There is no escaping the AI scourge in the present day.
I recently agreed to serve as a part-editor for a sizable publication. Headhunting is one of my favorite aspects of my new work. I look for interesting tales and try to persuade the authors to send their fantastic writings to me and the publication I help run rather than just posting them into the ether.
Although this is very satisfying and has helped me hone my editorial skills, the issue was almost immediately apparent.
There is a lot of hay there, but hardly any needles. Even worse, much of that hay is produced artificially.
When I click into an article with a bad headline and discover the substance isn’t quite excellent enough to pass my recruitment cut, I feel sympathy. All of us have been there. Nobody is a flawless writer from birth. We are after all human. We try, become better, fail, and try again.
When I believe the entire article was produced by AI, my empathy immediately wanes. It’s a waste of my time, the time of any potential readers, and, in my opinion, the time of the author. What does the author want to achieve by writing a poor essay that offers readers nothing of content or value? They won’t increase their audience or attract customers. I genuinely don’t get the argument.
Humans are pretty good at catching AI
I haven’t yet discovered a trustworthy AI content detector. The greatest ones are infamous for still classifying William Shakespeare’s plays as AI. But I’ve discovered that we as people are actually fairly effective AI detectors.
We can usually sense when something is odd.
There isn’t enough humanity. There is no firsthand knowledge. No tone or voice is present. There are a lot of what I refer to as corporate We’s. (For example, “In this blog post, we’ll detail exactly how you can blah blah blah.” affiliating with the royal we.)
