Oh, AI - Artificial Intelligence - and the controversy around it. From the moment I saw it, I had contradicting views about everything related to it.
Will it take over the world? Will it replace us? Will it replace jobs that were once vital, or just necessary? Well, my answer has always been "how would I know?"
I'm not educated enough nor smart enough to figure all that so quickly. Besides, I have a full-time job, responsibilities, and a lot of other things going on in the background. The last thing I'm gonna care about right now is whether AI will be chopping vegetables for me in the future or not. The present holds my attention for now.
I have, of course, seen instances in which AI is used in a negative way, stealing art from other people, helping with fraud, and taking the jobs of a bunch of people that are now without an income. I cannot help but feel sympathetic about their situation and wish them the best.
I also can't help but get the feeling of "déjà vu."
Technology has evolved a lot from when I was little, meaning 3-4 years old. It has taken jobs, many jobs that were once very important. People have suffered, and those who didn't manage to adapt had to suffer the most.
It wasn't pleasant, but it happened anyway. I have a feeling that this is going to happen with AI as well, one way or another. Maybe it won't replace everything, but it will take things that were once held by humans, although hopefully not in a very aggressive way, leaving too many without a job and income source.
As for me, I'm both afraid of it and excited by the new opportunities it presents. And by that, I will have to mention, or perhaps the better word would be "confess," for those who might judge me, that I am and will also use AI in the future.
The one thing I use it for, right now, is to get rid of the worst part about writing - the editing. I have hated it from the moment I finished writing my first article, and I kept hating it for the entire duration of my "writing phase." Staring at a screen for an hour, reading the same thing over and over again in an attempt to catch a grammatical mistake is incredibly boring and tedious for me.
Sure, editing might eventually lead to some changes in the article itself that will help improve the quality of it, but for me, that's not always worth it, not unless I write something very long and very important that has a lot of value to me. If I'm writing just a normal post, to just communicate something, I want it ready to post as quickly as possible.
So yes, I have sold my soul to AI, if that's what you wish to call it. I have conjured ChatGPT, and I'm using it to get rid of all the grammatical mistakes that I'm making while writing an article in my few hours of free time a day. Am I a bad person? Morally deprived? Perhaps. But I am also a realist. I have very little free time. I wish to write, not to be stuck editing for an hour and sacrifice everything else that I wish to do, just to feel morally superior to those who read their own post 35 times in order to make it just right.
I have talked about being productive for years. If there's anything I learned in the past 12 months it is that being productive is easier when you're being smart about it and you're efficient. And efficiency is getting things done quickly, without spending too many resources. That's what I'm doing.
Who knows, hopefully, this will bring back my love for writing. Maybe it will make things interesting again. I guess I'll find out soon. But at least I will no longer feel dread every time I write more than 600 words and realize just how many times I will have to read every word that I wrote in order to put a comma in the right place or make sure that I wrote every word correctly.