For the longest time, I have been deviant and delusional. It's a basic instinct that has made me feel like I possess some superpower that I naturally don't have. It's human nature to have the lopsided perception that the pastures are greener and more desirable on the other side. What you are doing is not good enough; hence, you romanticize what the other side offers. It was this coercion that drove me to deify the use of bots in my compositions, which resulted in the loss of my style and natural voice. I became a nomad in my sanctuary.
When the ugly truth came out, I was naked and unmasked, unable to make potent use of my brain. All this while, I had lost my creative juice in the quest to sound erudite. I had eschewed the sanity of using the easel as a prop to support the sketchbook, which would imbue my artistry with logical clarity and emotional delicacy. Adrift, I had undermined my endeavors as a middlebrow. I was at sea, my soul lost, and I yearned for the feel of the land, a refuge of safety.
Naturally, there is this trap that we fall into because we want to make life easy. It's cool to sound like an elite and have an air of sophistication. When you pen down your thoughts, you want them to exude sage and intellect. Yet in reality, this misconception creates the illusion of an innate, extraordinary ability. You almost end up having epistemic arrogance which is a misguided sense of superiority. Ultimately, it destroys rational reasoning and makes you think you are in a privileged position that justifies your actions.
Moving forward, the journey I want to embark on will be defined by originality and veracity. Since the year began, I have always relied heavily on AI to perform tasks that I was supposed to do. The dependence on AI can be addictive and erroneous. As much as writing is easy, there is a tendency to think that it is ethereal. All you need is just a pen and paper to project the notions in the mind so that all and sundry can be able to grasp a piece of your mind. Alternatively, you sit down behind a screen, and with every keystroke the stories that yearn to be told interlace seamlessly hence blooming into tangible art.
Indeed, it is tempting to solicit for an easy way out so much when it comes to writing. I recall how I failed to ace a scholarship opportunity due to my reluctance to put in the effort to craft a narrative that would have sold my story with ease. Nowadays, academia has realized that many people rely on bots to do most of the grunt work associated with their academic pursuits. Original ideas have taken a shift in how they intertwine to form solid arguments because bots are taught to mimic effective writing that poses an ethical dilemma. Nevertheless, technology has advanced and can easily detect if one has leaned on artificial intelligence despite passing a plagiarism check.
After using artificial intelligence for close to six months, I have to accept the reality that we cannot escape the use of bots. They are an inseparable part of our future. They are here to stay and the more they are integrated into our lives the better they will become in replacing the human, producing what we have always thought was exclusive to us. Still, without human input, a bot will not be able to be productive. I was influenced to believe that what a bot produces is better, which is not necessarily the case. Nonetheless, it could rephrase my words with finesse to my liking. I loved how it polished my sentences in such a way that they were so refined I felt like, 'This bot just read my mind and offered the remedy to my problem.'
Little did I know that it was stifling my authentic voice and style. As a writer, which I am, albeit a mediocristan one, I have to recognize that existing creations should not limit my pursuit to better what is already available. Depending on technology as a means to an end decimates authenticity and creativity. For instance, asking a bot to finish a sentence is easy but it also weakens your expression, and depending on the feedback, it will execute what you want while compromising on your originality. The thought process is weakened. However, I have learned to appreciate the sophistication of AI.
Somehow, bots are reliable tools. There are numerous out there but the ones that I have used extensively are ChatGPT, CoPilot, and Gemini. Of the three, I would say that I rely more on the CoPilot toolkit. It comes in handy because of its ease of accessibility. Whether it's through a sidebar on the Edge browser (I am used to Edge these days as a choice) or an icon on my taskbar, it's always easily accessible. Most of the time, I use it to rephrase sentences that are repetitive and need a little bit of variation. I mean, when I ask it a question and where it has the ability, it provides direct and prompt answers that address my curiosity head-on. I feel like it's telling me, "Say less!" And kaboom, it delivers precisely.
Though I may be resistant, I am not immune to the use of bots. Even this article has instances where I relied on them because of their compelling nature and how versatile bots are. When it comes to all three bots aforementioned, I feel like ChatCPT stands out in the realm of writing. When you present it with a verbose paragraph, it will preserve the core message with minimal alteration. When you give it a loaded paragraph, it will condense it by ensuring the brevity that is needed. It serves as a cost-free editor when I am revising my first draft. The reality is that I don't have a human editor to oversee the inconsistencies, grammatical mistakes, and sentence elongation; that is why it steps in. Certainly, it acts as a decisive blade in the 'Kill your darling' editing mantra.
I hate the way Gemini does its rewriting. You may give it a lengthy paragraph, only for it to end up diverging into something entirely different, which can lose the meaning of the original intent. I don't have examples but I know that when it comes to writing, that is not its fort. While it may have some of the best creative nuances, the reality is that it blatantly deviates from the original intended idea and offers a solution for what should have just been left the way it is. Who needs a suggestion that seems so obvious it has been auto-generated? Bots also have a voice that you easily distinguish if you consistently use them. It's about the structure and elements of style and how it solves what you want with ease.
Technology is here to stay. Other than those AI bots, I also use Quilldot's AI content detector to find out if my prose is overly dependent on AI. Hitherto, I had no idea that I was among those who were mutilating the creative space with a constant summon of AI to assist in rectifying my shortcomings when it came to diction. My integrity was compromised and I must admit that frequent reliance on AI has diminished my prowess and assertiveness. AI offers a very reliable avenue that aids in enhancing vocabulary and helps hit the nail straight on the head. Still quillbot also helps with grammatical mistakes that are detected by Grammarly. To get the most, you need to subscribe to a premium package.
Another important tool I have been relying on ever since I came back to this space is Grammarly. That has been helpful when it comes to writing mistakes. There are an array of issues that you can be able to detect using the tool such as conciseness, punctuation, grammar, and word choice also aids in making writing clearer and engaging. Since I use a free version of the tool, I must admit they have grown having used the features built on the platform.
Other applications that I have used include readability apps that break down the grades and scores of the prose that I have penned down. The language tools are really important though they expect you to pay a premium to savour the full scale of the features they offer.
And there lies my beef with them. We live in a society where technology has distinguished itself by its precocity and created the perception that it offers real solutions to artistic merit where there may be a deficiency. Technology, especially the internet is a repository of the past and helps us taste the charm of the olden days. Yet when you codify grammar into an app, it restrains the ability to indulge in the untrodden. While it is prudent to fit into the grammatical rules that language accords us, the reality is we are not supposed to be constricted by technology and ups to explore the brilliance of what the human mind is capable of. I feel like such apps limit our knowledge and confine us to what is an unjustified resignation to their application.
Hasta La Vista, Baby.
