"Learning" from AI
Jul. 12th, 2023 05:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
swan_towerOver on Mastodon, the question came up the other day of whether people thought it was acceptable to use ChatGPT and that sort of thing as a "writing coach," to improve your own writing.
Let me propose an analogy, by way of illustrating my feelings on this.
Pretend for a minute that someone comes to you and says, I would like to be your writing coach! I don't actually speak English [for the purposes of this analogy, you're all bilingual, so you can have this conversation with the coach]; in fact, this person says, I'm illiterate. But I have here a Big Book of English Sentences, and I will improve your writing by comparing what you've done to my book, whose content I don't understand, to suggest what sentences you should use next.
I somehow doubt anybody would be in a hurry to hire that person as a writing coach.
And yet, you get people out there who think using AI to improve their writing is a good idea. They want to learn from something that does not understand what it's saying -- because it has no actual mind with which to understand. The only difference it sees between "the man walked the dog" and "the man ate the dog" is that the first of those verbs is more commonly followed by "the dog" than the latter is. And because it has no comprehension, it is incapable of aesthetic judgment; if anything, it might steer people toward cliche because cliches are statistically common. It certainly isn't capable of moral judgment, i.e. having an opinion on the content of what you're saying or helping you determine if that's really the message you want to be sending.
What benefit are you actually going to get from a coach like that? The purpose of writing isn't simply to get words down on the page without violating the rules of grammar. It's about learning to use words for a purpose, whether that's to present facts or persuade opinion or just evoke an emotional reaction. They're a tool. And AI doesn't even know what kind of tool a dog leash is, and what differentiates that from a fork. If you ask it to help you write an essay about how to solve world hunger, it could very well come back with "A Modest Proposal."
But hey, it's cheap, right? Much cheaper than paying a teacher or a tutor to work with you, someone with actual comprehension and skill who can explain to you why it's useful or unwise to write in a particular fashion. And if there's one thing late stage capitalism likes, it's "cheap."
(originally posted at Swan Tower: https://is.gd/f4CiHc)
Let me propose an analogy, by way of illustrating my feelings on this.
Pretend for a minute that someone comes to you and says, I would like to be your writing coach! I don't actually speak English [for the purposes of this analogy, you're all bilingual, so you can have this conversation with the coach]; in fact, this person says, I'm illiterate. But I have here a Big Book of English Sentences, and I will improve your writing by comparing what you've done to my book, whose content I don't understand, to suggest what sentences you should use next.
I somehow doubt anybody would be in a hurry to hire that person as a writing coach.
And yet, you get people out there who think using AI to improve their writing is a good idea. They want to learn from something that does not understand what it's saying -- because it has no actual mind with which to understand. The only difference it sees between "the man walked the dog" and "the man ate the dog" is that the first of those verbs is more commonly followed by "the dog" than the latter is. And because it has no comprehension, it is incapable of aesthetic judgment; if anything, it might steer people toward cliche because cliches are statistically common. It certainly isn't capable of moral judgment, i.e. having an opinion on the content of what you're saying or helping you determine if that's really the message you want to be sending.
What benefit are you actually going to get from a coach like that? The purpose of writing isn't simply to get words down on the page without violating the rules of grammar. It's about learning to use words for a purpose, whether that's to present facts or persuade opinion or just evoke an emotional reaction. They're a tool. And AI doesn't even know what kind of tool a dog leash is, and what differentiates that from a fork. If you ask it to help you write an essay about how to solve world hunger, it could very well come back with "A Modest Proposal."
But hey, it's cheap, right? Much cheaper than paying a teacher or a tutor to work with you, someone with actual comprehension and skill who can explain to you why it's useful or unwise to write in a particular fashion. And if there's one thing late stage capitalism likes, it's "cheap."
(originally posted at Swan Tower: https://is.gd/f4CiHc)
