AI: Something Big Is Happening; how big?
(This is Part-1; for Part-2, go here.)
Matt Shumer’s recent massively viewed article, SOMETHING BIG IS HAPPENING, states the AI tidal wave is VERY big.
Because AI breakthroughs are coming on at an ever-accelerating pace.
What was true a year ago is not true today. Shumer says forget those old claims that ChatGPT hallucinates and makes mistakes. That was a year ago. The new versions of GPT are much smarter. A year in AI development time is huge. Even months are now huge.
I want to discuss writing and journalism, since that’s what I’ve been doing since I was 17, 70 years ago.
As I’ve shown you in a past piece, ChatGPT can write a paragraph in NY Times style that is indistinguishable from what a human Times reporter would write.1
Most human writers are mimicking a style they learned or absorbed by contact.
In a way, they’re human AIs. They’re writing mechanically, according to a pattern.
An actual WRITER is doing something else. And not just one something else. He gives rise to many different voices. He’s inventing. He’s giving the English language a ransacking workout.
Then there is this factor: