Is AI writing assistance ethical?

[Naomasa298]

Right, and that was my point. You need to instruct it how to critique your work in order to get useful results.

I entirely agree. For it to be useful, you kind of have to reach a certain level of ability first, both in your own writing and in using the AI. If you just give it a passage and say "make it better", it's going to flatten your voice and not be terribly useful.

 

[defaux]

To be fair, if my above questions seem unfair, is crediting AI the same as crediting a tractor?

I think they are valid questions for discussion, as is this one.

My opinion is, if you are dictating the words and someone else writes them down, then you are the author.

If your wife is dictating to you, then she is the author (obviously, that follows). But if your wife is giving you something more like prompts, suggestions, ideas, and the prose comes from your own mind, then you are still the author. At what point do ideas become suggestions, become edits? At what point does she deserve more than a footnote credit? Therein I suspect is an ethical question, or a moral one.

 

[defaux]

Here's a question that I think follows the point of ownership: what do we mean when we write/say "Written by X"?

Conceptually, for me, this comes down to ownership of the ideas. If I have an incredible idea for a story but no ability to write whatsoever, then perhaps the person who pens the idea becomes a co-author. And this is maybe the point where an LLM might step in.

I also think there is a difference between "AI, write me a story." and "AI here are my ideas for a story, fully formed concepts and characters, please arrange them into structured prose." Though both cases the AI is technically doing the "writing" part. The latter would be more like using a ghostwriter, perhaps.

edit: these are continuations of the thought experiment.

 

[Naomasa298]

Conceptually, for me, this comes down to ownership of the ideas. If I have an incredible idea for a story but no ability to write whatsoever, then perhaps the person who pens the idea becomes a co-author. And this is maybe the point where an LLM might step in.

I also think there is a difference between "AI, write me a story." and "AI here are my ideas for a story, fully formed concepts and characters, please arrange them into structured prose." Though both cases the AI is technically doing the "writing" part. The latter would be more like using a ghostwriter, perhaps.

edit: these are continuations of the thought experiment.

I am of the opinion that there is no difference between "style" and "substance". In that, I agree with Neil Clarke, the editor of Clarkesworld. I think words matter, so having an AI write an entire passage isn't a neutral choice. Maybe if you're a fan of minimalist, "invisible" prose, it's workable, but I'm not.

 

[Louanne Learning]

Honest question - how does any of this help someone become a better writer?

Just as I thought. It doesn't.

I shudder to think how Wuthering Heights would have turned out if Emily Brontë had had AI.

 

[Homer Potvin]

Just as I thought. It doesn't.

I shudder to think how Wuthering Heights would have turned out if Emily Brontë had had AI.

I don't think it's supposed to. It's meant to produce a faster, cheaper product that requires less human intervention. Basically a machine like any other, I guess.

 

[defaux]

Honest question - how does any of this help someone become a better writer?

Just as I thought. It doesn't.

I shudder to think how Wuthering Heights would have turned out if Emily Brontë had had AI.

Sorry, Louanne, I missed this amongst the rest of the dialogue.

I can only speak from my own experience here, and obviously each users' intent in doing so is important. But I believe I have benefited from "discussing" my writing with AI, in the way one might with a beta reader or critique partner. Up to a point (which I'll come back to).

I don't use the thing to generate prose. But I have used it to review specific intent of my writing. I can drop some text into a chat and say, here is what I'm trying to achieve, does it work? And not just for narrative, but also for style and tone and voice. Again, though, you have to direct it, be specific in what you are asking it to review, in order to get useful feedback. Which, may sometimes be the case for human reviewers as well.

The main advantage here is speed. I can drop some text, have a back and forth with the AI for a few minutes, go back and rewrite portions of the text, and repeat ad nauseam. I could get through in an hour with AI what might have taken days or weeks with human readers.

"But AI isn't as good as human readers!" I hear you proclaim.

Up to a point, it is good enough.

I haven't been here for very long, really. I began with the notion that because I knew how to construct sentences properly, that I would be able to write well. But learning narrative technique is an entirely different skillset. This approach has allowed me to compress a lot of learning these techniques into what felt like a considerably shorter timeframe than I would have without the AI assistance.

Does it give bad advice at times? Does it lead me astray? It assuredly does. But so may a poorly contrived human critique. And this too is a valuable learning experience - to know what not to listen to.

I can feel that I may have reached a culmination point now, where the advice it gives is diminishing in it's helpfulness. Not because I have learned everything there is to learn, but because I have reached the limitations of the system. I am now writing things that the AI cannot understand, because of nuance and subtlety, and a lot of the feedback I get are things I already know.

So, there you have my opinion. Yes, AI can help you become a better write. Up to a point. But you still need to put in the work, still need to think about what you're doing both in the writing and the review phases. It cannot do everything for you. And I hope I haven't just built my own witch-pyre in expounding all of this.

 

[Louanne Learning]

@defaux

Thank you for your insights, and I understand your position, but it would not work for me to hand over what I am trying to say in a story to AI. This gets back to the distinction between pragmatists and purists. I am unapologetically purist.

I have this great welling of thought and feeling inside of me, and I am the best driver of it into words. I am not going to ask an AI if I am on the right track. I have to decide that for myself. What I have to write must be true to me.

What I write stands or falls on my own creative impulse.

 

[defaux]

That's fair, and I understand it as well. I'm certainly not proposing that the path I have taken is the only one, or the best, or even the right one. But it felt like it worked for me at the time. Like an online self-study course.

hand over what I am trying to say in a story to AI

I don't believe that is what I'm doing. The stories I tell are still mine. I just asked for an automated response to a question, the way I might ask you or anyone else here on the forum. "What does this story say?" and if the answer is not what I was expecting, then I consider if I need to adjust it to more effectively convey the intended meaning.

Still, I appreciate you didn't immediately strike the match.

 

[Pyroglyphian]

Here, though, I disagree. I think an author stating that 1.5% of their work is AI is attaching a stigma to their own name (in the current climate). People are far more likely to read it as "This author uses AI, doesn't write his own words". Now, if your book is 100k words, that means 85k of your lovingly crafted work is going to be labelled "AI slop" by association.

Conversely, my earlier point was, I don't see how using editing services is any different. You wouldn't publish with "My editor rewrote 1.5% of my book" and no-one would complain that an author doesn't produce his own work because he uses an editor.

I think there’s a difference, but it arises from reframing the comparison you made. Namely, the “stigma” around the means of writing seems more apparent among writers than among readers, I suppose, in part because it’s the writer’s passion and potential livelihood that AI threatens to undermine.

By contrast, “people” are a heterogeneous bunch with various needs and concerns. Whilst there are many discerning readers in the world, there are also many who may not mind the “made with AI” small print and simply evaluate a book based on their enjoyment of it.

However, there is a genuine stigma around the ethics of integrity, authenticity, and honesty. There are also broader ethical concerns around the use of AI, which have been captured elsewhere in this thread, which is why transparency with AI can be more valuable than with a human editor.

 

[Trish]

@defaux

Thank you for your insights, and I understand your position, but it would not work for me to hand over what I am trying to say in a story to AI. This gets back to the distinction between pragmatists and purists. I am unapologetically purist.

I have this great welling of thought and feeling inside of me, and I am the best driver of it into words. I am not going to ask an AI if I am on the right track. I have to decide that for myself. What I have to write must be true to me.

What I write stands or falls on my own creative impulse.

Do you not ask for feedback from humans? How is it different? If all he's doing is asking for impressions of how well something fits the theme, emotion, whatever, it's the same as asking a human what they think, isn't it? You aren't obligated to accept what a human says either.