Tag Archives: ai

Editing/writing life, Technology

Editorial Maverick: Spotting AI

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I do some technical editing, a service I do not vocally market here for various reasons. In the last couple of years, I’ve worked over a lot of AI-generated writing. As you might imagine, it’s the topic au courant in editors’ groups. Small wonder, when it touches much of what we do.

For some readers, the question is more basic: How do I even know whether or not it’s AI? (All right. Others are asking why they should even care, but they probably did not read past the title of a blog post covering what they don’t care about. Thus, they probably are not the audience here.)

AI is a clever machine with its uses, but like the so-called smartphone, it’s not that smart. There is a certain abstract connectivity among concepts known to humanity, an unconscious reality checking. This is absent with AI, allowing it to wend its way into strange areas with oddly irrelevant paragraphs or concepts. If the writing suddenly seems to have wandered into weirdness, kind of like when I tell a story for which only I can see the relevance, and thus baffle my listener.

There is a sort of fear-and-cowering around the em dash–in order to simulate it here, I must use two hyphens, like this–on the thinking that if you use a single one, everyone will think you wrote it with AI. Very common for those coming out of college, which I suspect holds the trenches of this long battle between plagiarism/cheating and original writing that demonstrates material learned. I have seen it with younger consultants’ tech writing and in discussions, as if Prof. Fussbudget might catch them out even in the private sector. I do not think you should cower over em dashes because if you use them sparingly, they’re a great tool. If you use them several times per page, they’re bad writing. And yes, that can also be an AI tell. AI won’t say “open you’re book to page x,” but it doesn’t know how to camouflage itself very well.

One hallmark I have seen of AI composition is prose too technically perfect and very sterile for the most part, lacking any sense of the person behind it (of course, there was none). It does use passive voice when it should not. Now and then the phrases are in the wrong order, because that’s problematic for AI to reality check. Our language is so difficult to master that it can/does trip up AI.

There are AI checking tools, but the consensus is they have a high error rate. My own checking tool is more basic, though it took six decades to acquire: Common sense paired with a long grounding in the language, associated with some critical thinking. I know that certain sources are very likely to use AI. If I think the author is under 30, to be honest, I begin with that assumption and seek to disprove it; I am seeing too many young workforce entrants who obviously never learned to think and express. (I do not fault them. This is the world we bequeathed them.) If the text comes from a corporation, I assume it’s AI but I don’t care because they always wrote that way before. If it’s marketing copy, same: likely AI, but I don’t care. I’m the one always trying to avoid letting my eyes apprehend marketing copy, because their objective is to imprint upon my brain and that’s not their province.

So first comes the question: Do I care enough to analyze it? Usually the answer is no, because I expected no better. If I do care, then I look for writing that is too technically perfect for the modern world. There’s a gas station near me with a big proud sign about their status as an eco-gas station, with text including the word ‘compatability.’ Yes. It got all the way through whatever marketing department without someone even spellchecking it; it’s been hanging there five years or more.

AI would not have written that. I never thought bad English would be a helpful tell, but it can be. Some years back, a new cheap cheep cheap grocery store opened up not far from me, and the marquee at opening said: YOUR TO GOOD LOOKING TO SHOP ANYWHERE ELSE. (How will I boycott you? Let me count the ways.) But say this for that lop-eared dumbness: It was fully original.

In a society of decreasing literacy, quality original composition English is not so common. Sterile quality composition sparks fundamental suspicion. And while I’m looking for the small errors that suggest I can take the thoughts seriously, I’m also reality checking. I’m waiting for the moments where AI seems to stand for Alzheimer’s Intelligence.

There’s a certain semi-incel movement among men who can’t quite adapt to what women want in a male partner, one that if it had its way would simply have a fembot. It (that’s not “she”; a she is a living female being) would be a pliant servant lacking mood swings, desires to buy new accessories, or stray body hair. It would prepare foods, provide sex, and refrain from challenging featherbrained perceptions. It would never fart, never want to repaint the living room. It would have stereotypically perfect looks that would never age. Some would even want it to appear as an age that would, in a living human, make sexual contact with them a felony. But it’s very difficult to imagine that a fembot would not get confused, or might bring the wrong thing, or be unable to throw that deadbolt because it’s touchy and has to be done in a certain way. What would not confuse you for a second could baffle this imaginary fembot. It could not reality check, any more than it could say “Hey, fuckhead, go mow the lawn.”

AI reminds me of a fembot. It’s a tool for those too lazy to write their own words, or those too busy to produce enough words…or those who never learned to begin with. You don’t have to be nice to it when you’re crabby. But at some point I think we will see a majority of the young workforce simply quit if they are told they cannot let AI write for them. They’ll have to. They’ll never have learned to write their own words. Take away the bot, and they’re done for.

That said, there’s opportunity there for my kind. I wonder what percentage of today’s self-published novels are written mostly with AI? I have good reason to believe it’s true of a great deal of business writing. It does carry a stigma, and it takes an authentic editor to de-AI writing. If that matters to people, they might end up engaging one of us to make it sound like the au did actual work.

I wonder.

Speaking of generational dumbdown and random segues, here’s one. This isn’t AI-trained kids; this is grown educated adults who have worked in intelligence, science, government, and the military. Some have doctorates.

When was the collective decision made that ‘nucular’ was an acceptable articulation for ‘nuclear’?

I do remember when a certain government executive, one dumber than most, started saying it that way. My theory is that people collectively made the wrong decision there.

Right reaction: “You goddamned cretin, you pollute the air with every ass-ignorant thing you blurt. Not only no but holy hell no.”

Wrong reaction: “Oh. Stupid isn’t so bad. Let’s embrace stupid!”

As usual throughout our history, we had the wrong reaction. Unfortunately, this one is word herpes. There’s no way to eradicate it. Free speech laws will not, for example, make it legal to junkpunch anyone pronouncing it ignorantly.

Within one more generation, no one will ever know it was ever considered a mark of ignorance.

Editing/writing life, Social comment, Technology

The state of the AI from an editor’s perspective

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As a believer in labeling one’s biases and then letting rip, let us begin with mine:

I despise AI. There is nothing I like about it. I don’t like the data centers, I don’t like the plutocracy behind them, and I don’t like the pliant municipalities who just bend over and drop trou for plutocracy. Not even at bayonet point could you get me to use AI to write my words for me. I take delight in watching it display the mindless trends that are its tells, sneering at its never-life.

I’m a snob. I would rather read the tortured constructions and bad spelling of the world’s worst real writer than technically correct AI.

In the many cases in which AI use is simply laziness, what my mind says is: It was so much easier than using your actual mind, wasn’t it?Today, Konrad Kujau wouldn’t have to author a phony Hitler memoir ms; he’d just feed the question to an AI and out would come the Dolfiness.

AI is here to stay, unless (as I hope) the proliferation of AI-genned content becomes recursive in that its outputs get stupider and stupider as it is increasingly its own unvetted (except by itself!) source material. It already generates fictitious references. I do not see evidence that it employs discernment on its sourcing. I think if enough QAnuts published enough wackiness, and at least made some effort at originality while not labeling themselves openly, AI would refer to them as if they were Stephen Hawking, or E.F. Hutton (ask your grandparents).

With those understandings, let’s talk about where this phenomenon is. AI goes beyond what I’m describing, of course; it can do at least something that looks like editing. In time it will probably be capable of more, unless it worsens its trend of eating its own children.

It is not that new, as far as I can see; it’s just more interactive. In essence, it’s the modern evolution of Altavista (ask your parents) or Google. What is a search engine algorithm but a form of AI? Is a word processor’s grammar check and spell check not some form of AI? Some games pit the player against relatively decent AI, which computer game designers have been trying to improve for decades. In the old Steel Panthers days, we’d sometimes delegate a trial setup to computer control just to get its sense of the position. (Andy Gailey will never see this, but those words began as his, and so was the idea. And unlike ChatGPT, he’s a person.) What’s new is that one can get it to do the work of writers and editors, at least in some ways. It takes a pretty sophisticated reader to tell it apart, which eliminates the vast majority of the modern US public.

My theory about the impact on my profession is that it will have the greatest impact on the people who don’t hire someone like me, and the people that they do hire. Consider: One is a stereotypically lazy ‘nap-my-way-through-college’ student who takes one look at the concepts of research and composition and replies: “Oh hell no. That’s actual work. I’d rather get AI to do it for me, then I’ll go through and edit out some of it so the prof can’t tell.” After muddling though, the alumnus* learned almost nothing about writing. Except, perhaps, that which would be learned by reading a few syntactically correct history papers (which isn’t enough; try reading voraciously from ages 3 to 22 if you want it by osmosis and Kodak childhood memory). Now he’s stuck. Take away his AI and his literacy is spavined.

*I think women are less prone to let a dumb computer program supply their words, probably because on balance the evidence indicates they’re slightly brighter than we are, and because I believe they are less interested in letting a computer talk over them than they are even in letting men talk over them.

So Slacker Alum, living with his parents because getting jobs is hard and might even require him to leave the house, has always had some ideas for novels. He starts having AI write the story for him, and in the process he at least becomes better at using AI. His AI novel is no worse garbage than a fair percentage of the self-published material out there, and not a little of the trad-pubbed. Does he hire an editor? Not a real one; that would take money. If he had money, he wouldn’t be doing any of this. He either hires one of the self-anointed Starving English BA Editors who thinks s/he’s qualified, or he accepts the AI editing and congratulates himself on creating moneymaking content while maintaining his slacker image. Either way, he was never going to hire me. He’s not my market and I’m not his. The Starving English BA Editors are already doing it for almost nothing because of $250K in student loans, which means they must have the money. Their sad revenue streams are likely to take hits.

I’m not mocking the plight of today’s 20something, attempting to navigate a world in which their elders ate up the whole buffet. (I’ve been cussing those elders for it since our twenties during the Reagan administration. They ignored me. Still do.) I’m only mocking the lazy ones with low to no standards or pride, or who assert for themselves unreasonable qualifications. I am making the point that for those who want to loaf their way by, and who feel better about doing that and then playing Galaxy of Mortal Annihilationcraft: Total & Utter Eternal Damnation & Destruction all day, AI is not merely the crutch. It is more the self-driving vehicle.

Would I use AI to help me edit material people paid me to work on? You can guess that answer. I doubt that anyone who does would ever admit it, so you can believe me or not. Those who know me well have no trouble taking it at face value. But in case anyone needs to hear it, I would sooner make homebrew napalm and drop flaming globs of it on my body.

Would I reject working on a novel partly or wholly written by AI? It’s unlikely I will ever see one, because those who don’t want to write (but want the appearance of having done so) are unlikely to want to spend money. A part of me can see that. To them, what the AI wrote is grammatically okay, and isn’t that the only use for a damn editor anyway? I’m not going to pierce that perception and won’t try. It’s unlikely they understand the breadth of my work, but that’s okay; in most cases I think they’d be shocked to hear that it costs more than $300 to “put an edit on it.” (That could be one of the most unpalatable and ignorant turns of phrase I ever encounter. Take it from me: Anyone using it knows little about actual editing.) Thus, I’m not their target vendor and I’m not that vendor’s competition. You all have fun.

Is there a place for AI in the work of writers I respect? That depends on what they are writing about. In non-fiction, such as (stop laughing) business reporting, I can see at least reasons to think of letting it handle a first draft. I think this because business reporting is not a passion project, and the live workforce every year is demanded to do more–with less people, in less time, for less compensation. A first draft can also be edited, reviewed, and its odder fancies corrected by someone who could have written that were they given the time to do so. There is a canyon separating those who can’t actually do it themselves in a competent way, and those who could but for life circumstances (deadlines, kids, delusional boss) eroding their time and mindshare. Those who could have done it themselves can certainly spot and correct flawed material. I get it.

As for ‘lancers, the market that wants to write its own words and hire a real editor will continue to do so, because it values the journey and the education at least as much as it does the  outcome. Those are my market. Them I can help. They are why I keep doing this.

Am I concerned about AI? I wouldn’t need to be, except for the climate that made it acceptable. I am much more concerned about the decline of literacy, attention spans, and critical thinking in that climate than I am about AI itself.

After all, I obviously didn’t mind it when it was trying to give me stress trying not to get my experienced Panther crews blown to hell in Steel Panthers by US P-47Ds firing 5″ rockets, or when it was helping me look up why my stupid fitness watch wouldn’t pair. I only started taking a leak on it when it started moneylending in my temple. And when that came, it was time to get to work on scourging.

Editing/writing life, Social comment, Technology

Editorial Maverick: Can it about the em dash and AI, please—right now

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I had heard about this, but did not imagine I would encounter it from a highly literate, educated person. How naïf I can be.

All right. Time to stand our ground.

The word on the editorial street is that some people have decided the em dash* (the longest dash we use; —) is associated with AI writing. It seems some fairly non-thinking people have darted from  basic notice of that computer-generated habit to: “OMG never use an em dash, or they’ll think you used AI.”

Poppycock, horseshit, baloney, and a load of crap. Furthermore, the stance of a writer showing minimal confidence in their craft.

Details:

  1. While I will go to war with cheerful ruthlessness to eradicate overuse of the em dash, it’s a valid and useful part of the language. I will not stand still while people throw it away because they heard that someone who doesn’t know much about writing might think negative things about their writing because they saw an em dash. No. Stand up and fight. You are ceding this ground to AI, which is not a person and has no rights.
  2. Who so greatly cares about fairly slow people’s evaluations of their writing that they will trash a helpful device just in case the slow people might think a naughty thought about them? Don’t spend so much time caring what knee-jerk critics have to say. Spend more time caring how well you are communicating with your chosen audience. (Although I guess that if your audience is dumb, maybe you better abjure the symbol so you don’t act upon them like the doctor’s little rubber hammer.)
  3. AI will evolve, improve. Think its makers haven’t heard about the em dash hyperdependence tell? Perhaps you underestimate them. It won’t be this way for long. While they are busy trying to make AI writing less stupid—and we can expect them to succeed by degrees—they’ll also start throttling back the tells. The em dash will be among them. Em dashes were not invented by AI; they were here long before the computer.
  4. If you write better than AI, it follows that people will realize you wrote it yourself and have some modest chops.

This sort of little ad hoc rule is no more than another form of conformity. Not a fan. All my life I have watched herds of non-thinking people let the world dictate to them the obligatory current views. The thinking people didn’t ask anyone’s permission to have viewpoints, nor did they ask for approval except perhaps from their educational and intellectual peers. I have seen fad after fad, trend after trend, come and go and fade into memory. All represented voluntary conformity for the sake of conformity, which is perhaps the filthiest language I have used in a month.

Nonconformism neen’t be stupid. Conform because a conforming act makes independent sense? Certainly. Conform because power has a weapon pointed at you? Very well; they can order you to obey but they can’t have your soul. Conform because you need to keep a job? Fine; work isn’t a place to be yourself, and one is a fool or a saint to think so. But conform for the sake of wanting to be like others, to receive gang approval, strokes from bullies who would be gutless without someone to tell them what they think? Give away your soul for the sake of a fickle approbation? Throw away a useful piece of punctuation for fear of what others might think?

Not sure whether I react more with contempt or pity.

Now let’s edit/writing coach like we mean it. Em dashes are a useful part of the language. Used in excess, they are bad writing, a lazy crutch to avoid recasts. The same is true of ellipses, italicized emphasis, adverbs, passive voice and other deprecated-but-not-rejected options that too easily become bad habits. Be judicious, save the tool for when it pays its way, and you are in control of your writing. Be lazy—use the tool because it’s so much easier than quality writing—and you’ll hear about it the first time you show your work to a competent editor.

If you want to stress over something related to AI, try focusing the energy on being a better writer than an algorithm. That’s more productive than placating people who don’t write as well as does an algorithm.

 

*Why the hell are we calling it that? The em dash is so called for typesetting reasons that no longer bear resemblance to the way contemporary printing occurs. It’s supposed to be the width of an m; the en dash an n, and the hyphen: —, –, -.