Is AI Co-opting Creativity?

(photo by Owen Beard on Unsplash)

As a writer, I am now receiving daily job postings inviting to input my data to AI platforms to provide the machine with more human generated information. I actually considered taking a job like this. If I’m writing anyways, why not get paid for it?

Then I considered the ethics of this work. Do I want to enable the machine to co-opt creative jobs in journalism, advertising, publishing etc? It would be easy to say that if I don’t do it, someone else will. But that’s just a cop-out. I needed to reflect on my ethical choices.

Some people have made analogies between the advent of AI tools like ChatGPT and the invention of the printing press. I prefer a more recent analogy — how the home printer / scanner killed the printing industry back in the 1990’s. I had a few good friends working at printing presses who lost their careers at this time. Now, I am wondering how many jobs will be killed by AI?

It is already difficult to get in contact with a human being on any help sites. We have all felt the frustration of trying to communicate with robots to remedy  customer complaints or fix travel reservations. I can see this expanding to the point where, as consumers, we can never reach a human being.

As a teacher, I can honestly say I’m glad I retired just as students began submitting AI generated assignments. I imagine this is a huge problem at high school and university levels now. How will teachers verify student work as genuine? As a writer, I am worried about copyright infringement and the authenticity of my sources. I’ll bet you can’t even tell if I actually wrote this blog or if it was AI generated.

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