PAUL GPT

Are you letting AI do your writing for you?

Before we get started, I'd like you to take a moment and consider three questions:

1.)    Have I ever used an AI application to write something, and if so, why did I choose to use it?

2.)    How did I feel about the finished product, and did I feel like it was my work or somebody else's?

3.)    What's something I have a really strong opinion on, and could I type out that argument along with three facts to back it up?

OK, let's hit this rabbit hole.

My name is Paul Andrea.

If you are reading this, you are the resistance.

It's not because SkyNet or our world leaders are coming to lay waste to the world, that stuff is for movies meant to scare us.

They are coming to scare us. Scared people are entertained people, and entertained people are distracted people.

The apocalypse is not coming. The administration buildings will still stand. The roads will still carry traffic. Life will go on.

But what of the people doing the living?

The real horror that's coming is a sugary sweet one, a place where people go about their daily lives like automatons, moving from one task to the next, without a creative thought in their heads

The horror is control.

These people can't read or write, can't draw a picture, can't even come up with a joke that they haven't heard in a movie. They just go about their business, reacting to whatever comes up, never having created anything.

These folks are perfectly controllable. They'll do whatever they're told, given sufficient stimulus.

An ad on the internet.

Patriotism.

My neighbor did it.

I know what you're thinking: This doom and gloom scenario is an old scare tactic. We've been building and improving technology for thousands of years. The internet was supposed to turn us into zombies, and instead it created an information revolution!

Skills and services become outdated with time. We don't need to know how to make a fire anymore.

We don't need to have a delivery guy put a block of ice in our fridge.

We don't need to know how to write in cursive, or even use a typewriter.

We don't even need to know how to write. It's a menial task. Let the computer do it.

Here's where things get interesting.

There is a chasm of difference between abandoning outdated technology and surrendering the skill of writing. Allow me to demonstrate.

Writing is the skill of organizing one's thoughts into a complete whole. That whole can tell a story, explain how something works, or persuade a reader to consider their ideas. (such as the case in this piece).

Writing requires the author to sharpen their ideas by melding facts and concepts into cohesive, fully formed arguments. An opinion that a writer can defend with a well written argument is far stronger than a random opinion backed by nothing.

You may stop here and think to yourself “I've never been good at writing, and I can still win a debate with my friends easily. I've never needed to write.”

Maybe, but I venture to say that you can still write an e-mail, or a cover letter for a resume. Furthermore, if the chips were down, and you needed to write something for work, you could, given time, cobble something together that would be sufficient to get the job done.

Thankfully, they taught us extensively how to write in school.

Now along comes ChatGPT (along with Google AI and other AI platforms), which takes away the need to actually write anything.

Have an e-mail you need to send? Instruct the AI to construct a professional proposal to a client. You needn't even be too specific on the ideas in the proposal – the AI will figure it out for you.

Before you know it, AI authored pieces will dominate the landscape. If you read an idea, it will probably have come from a computer. Things will start to look more and more uniform, since computers have a programmed way of thinking.

Eventually, people will be on the sidelines, wondering how computers ended up doing all our thinking for us.

In the end, it will be a planet full of mental children, incapable of thinking, incapable of learning, incapable of anything but indentured servitude.

I submit to you that if we lose the skill to write, we will lose the skill to think.

Sure, those of us already trained and practiced in the art will be fine. Writing is probably a similar to riding a bike. But what of the kids in school young enough to be growing up in this crazy landscape? Teachers already let them use calculators instead of pencil and paper for math. Teachers already stopped teaching them cursive. How long before English class consists of learning how to present ideas to Chat GPT for formation into a term paper?

Will these kids really have the critical thinking skills or abilities they need coming out of school?

Or will they be just zombies, ready to go into the daily grind, doing what they're told, existing until they die?

If this future sounds horrible to you, then I urge you to avoid using AI to do your thinking for you. No matter how far gone the situation seems, it's not too late to think for yourself.

We'll need all the free thinkers we can get going forward.

My name is Paul Andrea.

If you are reading this, you are the resistance.

Public Service Announcement: All articles, e-mails, sentences written by Paul Andrea are written solely by Paul Andrea, without any aid from any any AI platform. So sworn.