Academia never able to innovate, strangely. People who criticize AI for its writing ability fail to consider the innovations inherent in Word and Grammarly and spellcheck. What damage did those do to human writing ability? In Word, paragraphs and formatting, in Grammarly grammar is automated, and spell check definitely eradicated the need to learn to spell. Email now writes itself. Text automatically finishes a sentence while typing. As a professional writer myself, I welcome AI's ability to write and do the menial work. What I remain and what AI augments and enhances, is me as Author, as authority over my life. I also exercise critical thinking as instructor to AI, directing and managing its output. AI is media and McLuhan would have welcomed it as a message in itself - that Man and machine are irreversibly linked in the physical world even though the two may be on roads no longer perpendicular or parallel, but converging into a consilience of the power to conquer limitations and overcome challenges and solve pressing problems. Technology and Man are not mutually exclusive: we're extensions of each other, from the day the Sumerians discovered writing on clay tablets and baking it in the sun, to the day the wheel was invented or fire showed up with dreadful fear but arming promise. Media, Man and Machine - we're a bonded force of nature forged from absolute necessity into a new entity, but, happily, to augment human intellect. -sms
Academia never able to innovate, strangely. People who criticize AI for its writing ability fail to consider the innovations inherent in Word and Grammarly and spellcheck. What damage did those do to human writing ability? In Word, paragraphs and formatting, in Grammarly grammar is automated, and spell check definitely eradicated the need to learn to spell. Email now writes itself. Text automatically finishes a sentence while typing. As a professional writer myself, I welcome AI's ability to write and do the menial work. What I remain and what AI augments and enhances, is me as Author, as authority over my life. I also exercise critical thinking as instructor to AI, directing and managing its output. AI is media and McLuhan would have welcomed it as a message in itself - that Man and machine are irreversibly linked in the physical world even though the two may be on roads no longer perpendicular or parallel, but converging into a consilience of the power to conquer limitations and overcome challenges and solve pressing problems. Technology and Man are not mutually exclusive: we're extensions of each other, from the day the Sumerians discovered writing on clay tablets and baking it in the sun, to the day the wheel was invented or fire showed up with dreadful fear but arming promise. Media, Man and Machine - we're a bonded force of nature forged from absolute necessity into a new entity, but, happily, to augment human intellect. -sms