I once gave a carpentry apprentice a written task. Explain the four types of Construction Foundations. For the uninitiated they are, Strip, Pad, Raft, and Pile.
He gave me this:
Liquid Foundation, versatile and good for all skin types.
Powder Foundation, ideal for oily skin.
Cream Foundation good for dry or mature skin.
Stick Foundation, versatile and portable.
He said there were a lot more but I’d only asked for 4.
Trying so hard not to smile, I asked him where he had got his information, to which he replied CoPilot. Not entirely the robot’s fault, obviously he hadn’t read it, but I found that generally carpentry apprentices don’t edit. The worrying thing is; he hadn’t learned anything. This brings me to my real point.
Did you know the brain constantly improves through consisitent, new mental challenges and learning new skills? Plus exercise, sleep etc, But we’ll concentrate on the first two. If you’re writers you probably don’t sleep much anyway. So if we stop using our brain? All I see is a future of numpty’s. Take a look at Reddit’s Author pages. They’re all at it. “I did this with AI. I did that with AI” The last comment I made was to a geezer who posted that he had written a complete novel with AI. Isn’t that an Oxymoron? (Which as a youngster, on the farm, I believed was a stupid cow) How can a robot write a novel and you then say you wrote it? Anyaways, I replied with. “Did someone steal your imagination?” He came back with. “Why?” I gave up!
If they let AI do everything for them surely their brain will shrink, or do whatever brains do when you don’t use them? Doesn’t that mean in years to come our civilisation will end, because as with my apprentice no one will actually learn anything? In which case they won’t know anything. So, I had a brilliant idea (score two brain cells, ka-ching) I asked AI. “If you let AI do your thinking would it cause brain deterioration?” The answer?
Yes, if you consistently rely on AI to do your thinking, your brain can experience a form of cognitive deterioration often referred to as cognitive atrophy or “use-it-or-lose-it” cognitive decline.
Recently there was a football match here in the UK. Aston Villa vs Maccabi Tel Aviv. The Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were banned from attending by the Birmingham Safety Council on intelligence recieved from West Midlands police. After an uproar (obviously not from the crowd) it was discovered the police had used AI to conduct the risk assessment, and it was unfounded. Scary?
Happy Trails Folks x
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I know, it’s sad, it’s not funny… but at the same time, I can’t stop smiling at the thought of that guy enumerating types of foundation. It seams that so many people missed the whole point – if you’re going to use AI, use it as a tool, don’t let it do the thinking for you. As you put it, the brain needs to work out too, not just the body. A few months back, someone I vaguely know was genuinely wondering if ChatGPT is actually Satan, because “he knows everything, no one person can know so much and answer so quickly”. At first I thought it was a figure of speech, but the man was truly concerned about committing a sin by using it. Wrong on so many levels…
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It also blows smoke up your proverbial too. The two experiments I did had no downsides everything I asked it came back with. “Fantastic idea, this is exactly what people are looking for, your kind of TikTok profile would be so popular, etc” Yeah, right 😂 Some old Yorkshire geezer rambling on about his book, as opposed to a semi clad 20 year-old pouting at the camera telling you commas are soooo 90s 😂
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To be fair, the latter would be preferable to a semi clad old Yorkshire geezer pouting at the camera. :-)
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😂😂
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I have a feeling that’s exactly the kind of feedback some people are looking for. :-D
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Yes, this is why it’s probably so popular. 😀
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:-D
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I could talk about this for hours with you!! I started reading about the foundation and just snorted (that’s how you know you make me truly laugh). He didn’t even try to understand the task or topic before launching AI.
The perfect line from one of my fave movies “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”
“I weep for the future.”
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Absolutely 💯 ai is a detriment to those without a brain… and a kind of digital mosquito to those with one.
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A Digital Mosquito? so, all the work done without ai could be eliminated in the future, within milliseconds of it’s publication. I find that interesting. Akin to Terminator but instead of the machines wiping out humanity, they target writers? (sorry my mind goes off in spirals 😂)
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😅 So, a kind of online entity that is super annoying to contend with, is everywhere, and sucks the life out of art. 😆 Dunno, digital mosquito kinda sounded right 😅
Yeah, AI is fairly scary tbh. But, I think humans will prevail. And at least we still write and have hope.
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after sitting at home through several lockdowns and hardly going anywhere it took years for my brain to adapt to navigating around town. Places I’d been going to automatically for years became difficult intellectual problems. I thought I was starting with dementia. Gradually it started coming back. That’s why I write – to keep things working.
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I guess that kinda proves it then 😀
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It does for me. But I’m not that clever, as I just revealed.
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It’s not that brains “deteriorate” from AI use. It’s that skills atrophy when they aren’t practiced. If you outsource a function, the muscle for that function weakens. That’s true for any tool, not just AI.
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