Is It Butter
One of these days I think I’ll ask one of the AI programs to write me 300 words in three paragraphs on some topic that strikes my fancy. Although, frankly, I’m terrified it will do a much better job than I ever could. Still, I think it might be fun. After all, it’s drawing on the writings of some fairly good people, and I’d still have to edit it and get it ready for publication. And I’ve heard that the prompt you use to get the outcome you want is fairly important. So, that would keep me involved.
For instance, I’d have to pick a subject. Then, I’d have to tell it to play fast and loose with the rules of grammar and punctuation, because I was never really good with that at school, and I hated diagramming sentences. It was a bit like deconstructing sausage. I didn’t like words because of the rules that went with them. I liked words because of how they made me feel as I read them off the page. I think I could tell it to use just a touch of grammar, or maybe to follow the advice of Strunk and White. And to use the Oxford comma because I like it.
And now that I think about it, that’s a lot of work to do to get 300 words and it feels as though the instruction might be as long as the finished product. So, if I’m going to spend that much time on the front end, I might as well finish the job and actually do the work. Besides, I don’t really know where the charm in this lies, and why it appeals to certain people. But it does. And I don’t know how I’d describe that to the AI engine. So, I guess all I can do is just be me and write. Although now you’re probably thinking, was this real or AI, and isn’t that a funny predicament and a real 21st century conundrum?