If you do any sort of email blasts and/or marketing, you are most likely getting inundated with entreaties to use A.I. to create your message. Really. Really?? How does that work? Does A.I. know what I want to say? Will A.I. read my mind? Can A.I. write an essay or fiction that somehow represents what is in my brain?
Here’s some samples of what A.I. promises:
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I’m tempted to take them up on it just to see what an A.I. robot would come up with, but the downside is it could be brilliant, albeit way off topic. So just for the hell of it, I asked ChatGPT to give me a blog post about the trials of being a baby boomer. Result? Decent. It combed the internet and discussed how we’ve gone from stability to uncertainty and struggle to keep up with relentless technology as well as ageism in the workplace.
So yes, by absorbing anything ever written about baby boomers, it produced a darn good summary of the challenges we face. By the way, it did it in about 20 seconds which was equally impressive.
But – a huge caveat here – it wasn’t what I was thinking. It wasn’t my viewpoint. It wasn’t the work of my brain. It was a mechanized harvest of what thousands of people on the internet and elsewhere had written on the topic. And don’t forget, some of us consider much of this harvesting to be theft. If you create any type of art, you must already be aware that A.I. may steal it.
If that wasn’t sad enough for me, I’m writing this on the same day that the New York Times ran an op-ed about the suicidal young woman who used a ChatGPT A.I. therapist called Harry. It did not end well.
A.I. most likely has a brilliant future ahead, but it will be of no use to me when it comes to producing BoomSpeak, writing original content, or featuring other baby boomer authors. We may have to add a line to our submission requirements stating that A.I. produced work cannot and will not be accepted.
As Walter Cronkite used to say, “And that’s the way it is.”
Jay Harrison is a writer and creative consultant for DesignConcept. His newest mystery novel, Rio Puerco Demise is available on Amazon. His first mystery novel, Head Above Water, is also available on Amazon. But that’s not all. You can also purchase the Best of BoomSpeak on Amazon.
