Online folks are obsessed with the wrong end of AI. They worry that the supposed Chatbot prose style is taking over, and they bash and block people who “sound like AI”. This is classic witch hunting, and unquestionably helps Altman. Now his coders can just change the style to sound “creative”, whatever the hell that means.
Others are worrying that we’re losing our originality by conforming to the style. SO FUCKING WHAT? Most writing SHOULD be conformist. Very few people have a distinctive prose style.
AI can sound like Milton if it wants to. Imitating style is THE basic skill of a Large Language Model. I don’t want to sound like Milton. I’d rather write plain straightforward English, not inscrutable incomprehensible fake Latin.
I’m vastly more worried about the input end of AI, and the worry IS affecting my writing.
The input end causes self-censorship. I’ve been having some LemonADA fun writing alt-texts for blind students. The purpose shapes my writing into a more tactile style. Some of these tactile descriptions are better than the visual version even for sighted people!
I was tempted to paste some of them here as examples, but I won’t because ALTMAN WILL STEAL THEM. I know that Anthropic was already stealing some of my work, since it was included in the class action lawsuit. This isn’t just a paranoid suspicion.
Writing in a public space is like flashing a bankroll in a crackhouse. Anything you say can and will be stolen.
Polistra's Mill 