Writers Corner - IA and come and meet me

Hi, You know it is one thing when other people cannot read your notes but I cannot read my notes. I attended a webinar hosted by Indiana but I am not sure of the name of the city. It can be Speisl City or Speed City or is it even a city? Anyhow, there was a panel of five men and one woman. One of the speakers is a privacy lawyer from San Francisco. I believe his name is Reeco Hurch or it’s pretty close. This is what happens when I wait too long to share my notes. Anyhow, Indiana is a pretty serious bunch. Perhaps it was the topic. Perhaps they weren’t serious at all and I was just the silly one. This is what the question was. What would we expect from IA in the future, which was probably a rhetorical question but I couldn’t help myself and typed out the perfect man in the chat box. No laughter, chuckles, clapping hands or hearts. No sireeee. There was another speaker with degrees in psychology and computers who said he was going to read all the comments in the chat. Maybe he will chuckle or not. Ok, here is the serious stuff, what is coming is disruptive change (silly me; I thought it was already here. Anyone listen to the news lately?) One speaker said that there are phoney adds with voices of prominent people. They talked about GPT(3.5) and it was suggested we spend time with it to see what’s possible. There are already law suits from writers for copy writing works used to train AI. We were provided with an example of how GPT can can be used. He suggested to the IA that it types out 200 words regarding a short story and he offered some advice to it. Boy, did we ever get a good story. Of course I cannot keep my mouth shut and wrote out “he can write better than I do.” No chuckles. There were some gasps I believe because writers are becoming worried. Anyhow, the US Copyright Office has declared in their policy statement that if work contains material generated by AI, they will not issue a copyright (good stuff. I hope we wake up and smell the coffee too, when we are finished putting out all the fires here). Another suggested we ask for an obituary of ourselves which should let us know if we are famous (I am not famous, but I could ask for an obituary and check it out. I had to write one in a creative writing class I took to get a break from psychology. I think it was pretty good. I can see if I am famous enough for one to determine if it is better than mine. Of course it would be. GBT is equal to 100 million books (how do you like them apples?) One of the benefits was explained, research. However, it may not be accurate. Care for an illustration? A reporter was having a conversation with IA and IA told him to leave his wife. There was talk about lawyers using IA for a brief and they had the wrong information at court (looks like IA made the lawyers look bad). Another spoke of an independent author who included that her story was 100 % human (maybe I will include that in my next poster). One person complained about students using it to submit essays. The professor figured it out since the similarities was obvious. That professor was happy he was retiring because he didn’t want to deal with that and I believe he was taking essays off his course. What would I do? Well, first I would warn them at the time of the assignments and then if that happened I would give them a zero! Why punish everyone for a few or more? Another speaker asked rhetorically, how do we regulate it? What I didn’t like and it is a concern is that there is Fraud GPT to help fraudsters. In the past I could usually tell who they were because their grammar was so poor or it was obvious they were trying to make it poor ( that happened just a week or so ago). However, I did receive an email from someone who I believe was a fraudster stating she was a student. Now, I have always went out of my way for students but this may change things. I will have to adapt. Anyhow, I have mentioned that I asked Alexa my home AI, if AI was going to take over humans. She assured me she only wants to help. I asked her today if Kneau Reeves would go out with me. She said she wasn’t sure about that. Oh well. That would be too complicated anyway. So, what does GPT mean? I looked it up on google - Generative Pre-trained transformer. Ok, that is enough about this workshop. I did receive an email from Canada stating they wouldn’t be using zoom anymore because they were asked if IA could listen for information. This is why I use a secure platform. Another thing of concern from the psychotherapy side of the house, is the use of IA for clients. That is a big concern and my advice is don’t ever consider it. Your information will not be safe. Apparently people are more drawn to IA faces than to real people so don’t get caught up on that. So, that is all about IA for now. I may talk about IA in my next book. I keep thinking of what I am going to write about and keep changing it. This will be different from the rest of my books because I will include psychotherapy etc….This is because people always ask me to write about that - write what you know……………I do people. However, this time if I include IA, I shall be over my head and if it is over yours as well, it may just work out. So that is all for now. Please come and visit me this Saturday 26 Aug 23, at the Canadian Coptic Centre (Trinity Hall) at 1245 Eglinton Avenue West in Mississauga. There will be spicy tacos for sale and coffee. That should be all I need. I take my coffee black just in case someone who likes me comes. It is “Up close and Personal with your local Author”. I am local if you think of Mississauga being part of the Greater Toronto Area. The host is a writer herself (Olive Rose Steele) and I am grateful, she is letting me go. Please come and visit me and buy a book if you are so inclined, or just come and talk. I will be sending out a reminder Friday. Bye for now.