A.I. - To Be or Not To Be
The emerging ethical dilemma of Artificial Intelligence
In the rapidly developing world of Artificial Intelligence and many tools available to commercial enterprises and individuals, the question of what is ethical and what is deceptive has arisen. As a human writer and creator, this affects me personally, as well as my friends and fellow authors. To be or not to be whether technology will be allowed to intrude into a platform of human creators is the question.
For generations, the idea that computer programs generated written copy with a system that could learn from it was exclusive to Sci-fi. Once again, what was once Sci-fi is becoming a reality.
First, let me disclose that I am not an expert on this subject, but I am educating myself as quickly as possible.
Second, I am not anti-technology, or I would not be utilizing a laptop, smartphone, or the internet. I am a free thinker who believes that human creations should be protected. If I am to compete in a free market of creative ideas, I do not expect to compete against a computer program any more than I would race on foot a forty-yard sprint against a race car.
What is A.I?
Techtarget.com says Artificial intelligence is the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems. Specific applications of A.I. include expert systems, natural language processing, speech recognition and machine vision.
Machine vision is another term for self-learning machine language. OpenAI has released Chatbot and drawn the most attention, along with Bing and Bard. Other competitors are Anthropic, Mindverse, and True Era. However, you may need to realize that you have been utilizing A.I. applications for years with Siri, Cortana, Google Assistant, Alexa, Elsa Speak, Socratic, Fyle, Databot, Hound, and Youper, to name just a few. The A.I. wars have begun, and human creators must be aware of the shifting world. Using Grammarly, Word, Google, or any editing tool, including myself, is common among writers today. I have utilized DALL*E for cover photo generation.
There is no doubt about these tools' power and commercial benefit to working quickly and efficiently. The cost savings to a company could be the difference in financial survival or not. My concerns are centered on my creations for publication and the desire to compete on an even playing field. Universities are struggling with the invasion of A.I. being utilized by students to write papers that are supposed to be their sole creations. Some are taking a hardline with penalties, while others are embracing it.
Vocal has successfully utilized A.I. as an initial curator of submitted works to speed the publication process and compliance with policies and procedures. I do not need to know how Vocals business model functions or how it works. They appear to blend the A.I. process with human oversight for Top Stories and Judging for challenges. I respect the platform's use of the technology as I am sure it reduces their expenses to continue to operate.
The dilemma is the apparent influx of A.I. generated content in articles, stories, and even comments to other creators that the submitter presents as their work. Here we have a potential problem. The commenter must scan the work into their system where the A.I. analyzes the story to generate a book cover level comment but also has consumed the voice, style, and structure of the Vocal creator. You could argue that humans do the same when another writer's creation is read. The machine vision A.I. would then be able to sort the best of the best to generate new creations that a human may not compete with. It is just a matter of time.
Possible Solutions
1. Require full disclosure on any work in the header, other than editing tools, on each story, poem, or article submitted. The reverse A.I. tools have arrived on the scene of battle but are quirky at best. Non-disclosure is a terminating offense. A simple checkbox in the subtitle line would be a solution where it creates a banner notification for the reader.
2. Develop a system where creators are validated, as being human, for their Vocal account. Currently, several apparent Vocal Accounts are A.I. and have seeded the Facebook Vocal Community Pages and utilize this as the foundation of their entry into Vocal.
3. Ban A.I. generated comments in the wonderful tool Vocal provided for creators last year. Classify it as spam.
4. Consider A.I. only generated Challenges for those who play in this sandbox to compete against their own.
To be or not to be?
Artificial intelligence and its sprint to take over content creation are here to stay. The war is blazing hot and escalating rapidly. Too much money is at stake for the winners and annihilation for the losers.
Now is the time to get a handle on the evolving influx of this expanding technology on Vocal. Vocal's mission of providing a platform for human creators of all the arts worldwide is why I support the company one hundred percent and the key to its success. I count on Vocal, as our publisher of choice, to protect our human-created work now and in the future. Anything less than this contradicts the mission and does not bode well for the future of any of us.
Thank you, Vocal, for all you do in providing a safe space for me and others to create.
About the Creator
J. S. Wade
Since reading Tolkien in Middle school, I have been fascinated with creating, reading, and hearing art through story’s and music. I am a perpetual student of writing and life.
J. S. Wade owns all work contained here.
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Comments (13)
I can usually tell when stories are generated by AI. It is kind of lifeless and lacking in moving emotions, repetitive etc. only sometimes though. Technology is not going anywhere, we have to cope.
Hmmmm, I learned a new thing about Vocal from your excellent article that I should have expected but hoped wasn't true. This is the absolute kiss of death for any truly creative writers on this platform: 'They appear to blend the A.I. process with human oversight for Top Stories and Judging for challenges." It certainly explains a great deal though. Any algorithmic program looks for key words and phrase in order to 'flag' (as good or bad) items for attention. In other words, the only way Vocal's A.I. process can function is to look for phrases and patterns that ALREADY exist! By definition, it is unable to deal with genuinely creative material as that's beyond its scope. Programs can't create new ways of expressing a thought, they can only manipulate what has already been done. In the same way, they CAN'T assess material outside the range with which they have familiarity. (I'm not shouting at you Scott, I'm just too much of a Luddite to know how to create emphasis in these little comment boxes we have; sorry.) If Vocal is using a blended strategy which (I assume) eliminates a large portion of contenders for their attention by employing A.I., which in turn is seeking key words and discounting entries the program can't understand (actual new ideas and phrase patterns) then anybody trying to grow as a writer beyond the base-line level of the mass of society is SOL at Vocal! (This is how these A.I. supported job interview selection programs work too. Heaven help any creative people trying to enter today's job market!) It explains the strange banality of much of what Vocal considers "Top Stories". Here I must emphatically exclude work from the likes of yourself, Donna Renee, Lonzo Ward and a good number of other excellent writers who have somehow pushed through the digital wall that sites (and potential employers) like this are now using in order to make things 'easier' for themselves by eliminating what the A.I. has been 'raised' to consider discardable chaff. A recent (and poorly written) Popular Mechanics article features the steep decline in IQ scores in major cognitive areas taking place in US society. (I'm not pointing fingers as an outsider, but the article dealt strictly with US results. I'm confident the figures wouldn't be very different elsewhere.) The writer(s) was dumbfounded by these results and couldn't put a pin on potential causes, none were even suggested. Critical thinking skills were completely absent for this supposedly well-educated person! The patterns are all coming into clarity now and even a relatively small community like Vocal is making its contribution to the dumbing down of society by allowing overdependence on technology. This is very disappointing, at least from my point of view. I've only been at Vocal for two months but already I'm on my second bout of serious reconsideration of using this site as a place to find readers for my work. If Vocal is using A.I. to help judge their emphasis, then it is no place for thinking outside the box!
Great article. Thanks for sharing. Let's see if there will be a response.
You made some really great points in this article! Especially when you talked about how in order to generate an AI comment, the commenter must scan the work into their system and, in some measure, "consume the voice, style, and structure of the Vocal creator." This is scary to think about. I hate to think our original created work is just fuel for artificial intelligence. Not trying to overreact, but I really don't like the direction AI is heading. :/
Honestly, I believe AI is a fad, just like NFTs and cryptocurrencies. Things are cyclical. Once people realize that you cannot really emulate human creativity and emotions, they will lose interest in AI. As an artist, I'm not worried. With that said, when did Vocal start using AI for moderating submitted stories?
I agree with most of your points. It is definitely unnerving to think of the potential future consequences of such heavy use of AI for everything. I myself am guilty of using DALL.E 2 for generating images here and there. At the present these tools still rely on human input for the most part, so I do believe they require at least some minuscule degree of creativity. However, they will only become more intelligent as we input more information and data into these programs. The AI will learn quickly as humans continue to provide it with more data and eventually will be completely indistinguishable from real people. As with any tool there will also be people who utilize these programs maliciously and dishonestly. Scammers for example are getting scary good at mimicking real humans and institutions. Some see a future utopia with the advances of AI while others see a dystopia. I’m leaning toward the latter, unfortunately.
Yes and Amen and Thank you for this excellent synopsis of where things stand on AI in relation to Vocal. More transparency and clarity are essential to maintain trust in the platform, especially as the technology will continue to evolve.
Thanks for this, Scott. I hate feeling suspicious of “people” but dang it’s getting difficult to tell sometimes… 😬🤷🏼♀️. The speed at which my stories (even long ones) get published tells me it’s absolutely AI and mayyyyyybe a person too. I don’t mind that use at all haha. I also use DALL E for image generation frequently. I wonder how Vocal is going to deal with the AI accounts that impersonate though because they are really getting out of control. Anyway, just rambling now! Thanks again!
This was my take on AI a few months ago. https://vocal.media/futurism/publishing-dystopia
Are you sure about Vocal using AI as a curator? Did they just try that or are they still doing it? I thought they were done with moderating and it's auto approval now. Was there an email about this? I never signed anything saying they could have any of my writing go through an AI process.
thank you for sharing
Excellent article & very informative!!!💖💖💕
Thank you for sharing this information and your insights - it's definitely a topic that needs to be addressed.