Perhaps you've already wondered about whether there's a line between convenience and losing yourself; between creativity and using pre-existing resources; between being efficient and turning over your life to a machine. These are some of the things I've wondered about, and which have gone into my ongoing decision to avoid the use of AI in my own creative work. This is not an absolute. For some people, avoiding all AI as much as possible may make sense. For others, using auto-correct and grammar-checking software may be their best option. Others may have good reasons to use tools like ChatGPT. There is no judgment here; my only goal is to share my own views, opinions and decisions for myself.
If these ideas are new to you, and you’re interested in digging further into them, I would only offer that you might do so gently, with an attitude of “do what you can.” Personally, I don’t see a need to be dogmatic, to have a list of strict do’s and do not’s, to set rigid goals and then feel like I’ve failed if I don’t meet one of them. While I feel pretty strongly that, for example, I don’t want to use ChatGPT to create an assignment for my class, or respond to an email, if a situation arose where this made sense to me, I would do so (and I would simply add a note indicating my use of that tool). Again, these are just my choices.
I’ve observed multiple times that, as a group, people sometimes feel threatened by anything different. I choose not to eat meat, because it’s (mostly) easy for me to do so, and I feel like it aligns with my own philosophy about the planet, about life, and so on. I try not to make others uncomfortable about this, but, especially say 20-30 years ago, people would sometimes become angry if they found out I didn’t eat meat. They would argue with me about my reasons; or they would point out my leather belt, or my shoes made in a country that doesn’t treat workers well. It was as if they took my non-meat-eating as a challenge, a suggestion that I was somehow a better person, and they had to refute that. So I tried not to be obvious about being vegetarian. If someone was serving me a meal and it had meat, I would eat it. I also enjoy a bit of turkey once a year. Is this a contradiction? No, because I don’t claim to never eat meat; I just try to eat less than I used to, and to avoid it when I can.
I think using online tools in place of my own mental effort is similar. I don’t use auto-correct when typing. If a word is spelled wrong, I try to spell it correctly. Usually after a few tries, I get it (and this helps me remember for next time, and may also help me with other words). If I can’t figure out the spelling though, I’ll go to dictionary.com Sometimes that doesn’t work well though, since, really, you need to know (mostly) how to spell a word in order to look it up. So I may just type the misspelled word into a search engine, which will usually reveal the correct spelling. I do so without guilt, remorse, or re-setting of any internal “___ days since ___” counter. The next time I misspell a word, I’ll again try to figure it out myself. On the other hand, if I’m in a huge hurry, if I’m group-editing a document in a live meeting, and I can’t spell a word correctly the first or second try, I may just right-click and take an auto-correct. Again, no guilt there. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with auto-correct, I just choose to generally not use it.
If you’d like to share your thoughts on this, or just say hi, I welcome all comments!