This post continues an earlier reflection (AI is writing content for AI to read) on the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the human experience. Because of where I sit professionally, most conversations I’ve been in surrounding AI over the past few months have been about its impact on research, teaching, and learning. This has included comparisons of tools for searching scholarly databases, debates about which fundamental skills students really need to be successful in a given discipline, policies to prevent (or occasionally allow) student use of specific AI tools, and discussions of how AI can make grading more efficient. While some seem excited by the proliferation of tools that can potentially increase one’s productivity and impact, others seem overwhelmed by the sheer number of possibilities and the speed at which they are being released.
What I’ve found myself reflecting on in recent days is how the increasing ubiquity of AI-produced content will inevitably change the “end user” experience. Most of us have already experienced this in one way or another. Consider interacting with a company’s help line, either online or by phone. How do your experiences differ when you perceive the being on the other end to be computer-generated compared to interacting with a “real, live” human? What happens when you can no longer tell the difference between the bot and the human? For concrete tasks (e.g., your internet is having problems, you need a refund on a purchase), it may not matter much if your problem gets fixed.
But what about creative content? How important is it when you read/listen/watch anything to believe that humans played a crucial part in bringing it into being? Isn’t part of art that communication between the creator and the consumer? To know that someone else saw the world in a particular way and was able–through writing, painting, singing–to bring that perspective to you?
This seems especially relevant in a blog post where the tool I’m using to create it offers to generate the content itself. In the spirit of full disclosure, aside from allowing Word to correct some sloppy spelling and looking up synonyms for “create,” this post was written and edited only by me. I didn’t have the blog editor generate AI content for it.
My question, though, is whether it changes your reading experience to know this. Are you more inclined to enjoy/trust/relate to this post knowing I (not AI) wrote it? If you believed it was AI-generated (largely or entirely) based on a few prompts I fed it, do you “read” (and experience) it differently?
Screen shot of Divi AI generator