The topic of this article is this: AI writing is garbage writing, but most of you will never notice. That’s the topic, but it’ll take a lot of work for me to get to it. 100% of this was written by me and not AI, except where I clearly state that it was written by AI. That’s my promise to you. I will tell you when a robot is doing the writing.
Anywho… On that day I’d walked back and forth from my apartment to the restaurant four or five times. It’s only a half block, but sometimes I make the circuit six or eight times before my bar shift even starts. I’m old and I forget things. I don’t usually take the same route every time either because I am concerned that people working in the businesses I pass will think “there he goes again… what did he forget this time?” In reality, they aren’t thinking about me at all, but who wants to walk to and fro thinking that? Still, sometimes I cut through Coursey Park and other times I walk up Brown Street to Lee and then jaywalk across the street hoping not to die on Baker Street – struck by a truck because I forgot a pen and had to go back to the apartment to get one.
It was a gray day under lowering skies, dreary and solemn like a proper English suit. The kind of funereal day that made you want to boldly split infinitives and mix metaphors. A stark contrast from the day before which had been warm and bright – happy blue skies with a few lonely, feathery clouds. But this day was staid and serious and not given to colorful frivolity.
Later, we were busy at the bar and small talk prevailed, and one time I mentioned to someone that I’d been experimenting with the ChatGPT AI and that I was having fun messing with it and proving that it produced garbage writing. Another customer called me over and said “I heard you talking about AI writing. What do you think about it?”
“It’s not ‘writing’,” I said. “It’s unimaginative stealing. And it’s not even good stealing. It’s dreadful at theft and it will never get better. AI writing is *GARBAGE*.”
(NOTE: In the actual conversation, I didn’t say “garbage.” I used another word altogether. I used the word “sh*tty,” wherein the word rhymes with “pity.” I’m not sure the AI overlords at the newspaper will let me use the word “sh*tty” so in this piece I’m going to say “garbage” and I need you replace “garbage” with the word “sh*tty” in your head every time you read it. That way we can bypass the AI overlords who might otherwise object.)
Another patron (also a writer) said, “You’re absolutely right. All AI can do is plagiarize concepts from the Internet, change a few words or phrases, and spew out what is mostly nonsense. It can’t create. It can’t originate. It will never have a voice. It can only copy and blend.” The original customer who’d started the conversation didn’t agree. “AI is wonderful! We use AI for a lot of things and it’s great,” he said. “AI is writing code for us!”
Another person said, “I’ve had it write blog articles, social media posts, etc., and it does great.”
No, it doesn’t.
It’s good for writing code, I suppose. It’s horrible at writing anything that might be considered artistic, creative, and original prose. As a professional writer with thousands of writer friends, I’ve seen hundreds of them talking about how great AI writing is, and how they can use it to speed-write their books. Usually, they give lip service to the continued need for real human writers… “I’m not saying let the AI write the whole book. I just use it to give me an outline and then I go rewrite it. But I can write a book 5X as fast now!”
And now we’ve come upon the crux of the issue, and it’s something I’ve been saying for a few decades before AI writing even existed:
Bad writers don’t know bad writing. They can’t.
AI writing is the Dunning-Kruger of writing, and it doesn’t know it because it cannot possibly know it, and most of you won’t know it either. This might get a little painful, but there are things you need to know.
- Most writing is garbage writing.
- Most writers are awful at writing.
- Some awful writers make money at garbage writing.
- Some awful writers make a LOT of money at it.
- Most readers cannot tell awful writing from great writing. This allows mediocre writers to have profitable careers.
- Same with most writers. They do not know awful or even mediocre writing. They conflate success (or making money) with being good at an art form.
- A majority of successful writers (they make money at it) are what we call “adequate” writers. They write invisibly. From the midlist on up there are writers who make money with non-descript prose that is steadfastly adequate. There exists a thousand-thousand of them, and they need not even exist in the world of AI. They have no voice or style to speak of. They are plain vanilla, and that’s what their industry wants. Editors make them adequate, but editors do not make them good. That is, these writers can churn out adequate books that satisfy readers who don’t know good writing and don’t particularly want it. These churners do a good job of filling a niche. My father can read a book a day (usually thrillers.) He cannot tell you at the end of the day what he read, who wrote it, or anything in particular about the story. He doesn’t want Hemingway or Heinlein. He wants a writer who churns out boilerplate thrillers and doesn’t screw it up or get in the way. He wants the same story over and over with some cosmetic changes here and there. When AI is writing thrillers and churning out garbage mediocrity, people like my father will buy those books and be happy.
- That’s the “rub.” Do you see? Most writers are garbage writers and garbage writers will argue that AI writing is good.
Am I saying that I’m a great writer (or even good)? Nah. But I know bad writing when I see it. I’m not worried because I’ll always have a job. I have a voice and style even if you don’t like it.
Not long ago an acquaintance wrote a social media post about how someone or another was a bad writer. It was the most ironic thing in the history of irony. The post was some of the worst writing I’ve ever read. The writer even used the word “dribble” to describe the bad writing instead of “drivel.” He didn’t know the difference, and his spell checker let it fly. His post was written so poorly that even AI couldn’t have written it that poorly. That’s saying something! He even had an error in the title of his post, which made the garbage both ironic and hilarious. The point is that most people do not know what good writing is, so AI writing is coming whether you want it or not. We’ve suffered garbage human writing for centuries and now we’ll get the robot kind. But, until the AI apocalypse and robot rebellion there will still be good, human writing out there if you care about that sort of thing.
As a concluding exercise, I am going to include two samples of writing. This is my version of the “prove you’re not a robot” thing where you have to point out everything in a picture that is a crosswalk or a bus or a motorcycle (something any good robot could do) while whether you are right or not is judged by a robot.
The first paragraph is from Hemingway, the second is from ChatGPT. Use these samples to discover if you have the human capacity to judge art from garbage.
Hemingway (from The Sun Also Rises):
“I went out onto the sidewalk and walked down toward the Boulevard St. Michel, passed the tables of the Rotonde, still crowded, looked across the street at the Dome, its tables running out to the edge of the pavement. Some one waved at me from a table, I did not see who it was and went on. I wanted to get home. The Boulevard Montparnasse was deserted. Lavigne’s was closed tight, and they were stacking the tables outside the Closerie des Lilas. I passed Ney’s statue standing among the new-leaved chestnut-trees in the arc-light. There was a faded purple wreath leaning against the base. I stopped and read the inscription: from the Bonapartist Groups, some date; I forget. He looked very fine, Marshal Ney in his top-boots, gesturing with his sword among the green new horse-chestnut leaves. My flat was just across the street, a little way down the Boulevard St. Michel.”
ChatGPT (the instruction was to write a paragraph in first person in the style of Hemingway about walking around Paris in the 1920s):
“I walked around Paris in the 1920s and felt alive. The smell of fresh bread and roasting coffee mingled with the murmur of conversations and the honking of cars. I admired the intricate architecture of the buildings and the effortless elegance of the Parisians. I stopped at a café for an espresso and watched the world go by, taking in the sights and sounds. The city seemed to pulse with energy and creativity. As I strolled down the narrow streets, I couldn’t help but feel that anything was possible in this magical place. Paris, the city of love and art, had stolen my heart, and I knew I would never forget it.”
If you cannot tell which one of those paragraphs is good, do a Google search on “Dunning-Kruger.”
Some lightweight thinkers will say “Oh, it’s not great now but it’ll get better.” No, it won’t. It’ll get more lukewarm and more vacuous. Mental midgets who don’t know “dribble” from “drivel” will hate all of it or love all of it and still, no one will care what they think. A few of us will know art when we see it and we’ll celebrate what is good and beautiful and uniquely human in the written word. The world, however, will stumble on into the abyss, the bad writers with them, and the good writers will write about the stumbling.
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Michael Bunker is a local columnist for BrownwoodNews.com whose columns appear periodically on the website.