By Christine Grayden
AI is not on the way. It’s already here. Even in Bass Coast we all apparently interact with AI about 20 times a day; though we are all largely unaware that it’s happening. Now the world is abuzz with the possibilities of AI to remove the drudgery from our lives; increase efficiency in all areas of society; act as indefatigable carers to the growing older demographic and young children whose parents both work; analyze data more accurately to forecast financial movements, climate change effects, even your health issues and longevity.
AI is not on the way. It’s already here. Even in Bass Coast we all apparently interact with AI about 20 times a day; though we are all largely unaware that it’s happening. Now the world is abuzz with the possibilities of AI to remove the drudgery from our lives; increase efficiency in all areas of society; act as indefatigable carers to the growing older demographic and young children whose parents both work; analyze data more accurately to forecast financial movements, climate change effects, even your health issues and longevity.
I’m not sure if anyone involved in creative industries in Bass Coast is using an AI program as their main creating platform. But over the last three years I’ve had my own interesting experiences with AI with my writing. In my case, an AI voice recognition program – let’s call it Cobber for the sake of brevity – which is far more than just a speech-to-text program.
Remarkably, it took Cobber hardly any time to learn my vocabulary, syntax, preferred sentence structure and requirements for length variability, and soon predicted where I would paragraph and punctuate. I could also easily teach Cobber how to hear, recall and type any new words of phrases. We flew through the work, whereas for some months my disability had been preventing me from even coordinating a basic mouse click.
Moreover, within a day Cobber had worked out that its pathetic human had some sort of physical issue whereby sometimes her voice was strong, and other days she could barely manage a whisper, but it was still the same human wanting to work on this document, so it was OK to let her.
Cobber also learnt quickly that there were days when I couldn’t recall all the necessary voice commands, so it would patiently pause and give me a little dialogue box asking me to repeat myself, please. In fact, I learnt that that seemingly polite and innocuous phrase from Cobber was actually quite ominous. Because Cobber did not just use it to tell me it was waiting while I checked the cheat sheet for the correct command, or it hadn’t quite caught what I said, but also started using it to basically tell me it didn’t like what I was instructing it to do. Cobber knew better. I found myself having to deactivate Cobber, while I over-rode its ever-increasing number of inflexible and unimaginative substitute word and sentence structure choices.
As I grew stronger and could use the keyboard and mouse again, Cobber would spit the dummy if I attempted to take over the process and would punish me with the big issue all ‘creatives’ hate on devices: Cobber would simply freeze my document. Like for half an hour. No amount of save, close, escape, alt-ctrl-delete would break this pause. Cobber made me wait.
I cleared off all the voice files, uninstalled, then updated and reinstalled the AI program, and became more conscientious with the deactivating command whenever I wanted to keyboard or use the mouse around the document myself. That definitely did help for a while. But Cobber eventually retaliated by simply not reactivating when commanded to, effectively withdrawing its AI services from me. Fed up, I removed the program for some weeks, until trying to do all the keyboard work myself got the better of my limited strength and I reloaded it. But Cobber had not forgotten the mission it set itself to take over my creative process, and the problems arose for me again.
Two weeks ago I tried to remove the AI program for good, but it proved beyond me as. the response to uninstall was to simply cycle back to the load dialogue box. Running my two virus protection programs did nothing.
So my AI and I have called a truce in proceedings until I find time to call in some big guns to deal with it. Cobber sits unused and apparently comatose on my laptop like some sleeping ogre, waiting to pounce if I ever activate it again. Not likely. I will just go along happily in my own imperfect writing style, running to five labored drafts where Cobber would have decided the job was done in less than 5% of the time and a single draft; if I’d just let it have its way.
So for all you Bass Coast ‘creatives’ and other current or potential AI clients out there who are embracing ever-more powerful AI to ‘help’ with your workload and creativity – all I can say is good luck with controlling it, even if you want to. And I do wonder on what this trend to hand over creative content to AI is really all about. I ask myself, is this trend actually predicated on a deep distrust of the unpredictability of human creativity?
PS: My computer guru worked on my laptop, but instead of leaving his usual cheery note: “All good now”, or “Fixed OK”, his message this time read: “Seems gone”. Why does that make me feel uneasy?
Remarkably, it took Cobber hardly any time to learn my vocabulary, syntax, preferred sentence structure and requirements for length variability, and soon predicted where I would paragraph and punctuate. I could also easily teach Cobber how to hear, recall and type any new words of phrases. We flew through the work, whereas for some months my disability had been preventing me from even coordinating a basic mouse click.
Moreover, within a day Cobber had worked out that its pathetic human had some sort of physical issue whereby sometimes her voice was strong, and other days she could barely manage a whisper, but it was still the same human wanting to work on this document, so it was OK to let her.
Cobber also learnt quickly that there were days when I couldn’t recall all the necessary voice commands, so it would patiently pause and give me a little dialogue box asking me to repeat myself, please. In fact, I learnt that that seemingly polite and innocuous phrase from Cobber was actually quite ominous. Because Cobber did not just use it to tell me it was waiting while I checked the cheat sheet for the correct command, or it hadn’t quite caught what I said, but also started using it to basically tell me it didn’t like what I was instructing it to do. Cobber knew better. I found myself having to deactivate Cobber, while I over-rode its ever-increasing number of inflexible and unimaginative substitute word and sentence structure choices.
As I grew stronger and could use the keyboard and mouse again, Cobber would spit the dummy if I attempted to take over the process and would punish me with the big issue all ‘creatives’ hate on devices: Cobber would simply freeze my document. Like for half an hour. No amount of save, close, escape, alt-ctrl-delete would break this pause. Cobber made me wait.
I cleared off all the voice files, uninstalled, then updated and reinstalled the AI program, and became more conscientious with the deactivating command whenever I wanted to keyboard or use the mouse around the document myself. That definitely did help for a while. But Cobber eventually retaliated by simply not reactivating when commanded to, effectively withdrawing its AI services from me. Fed up, I removed the program for some weeks, until trying to do all the keyboard work myself got the better of my limited strength and I reloaded it. But Cobber had not forgotten the mission it set itself to take over my creative process, and the problems arose for me again.
Two weeks ago I tried to remove the AI program for good, but it proved beyond me as. the response to uninstall was to simply cycle back to the load dialogue box. Running my two virus protection programs did nothing.
So my AI and I have called a truce in proceedings until I find time to call in some big guns to deal with it. Cobber sits unused and apparently comatose on my laptop like some sleeping ogre, waiting to pounce if I ever activate it again. Not likely. I will just go along happily in my own imperfect writing style, running to five labored drafts where Cobber would have decided the job was done in less than 5% of the time and a single draft; if I’d just let it have its way.
So for all you Bass Coast ‘creatives’ and other current or potential AI clients out there who are embracing ever-more powerful AI to ‘help’ with your workload and creativity – all I can say is good luck with controlling it, even if you want to. And I do wonder on what this trend to hand over creative content to AI is really all about. I ask myself, is this trend actually predicated on a deep distrust of the unpredictability of human creativity?
PS: My computer guru worked on my laptop, but instead of leaving his usual cheery note: “All good now”, or “Fixed OK”, his message this time read: “Seems gone”. Why does that make me feel uneasy?