I think about this a lot because I do research for my writing. I would never want to use AI to summarize or perform my actual research. But I have a research database and I've used AI to write code to perform automatons within my database, like importing and triaging, querying and displaying reports. And I've wondered if that categorically labels me as "using AI for research."
To my mind, AI is made out of code and its does a decent job at writing code (for personal use).
Whether its an art or not, I value a human opinion in editing. I don't want things summarized by AI because I see the language as it was written as information in itself. I think debates at whether AI is or can be good at these things is beside the point for me. Focusing on its shortcomings just gives it an opening. I'm not interested. I wouldn't be very interested in a restaurant where robots did all the cooking and I don't know why I feel that way.
Anyway I don't really have answers.. but I am interested in keeping up with the comments here for perspectives.
I recently published a book of essays via KDP/Amazon that I edited on behalf of a friend who died while we were working on it. (It was years in the making.)
I didn’t use AI for any of the editing but I asked Claude for information on KDP gotchas that were poorly explained on the website. Ditto for MS Word quirks on headers/footers business. Very helpful and would have taken me hours of scouring forums to get past those roadblocks.
Ordinarily I would have done that research myself but I was under deadline to get it all done for the Celebration of Life. So I understand your distinction on using AI for the editing vs the production aspects. Somehow I felt there was a line there, also. Maybe because the editing is my job and wheelhouse?
If we are to believe the author of Shy Girl, she claims the AI got inserted during the editing phase. I think there should be human editors but I am just a reader so I can’t speak to how this work is completed. But the few times I had my writing edited by someone else, it felt like magic. Another person made my little PTA article I was sending to a local newspaper so much better! Cleaner and tighter. I think that should remain a human job. It’s not just grammar. It’s someone reading and thinking about what you wrote. I really don’t want a machine to replace that. And on a practical level, there is a less likely chance of embarrassing AI being inserted into the piece/book.
As for spreadsheets and data analytics, AI isn’t completely trustworthy so the user has to double check it. Otherwise there’s a good chance there will be errors in it.
My personal concern for research and editing only is the random insertion of made up shit. Not that humans can't do that on their own. However, I'm also headed to another archive to spend days going through boxes of paper so I'm not exactly in the thick of this issue.
I don't understand the whole thing. Writers can't plagiarize, obviously, whether AI or anyone
I think about this a lot because I do research for my writing. I would never want to use AI to summarize or perform my actual research. But I have a research database and I've used AI to write code to perform automatons within my database, like importing and triaging, querying and displaying reports. And I've wondered if that categorically labels me as "using AI for research."
To my mind, AI is made out of code and its does a decent job at writing code (for personal use).
Whether its an art or not, I value a human opinion in editing. I don't want things summarized by AI because I see the language as it was written as information in itself. I think debates at whether AI is or can be good at these things is beside the point for me. Focusing on its shortcomings just gives it an opening. I'm not interested. I wouldn't be very interested in a restaurant where robots did all the cooking and I don't know why I feel that way.
Anyway I don't really have answers.. but I am interested in keeping up with the comments here for perspectives.
I recently published a book of essays via KDP/Amazon that I edited on behalf of a friend who died while we were working on it. (It was years in the making.)
I didn’t use AI for any of the editing but I asked Claude for information on KDP gotchas that were poorly explained on the website. Ditto for MS Word quirks on headers/footers business. Very helpful and would have taken me hours of scouring forums to get past those roadblocks.
Ordinarily I would have done that research myself but I was under deadline to get it all done for the Celebration of Life. So I understand your distinction on using AI for the editing vs the production aspects. Somehow I felt there was a line there, also. Maybe because the editing is my job and wheelhouse?
If we are to believe the author of Shy Girl, she claims the AI got inserted during the editing phase. I think there should be human editors but I am just a reader so I can’t speak to how this work is completed. But the few times I had my writing edited by someone else, it felt like magic. Another person made my little PTA article I was sending to a local newspaper so much better! Cleaner and tighter. I think that should remain a human job. It’s not just grammar. It’s someone reading and thinking about what you wrote. I really don’t want a machine to replace that. And on a practical level, there is a less likely chance of embarrassing AI being inserted into the piece/book.
As for spreadsheets and data analytics, AI isn’t completely trustworthy so the user has to double check it. Otherwise there’s a good chance there will be errors in it.
My personal concern for research and editing only is the random insertion of made up shit. Not that humans can't do that on their own. However, I'm also headed to another archive to spend days going through boxes of paper so I'm not exactly in the thick of this issue.