AI wrote my former post, here are my thoughts
Using ChatOn (powered by ChatGPT and GPT-4, which are large language models to create an entire post for me was an interesting thought experiment. Here are my thoughts after playing around with it for a while.
The generative AI creates pretty compelling content, with accurate grammar and sentence formation. I was impressed by the speed at which content was spewed
With good prompts and edits, it is able to provide good iterative content. For example, my first prompt was for it to write me an introduction paragraph on “data to prose: using AI to generate compelling content”. The output was stodgy, so in my second prompt, I asked for a creative introduction paragraph.
With prompts, I was able to get options for the title of the article as well as the outline and sub-topics effectively taking away writer’s block and blank paper paralysis. The output needed good prompts from me, and got refined based on my prompt iterations
The content wasn’t in my voice so to make it valuable as a tool on my platform, I would need to edit the output extensively (which it acknowledges!)
When I was an analyst, one of the many boring analyst chores I had to do was to put together a summary of the most important and relevant news for my team. Some other poor kid in research probably had to pull all the links together. I can see how if I had a generative AI tool, I could have fed the information in to get a fast summarized email to send out and claimed back an extra 45 mins of sleep.
Playing around with ChatOn, I didn't leave the experience thinking it was a substitute for human engagement but a supplement. It is definitely not a substitute for creative writing , or the meditative or iterative learning that one gets from writing on their own. However, I can see this as being a supplementary for many “mundane” writing assignments such as my analyst day chores or other things I review today such as early drafts of marketing copy, emails, product descriptions etc. Do I think this is going to eat my job? No. Do I think it allows 22 year olds to use their times more wisely in value-added ways - I certainly hope so.