.

I’m aware of prompts that involve telling ChatGPT to analyze a text’s style, tone and voice; and then recreate those elements in new text about a different topic. I have tried some of these prompts out of curiosity, but while I occasionally see results coming a little close (and I say that loosely) to the elements in my own voice, they’re still not entirely convincing. And yes, I could edit, revise and rewrite A.I-generated text to shape it into what I’m after; but I’m still of the opinion that this takes away from the immediacy and sense of discovery of my own headspace. It wouldn’t be my text overall, and it certainly wouldn’t have my feeling of naturalness and spontaneity that makes me love expressing myself and being me (especially with my loose stream of consciousness-inspired pieces).

Motivation

When I had a long break from blogging a while back, I spent that time looking at my writings and finding what felt out of place. I spent time deep diving into my own thought processes, thinking about what came natural for me, what I was trying that didn’t work, and what felt forced. This phase and deep-dive helped me identify what didn’t make sense in my style, as I zeroed in on attempts, word choices, and writing styles that didn’t feel like something I would actually say or write. Thus, by learning what isn’t me, I learned to dive into what is me and fall in love with the process all over again.

A.I might’ve been able to help me with this period of silence, but this was before the era of ChatGPT, so there’s no point in thinking about what could’ve been. Plus, this was how I dived into my instincts and learned to trust them.

That feeling from sitting down, shutting off distractions, and either doing a fun loose voice recording, a written stream-of-consciousness-inspired piece, or even a focused thought piece from start to finish is a result of human skills and cognitive processes that form conscious creative choices made from a lifetime of growth and experiences. A.I. doesn’t have that. And even if someone devises “the perfect prompt” to come close to that, it would only be “close” (again, I say that loosely) and it certainly wouldn’t have that dynamic immediacy of a human touch. The more I do this myself, the more I find it helping me grow not just creatively, but personally.

This post is not meant to criticize anyone who might be using ChatGPT to write blog posts (I get it, the world’s hectic and some people just want to automate tasks). This has been my point of view since ChatGPT first hit the web, and I don’t feel it will change. The technology behind it is interesting; but it is, in the end, technology. It can’t be human and never will be.

If anyone has thoughts, opinions or even a unique workflow they would like to share in regards to A.I/ChatGPT being used in writing or content creation, please say so in the comments. I’d love to learn what others think about it.

I’ll see ya next time. Thanks for reading!