A Real Download - IWSG August 2024

 

Welcome to IWSG Day. The goal of this blog hop is to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a haven for insecure writers of all kinds. IWSG is the brainchild of Alex Cavanaugh.  Thank you to August co-hosts Feather Stone, Kim Lajevardi, Diedre Knight, C. Lee  McKenzie, and Sarah - The Faux Fountain Pen! To read posts from other contributors,  click here.

August optional question: Do you use AI in your writing and if so how? Do you use it for your posts? Incorporate it into your stories? Use it for research? Audio?

Typically when I write an IWSG post, I start it a week ahead, pretty much as soon as we get the email reminder with the month’s optional topic. But last week I received the email in the middle of my second week of a “staycation,” and could think of nothing relevant to the topic to write. In fact, I couldn't think of anything to write at all. So I tabled it. When Sunday arrived, my last day before going back to work, I spent it grocery shopping, reading at the beach, and then getting myself organized to get back into the work routine. I woke after midnight feeling normal work anxiety along with a sudden shock that I'd forgotten to get back to my IWSG post. Even then, I had no idea what I would write. I’m woefully undereducated as it pertains to AI and had no other topic. I tossed and turned, wondering if I could bail out with pictures of my hydrangeas, but oops, I did that last month.

As a result, here I sit, 6:37 am on Monday in front of the computer and this is what you get. A brain dump. Not an artificially crafted piece, but one generated as a result of my conviction that even when I have no idea for a post, if I sit down to write, something will come. So, back to the topic at hand. Writing using AI? Nope. While I suppose there are places where it can be utilized effectively (Legal briefs? Insurance documentation? Real estate closings?) my guess is, I won’t be using it for my creative writing anytime soon.

Like everyone else, of course I USE AI. How can we not? Search engines, navigation systems, online credit cards and banking, Venmo, the computer in my car, even my new oven is Wi-Fi enabled. It sends a message to my phone when it has preheated and another when the timer goes off. I could go on and on--to the point I worry about the world of hurt we’ll all be in when the internet crashes sometime. Hints of that are already happening (Hello, last week's airline outage). What's our back up plan? I know I’m an antique when I pull out my paper checks, and the yellowing Rand McNally road atlas in my car may be severely outdated, but in a pinch it could still get me from point A to point B (although the odds of getting stuck in traffic will be greater). I hang on to these vintage tools because I’m pretty sure we're so reliant on technology that we've lost ability to function without it. They're MY back up plan. And then there’s this. I picture the old Terminator movies and wonder if that’s our future? Will artificial intelligence turn on us?

And that sums up the difference between AI and me. I have the capacity for worry.

But—I also have the ability to think positively. So, as I “create” this post, I remind myself that artificial intelligence wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for human intelligence in the first place. This essay is my little demonstration of the real deal. Using my own brain, in less than twenty minutes, I created the barebones of this post that I’ll tweak to turn into my August IWSG obligation.

There you have it. It’s now 6:56 am.

Full disclosure: I’ll use the AI from Microsoft Word’s “Read Aloud” function as I revise this piece, before scheduling it to publish on Wednesday.  

6:58 am.

First draft done.

What's your writing world experience with AI?