Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

If AI wrote this, is that okay? The question isn’t that difficult.

In the past few months, we have all sorts of artificial intelligence or machine learning sites “writing” things for us. Well, this isn’t that intelligent or learned (in my humble opinion), but clever mimicry. Still it is quite useful.

Why do all that typing? Type a question, the software returns a couple hundred words on a general topic. Edit. Finished. The process: ask, edit, finish. No problem.

But can you put your name on that? Did you write it? Did you write it all? Did you write enough of it?

The Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4th, 1776.

There, ten words that I typed. If I had copied those ten words from one of a million places that they appear and pasted them in this blog post, did I write them? Can I claim them? Most importantly, does anyone care?

No. No one cares. It is general knowledge.

Okay, I ask some software a question and it returns 100 or 200 or whatever-hundred words of general knowledge. Do I need to type those words? Do I need to paraphrase and type 90% of those words?

Let’s take a breath. We have dealt with this for a couple of centuries. We quote someone, we give them credit. We quote a result returned by software, we give it credit. Basic stuff, enough written.

But… but what? The general information on a general topic does not make prose. My statement of July 4th, 1776 does not make prose. Any clod or piece of software can spurt words. Let ’em.

Simply write, general information from some-clever-piece-of-software.

We don’t have to write it all.