My Singular Statement On AI

Content, Nuance, Community

This is a very controversial topic at the moment and honestly I didn’t want to make this article for a long time. However, it’s getting to a point where I am fearing that if I say nothing, I’m eventually going to be asked the question, and not have enough space to lay all my thoughts out on it at once. Especially with the new “scan for AI feature” on Substack.

However, I don’t want this newsletter to turn into an AI debate space. It’s a tired topic that I am not very interested in. There are plenty of Substacks discussing it, and people freaking out over it.

So, this is my ONE article outlining my thoughts on the matter. You are welcome to ask me questions and otherwise talk about AI in the comments of THIS POST and THIS POST only. I am NOT going to be allowing it on any of my other posts from here on out.

First things first:

Is any of my content, written or art, AI-generated?

No.

I write rather chaotically and out of order, with a lot of moving pieces. It’s why it takes me months to write things, and weeks to developmentally edit. It takes hours for me to write a single post like this one too. My writing style and its improvement can be tracked through when I first started writing on Wattpad to now, with general clarity improving, less typos, just tighter storytelling in general.

But my voice and the way I sound, even when I’m trying to impersonate different characters, is still very there.

“Reasons Found In Promises” was entirely first drafted on my Freewrite, on this exact model I got for my birthday 2 years ago. It doesn’t have access to the internet besides emailing yourself your draft and backing it up to Postbox, never mind AI.

For the WIP I’ve been kind of hybrid between the freewrite and writality. Since I’ve been writing during work a lot, it’s been easier to type directly there.

I make every Substack graphic using Canva, specifically their image library and basic tools. You can see the general process in my article here. It’s about making covers, but I make the images the same way.

The only potential use, if you can call it that, is the Hemingway app, which I use for editing. Here is a screenshot of this post that was copy-pasted there with the settings I typically use so you can see the mistakes it flags.

(Its the exact excerpt as above so you can see what I changed)

What is my stance on AI-generated “art” and “books”?

To put it simply, I do not view AI-generated pieces of writing as authored. As such, I don’t believe they should be copyrightable. Which also means I don’t believe they should be able to be made money off.

I am the author of my own works.

I will own every grammar mistake, typo, and sentence fragment. All mine in everything I do, including these articles.

I also make all of my fanfic covers in Canva and every graphic I use for the posts. So are all my promo materials like the videos I make. I did use Pinterest photos in earlier YouTube videos, but I’m switching them out because I think there could be potential copyright issues there.

The only thing I believe in more is that I’m very strictly anti-censorship. And so, I don’t believe AI-generated content should be banned or made illegal. But in the same way, no person is entitled to a platform to show their work. As such, I expect basic respect from AI users to not try to invade non-AI spaces. Which has not really been happening. Hence, platforms like Fictionite are being created.

What’s my stance on AI in general?

This is where it gets a little more complicated.

The thing is I live in a cusp between two worlds in a way. On one hand, I’m a creative and I — perhaps to the point of mild conceit — am very protective over my art. I take great pride in that it is my brain, my hands, my time and work that I’m presenting. Be it liked or not, doomed to obscurity or not, it’s still mine and I’m nonetheless proud of what I’ve put out there.

On the other hand, I work as a software engineer. And we can joke about vibe coding all we want, but pulling code from already existing open source libraries, creating code that generates other code, creating templates, automation, and yes, AI have all been a part of the industry for years. Tools have come to the tech field with similar integrations long before generative AI hit the common space.

And I do want to make it clear: I’m talking about generative AI here. Not machine learning, or the enemy behaviour AI in video games, or the many other types of AI out there. Specifically, we are talking about the AI we see in chatbots where a user puts in prompts and AI generates content like text, videos, pictures, and in this case, code.

My placement as a software engineer is what makes me so vehemently against it in creative spaces. Because I know that, under the hood, it’s basically a copy-paste machine or a next-most-probable-token-finder with a very very veryyyy advanced search algorithm behind it.

But it is also what makes me feel like it absolutely has the capacity to be used in ways that ARE ethical. For example, I find learning with AI much easier because I can ask it 1001 stupid questions and request sources for everything in a way that would (and did) drive most teachers mad. Nor do I believe there is much of a difference in me searching through Stack Overflow for a snippet of code I need for 2 hours, versus an AI doing it for me in 30 seconds. I tell my boss it took an hour and pocket the difference by playing with my dogs.

Gen AI algorithms can also be used in other places like medicine, for predicting virus patterns, or the generation of elements in simulations and video games like water physics. And it can be used to automate the creation of code and help people learn and get into topics easier. Or creating robots that have the intelligence to figure out what they need to do when it comes to menial tasks:

For example, I am extremely excited about projects such as this: https://www.sunday.ai/beta-program

It’s a robot that can do your dishes! And laundry! And clean your space!

As someone who is neurodivergent, struggles with chronic pain, and is always busy with work and writing, this seems incredible. And imagine this being able to be a thing in the homes of the disabled, the elderly, or, heck, anywhere.

So despite my vehement dislike and protectiveness of human-made art, I don’t believe gen AI to be evil by its nature. Not every use of it is condemnable.

But all of that requires the use of the tool responsibly. With a brain and a working filter. The ability and know-how of cross-referencing sources is paramount, but common sense is not common, which is why we are hitting the BS we currently are with people using AI for tasks they absolutely shouldn’t be using it for.

Environmental Concerns

This honestly is one of my biggest overall issues with the current state of AI. Unfortunately, due to how capitalism works, the environment will always fall behind progress.

Not even going into the companies trying to get the government to pull eminent domain to build data centres.

To be honest, it’s a losing battle when it comes to general consumerism. Even if the common folk stop using AI, the big corporations that are now nearly mandating the use of AI in the workspace are going to use enough for all of us. And frankly, I don’t think we can expect people to quit their jobs over this because everyone needs to eat.

My concerns over the environment are not tied to AI specifically. It’s what our current way of life is doing to it as a whole. Not to be all druidy woo-woo, but we have severely lost the plot as a culture. We used to live in a reciprocative, symbiotic relationship with nature, and lately we just take, take, take.

Being upset just over the energy use of AI is like being upset about the plastic being produced just from plastic straws. There is a whole lot of other industry garbage that is contributing, and we should be battling it all. Throwing pitchforks at this one thing isn’t going to produce results, even if it is justified.

The Substack and Pangram Integration

If you are not familiar, now with notes and articles, one can press the hamburger menu on the top right and scan for AI. Substack is doing this with the help of an AI detection tool called Pengram. You might have heard of it due to the scandal surrounding the book “Shy Girl.”

I am…. unsure of how this will go. Substack has had a big rise in AI-generated content and since it is a monetisable platform I can see why people are unhappy with the flood. This appears to be Substack’s attempt at curbing that.

Pangram itself is currently the best detection tool out there with a very low false positive rate when it comes to human writing. But it is not infallible, and I do worry its inclusion in Substack will make people press that button, see any AI percentage and get their panties twisted up over it.

My advice to all of you would be:

Go ahead. Scan it. You are curious anyway. But take it with the idea of it being a probability indicator rather than a difinitive verdict. What I mean by that, is if a creator’s work comes up as 100% AI generated with high confidence for several articles, or even most of their library, then considering the fact that pengram’s false positive rate for identifying human text as AI is low for the industry, it is a pretty good indicator that this person’s content is AI. Vice versa, if a person’s articles consistently scan as human, it’s likely to be human-written.

Varying percentages or low confidence ratings can indicate AI assistance, such as the use of Grammarly’s rewrite tool, but also, likely lean human.

For the record, Fictionite, the platform I’ve mentioned before, also uses Pengram as ONE PART of their review process, which also includes human viewing, interviews, and more.

Above all, though, even if you suspect AI, just unsubscribe and move on with your day. There is no reason to put more negative energy out into the world than there already is. There are better things to do, like… going to read my book! Or sleep!

You can find my book on Amazon

Or its cheaper and more accessible on my website

All that is to say, Love and Respect Everyone!

I do want it to be clear that I’m trying to build an inclusive and loving community.

Personally, I choose to exclusively support authors and creatives who do not use AI to generate any part of their work. As I view them as more valuable to me, and more aligning with the experiance I wish to invest my time, and sometimes money, into. So I do my best to also reccomend other authors to you guys that I believe, to the best of my knowledge, follow that tenant.

Like Camillethespellpire and Eve and MKStephenson and anyone one else you see me review and reccomend on here.

But nobody deserves to be harrased for their personal choices, no matter what they are. Regardless of your feelings on AI, pro or anti or in the middle, remember to be kind and humble. Wrongful accusations can be extremely damaging to reputation. Most importantly, we all bare part of the responcibility to use AI, detectors, and social media in a responcible manner.

Always remember that there is a person on the other side that screen.

In light of that, as I said at the start, the only discussion on AI that will be allowed on this newsletter is in the comments of this particular post. That is STILL NOT a free pass to be a jerk, and I will moderate at my own discression by removing comments.

Anywhere else I will not tolorate harassement, accusations, or even any type of discussion on the subject unless it is related to the concepts of writing and fiction. This includes of myself, or anyone else. Commentors, other authors, etc. Not because I don’t think its relevant or anything, but its just not a topic I’m interested in rehashing here until the horse is so dead even a level 20 Assimar Cleric can’t bring it back.

Closing Thoughts

At the end of the day, AI is an algorithm. Just like merge sort or binary search.

It can be used well, with intent in places where merge sorts and binary searches, and other algorithms are helpful.

But that place is not creative writing or art.

That is where our humanity lies. What we are as people and what makes us the unique beings that we are. It is what should be left for us to pursue and passionately explore once society has gone past bartering scarcity. Human creativity is worth being protected, even if there isn’t a perfect system to do so yet.

How this will unfold in the coming years, I do not know. And at the end of the day, all I can do is keep working to support my hubby and animals, and keep writing and creating art my way in the hopes that it will move someone.

So that’s what I’ll be doing.

If you read this far, thank you all for being here. I hope to see you next time with hopefully a positive update on the status of the WIP.