AI wants to be me!
It's that time again where I rant reflect on the impact of AI on my life. Those who follow along will know I have no time for such Automated Ignorance. The uninformed may see it as the next big thing; something new and sparkly; the enhancement to their dominance.
Recently I was incandescent (i like a bit of playfully dramatic prose) when someone asked me for help and then assumed I'd used AI.
Today's latest mayhem unfolded as I was being educated!
Act 1 : The introduction
I volunteer as an ambassador to talk about real-world career experiences to kids (I think the current politically correct term is young learners!). The idea is "to bring real-life examples of careers into schools, colleges, and universities". Basically, talking to young people about career ideas.
A few days ago I attended an online session with teachers, and they gave examples of how they are using AI in education. The presenters covered teaching techniques for developing useful prompts, and utilising a variety of AI tools to help in their coursework. The students can get additional marks in their practical grades for using insightful prompts.
This was all new to me. I remember not being allowed to use a calculator at school. And here we are teaching the kids to get AI to do the work.
Act 2 : The Paradox
Today I was reading an article, written by a teacher, discussing the challenges in grading students' work. (Hey, you can at least say I am open-minded and interested enough to read about AI's life cycle).
Said educator was eloquently expressing how he has to run much of the written responses from his students through a website -- to gauge if the text was generated by AI or was original work from the student.
You can imagine how confused I was. On one hand we're teaching the kids how to, and on the other we're checking they don't.
Act 3 : The conclusion
This afternoon I thought it would be fun (clearly I need a life!) to try some of these AI checking websites against my own written material.
I copied and pasted a few random articles from this very website into the AI sausage machine and eagerly anticipated the responses.
And true to AI form, the results varied wildly. Some sites were happy that it was completely human content. Others had the audacity to suggest up to 56% of the text was possibly AI.
The Critique
I could, of course, describe myself as apoplectic at the mere suggestion that AI was involved. However, let's for a moment, pretend I don't like a bit of a dramatic commentary.
I can, hand on heart, say that every word, syllable, and the entire wittering of the site, is 100% my own attempt at stringing together words which make a coherent sentence.
In fact, I have reversed the entire thought of this, and concluded that AI likes my chatty writing style and wants to be me!