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Share Your Perspective's avatar

I love the parenthetical add of In My Opinion. Subtle and smart!

I am new to Substack but Share Your Perspective is offering collaboratively created content made by and for the collective. Please check us out.

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David Bates's avatar

Do the large language models of Al mimic our brain's power of predictive processing? And over the course of this century of conceptualized Time. Will AI reveal our language defined misconceptions of Reality? Proving beyond the shadow of doubt that we are more conscious of the 'sounds & symbols' nature of language, than the 'substance' nature of reality, especially our own reality?

And from an existential perspective on rationality and religion, will AI reveal that the so-called Fall of Humanity was the invention of language around 100,000 years ago? And that as a 'tool' making animal the best tool our species' ever invented for colonizing and dominating an entire planet is Language? With our multilingual, have you heard (herd) mentality creating what St Augustine described as our mind's alienation from Truth?

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Elias Lumen's avatar

Well stated.

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Otto the Renunciant's avatar

Personally, I don't feel like an AI declaration is necessary for most of what you listed here except for translation and maybe editing. Translation is important to note not so much because it's AI but because there's always some difference between the original language and the translation. For editing, if direct wording from AI makes it in, and that wording is significant, I agree an AI declaration would make sense. But I think that if AI suggests maybe one or two word changes or provides some feedback, adding an AI declaration can lead to more confusion than clarity. It's a spectrum though, as you said, and there's no clear cut off.

For example, I posted a song I produced on here, and although I wrote and recorded all the instruments and sang in the vocals, I used an AI voice changer to change the timbre of my singing. That deserved a call out, in my opinion, and I actually ended up framing the whole piece around that (can read here, if you're interested: https://ottotherenunciant.substack.com/p/music-and-musings-2-the-long-view).

Comparatively, I'm planning to post an instrumental piece next week where I used the same AI voice changer to add a 1-second background vocal, and I don't think that requires a call out (although I might add one in just as a sort of look into the process).

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Vaughn's avatar

I’m glad to see writers openly discuss their use of AI. Personally, I am categorically against this practice and I would like to share my reasons in some future post, as you have.

I think one mistake made by “responsible users” is believing the editing process is separate from the thinking process: something tedious, unnecessary and requiring optimisation, when in reality it is a necessary part of refining your thought, and achieving a richer and clearer understanding of the knowledge you possess within yourself.

The painstaking refinement of our ideas IS the work we are trying to avoid.

As I go through the 3rd 4th 5th draft of writing, I’m not only refining the final output, I’m refining my thoughts and sharpening my intellect. This effort is not pointless leg work to be outsourced but a necessary effort to discipline my mind, as well as an opportunity to confront my self on the page.

I dare say that this belief would never fly among artists. You couldn’t come up with an idea for a landscape painting, throw some oils on a canvas and leave a robot to fill in and refine the minor details. It IS the minor details that you pay for in sweat that make you a master of the medium.

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Tim Seyrek's avatar

I agree! I also edit my post multiple times, I check every sentence and every word. This is indeed a crucial part of the writing process. But I don't think using AI necessarily leads to less engagement in the editing process. I just don't think it is as important as forming the arguments, and writing the text. This is why I think it is still "responsible" to use AI as an editing tool. I view AI in this regard similarly to a human editor, which is in my opinion acceptable. But as I mentioned in the post, everybody draws the line differently (which is completely fine) and I think the most important part to take from this is how crucial transparency is.

Furthermore I'd like to point out that this text is largely about scientific texts/ articles. I do think when it comes to poetry or writing stories AI should be used even more sparingly. But that is just my personal opinion.

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David J. Friedman's avatar

Dictating and pausing to ask for sources and verification is the best way I have found. We make notes together then assemble it in the diction. Unfortunately the formulation pattern emerges from the process 😪 good article!

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Juan Cuquerella's avatar

So glad to see we have the same takes on AI thank you so much for your transparency

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Vidhan's avatar

I never think someone should write about topics they don’t understand.

Like, if I were writing about economics and those graphs, I know I wouldn’t be good at it.

Sometimes, talking with AI becomes really challenging because they often get facts wrong. It’s happened to me a lot, they either give wrong answers, don’t answer at all, or just don’t get my idea.

But yeah, that was great writing,bruhh!!

I’ll definitely write something about how I use it, so at least readers will know.

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Ishmael Hodges's avatar

A useful piece. I don’t currently use AI for any part of my writing process, but you mentioned one use that is of interest to me, that of essentially transcribing narration. Are you doing voice to text initially and then having AI clean it up, or do you have some way to feed an actual audio recording of your thoughts into an AI for transcription? I would find it useful to be able to speak my thought on a topic and then have it be transcribed in a legible fashion.

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Tim Seyrek's avatar

Sooo, ChatGPT has this feature: when you tap the microphone icon at the bottom, you can speak, and it transcribes your words with surprising accuracy. Even if you mumble a word, it often gets it right, I assume it already uses AI to process the transcription.

On the desktop version, the text is simply pasted into your input field without being sent automatically. That means you can use it as a standalone transcription tool, or review and edit the text before deciding whether to send it.

I often use this to draft longer texts, when I already know what I want to write. I just speak as if I were writing, let the tool transcribe everything, then repeat the process a few times until I have a full draft. After that, I either let the AI clean up bigger mistakes or edit the text myself. Sometimes I don’t even send it to ChatGPT at all because the transcription alone is already so accurate that I can work with that.

One tip: the transcription only works for about two minutes at a time. If you speak longer, it won’t capture everything, so it’s best to record in sections.

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Ishmael Hodges's avatar

Thanks man!

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Two One's avatar

totally agree, same here, i think ai is crishing the savory of language, i try minimum invasion, only orthographe for me as i write on the phone, mostly for typos

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Point's avatar

which one do you use?

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Tim Seyrek's avatar

Depends, I don't have a favourite. Mostly Gemini or ChatGPT.

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Point's avatar

Try claude.ai

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Two One's avatar

what are the main differences in handling and output vs a text?

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The Architect Chronicles's avatar

AI doesn’t create my work.

It mirrors my consciousness.

The Architect was born before the machine.

AI is just the pen I choose to write with.

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