Reply To: Using Chat GPT

[Ginger Herten]

This is an interesting question.

I think the first thing to remember here, is that this sight is rather purely for entertainment. These stories aren’t being graded, they aren’t essays to prove you have understood the material presented to you in an academic setting. Nobody is publishing their doctoral thesis here, nobody is writing legally binding contracts, nobody is making advertising claims that have to be accurate. Yes, we give things thumbs up when we like them, but even those are really just for entertainment, I’m not adding that I’m a trending author on HSN to my resume.

HSNadmin and I are very aware of our need to stop plagiarism when we see it, but the reasons plagiarism is a problem on HSN don’t really apply to AI the same way. It isn’t stealing another person’s work. It isn’t copyright infringement.

But then we come to the simple question of whether or not AI generated stories are worth posting. I can absolutely see HSN being flooded with flat bland repetitive story after story.

As it is the question of whether we should be enforcing quality standards comes up repeatedly. Poor quality stories make it hard to find the good ones. Poor quality stories take up band width and memory. Purely AI generated stories can be churned out so much faster than a well thought out one by a human. This site could easily be drowned in them.

I could see using a little bit of AI here and there as a tool. For example, nobody would be very happy reading my writing if it weren’t for spellcheckers (already been corrected at least a dozen times just writing this post.). I use the grammar checker feature on google docs and sometimes even go with the suggested autofill (mostly on texts and emails, rarely on stories since they aren’t as predictable,) which is basically light AI.

Sometimes, machines can improve the quality of something when used thoughtfully, like my sewing machine and serger are going to sew a sturdier seam than I will. However, I’m not going to just tell them to make me a blouse, I’m choosing the fabric, and either draping it or following a pattern. Having the sewing machine and using a pattern lets me create an garment faster and more easily. I can concentrate on the parts of the process that really matter to me, like getting a good fit on a uniquely shaped body, making a bold style statement through fabric choice or collar shape, etc. It lets one concentrate on the actually creative part, instead of using all my energy on just poking the fabric with a needle repeatedly in a straight line.

I could definitely see using AI to improve one’s own writing. I have seen stories here, that seem to have basically good ideas embedded in them, but they are a nearly impenetrable block of text without a single paragraph break. If AI could take those and make them readable…

I read the story in question. It’s fairly readable. It reminds me a bit of the writing of a nonnative speaker, which wasn’t something I would have expected from an AI. It definitely hiccuped and was a bit flat. I have read worse written by humans. So, not horrible, but…