The Dog Wrote My Homework

As a person who works in the creative realm, everyone in my life is obsessed with generative artificial intelligence and the many ways this overall unrefined product could harm the people who rely on it — and the bosses who want to replace us with it. Count me amongst them.

My biggest concern is the impact that products like ChatGPT will have on students and especially aspiring young writers. I was a horrendous student in middle school and high school and attended college for less than one semester. As a student, I spent more energy learning how to cheat on tests than I would have if I had just done the homework.

Maybe I would have had a higher grade-point average if I’d had access to ChatGPT to help me with my homework (a very low bar to clear), but I would definitely have turned out less equipped to actually learn new, complex concepts in adulthood if I’d relied on generative AI.

But here I am, a person who has already learned how to write professionally and has honed an individual writing style over many, many years of practice. I don’t worry about what ChatGPT would do to my own work, because I’m practiced enough to discern its suggestions from my own style. Crucially, I would also never ask ChatGPT to generate my work for me — a concept that offends my core need for creative expression.

This is where I should say that Grammarly is an AI product designed specifically to help people refine their writing skills. I downloaded it once to see if it would be helpful for me as I navigate the world of writing publicly on Substack without an editor. The suggestions it made went beyond punctuation and delved into style. This, honestly, scared the shit out of me.

Maybe Grammarly could be like having Strunk & White in your computer, but good writing breaks rules and futzes with form. It also bogged down my computer. I never tried it again.

So, I will stick to the un-humble ChatGPT for the purposes of an exercise that I hope will help to demonstrate what it can do to the work of a developed writer. ChatGPT’s output depends on the input you give it, so there are infinite ways this could go for any individual who uses the service.

I’m going to write out a very personal, very true-to-my-style essay and then run it through a variety of prompts on ChatGPT. I’m excited to learn about the writer that generative AI wants me to be. But I already know I’m more excited to be a real human who was born with generative intelligence in my stupid little brain. I’m sorry for contributing to global warming in pursuit of this exercise.

Let’s see what it says.