To best use AI chatbots like ChatGPT in your screen- or fiction writing, start with these rules.
Know what AI is not: As it stands today, artificial intelligence is neither artificial nor intelligent.
It’s not “artificial" because it is not really a synthetic imitation of something natural, like vanillin is a laboratory analog of vanilla. It’s good marketing to imply that AI bots like ChatGPT “think” in some new way, but they do not.
Therefore, AI is not “intelligent.”
Knowing what a tool isn’t is a great help in deciding when to use it. Got a nail to drive? Don’t use a screwdriver, because it’s not a hammer.
Know what AI is: Text-based AI bots like ChatGPT, Google Bard and the “AI juice” that every third software company is squeezing into its apps nowadays are like super-powered spell-checkers.
A spell-checker matches your attempt at spelling a word against a database of words deemed to be spelled correctly. When it finds a discrepancy, it instantaneously points it out, and, if you give it permission, fixes your typing to correpond with the database. AI bots analyze your query and match it against a database of everything that everyone has ever said insofar as it knows. That means the contents of the Internet, up until about two or three years ago. It treats all the feces human beings have flung online like angry chimps as a kind of canonical dictionary. This is the chatbots “Large Language Model.” It then predicts the next most likely word that would follow your query, and the word after that, and so on. It’s all math. Suddenly doesn’t sound so goshdarn brilliant, does it?
As with so much other magic that computer technology can pull off, it’s not so much the quality of the work, as the incomprehensible speed of that work, producing an amazing quantity of results in almost no time at all. Just like a magic trick… it’s a trick. That doesn’t mean it isn’t useful — and potentially abuseful. (I just made up that word, so ChatBPT doesn’t know it yet.)
Know what AI can do: Imagine the Flash running through every library in the world built from, say, 1970 on, looking up every word you type and every word that’s ever come after that word, then putting together a cogent-sounding summary of that collective thinking, written under certain secret rules designed to make the summary sound natural, and to avoid certain verboten topics and diction. And, because he’s Flash, doing it all in sometime between .001 and 15 seconds. That’s a pretty useful executive assistant to have around, hey? Thinking about AI in this way may help you resolve which jobs it’s best suited for.
Summarizing a block of text in many fewer words is a perfect job for AI.
Brainstorming on a topic — collecting a bunch of related concepts and combining them in various ways without regard to quality of ideas — is ready-made for AI.
The very human-seeming job of being a sounding board for whether ideas make sense in some ineffable way, is surprisingly appropriate for these bots.
Finally, quickly drafting a piece of writing that congently makes specified points, describes something in vivid detail, and does it all in a way that is perfectly acceptable if banally generic, is right up AI’s alley.
Know what AI can’t do: At this stage, artificial intelligence can’t be relied upon to be factually accurate. Far from it.
Why? The Large Language Model is based, not on a curated concordance of the best and most verifiable knowledge of humankind, but on the planetary toilet of id-driven concepts that comprises the bulk of our beloved Internet. (Hey, I’m on the bowl right now!)
Would you ask 100 random people off the street what you ought to do about that spot on your lung, then take their advice without question? Hey, why not? Just as you would (or should) doublecheck anything you find on Wikipedia, you should trust-but-verify the results of your AI query. Even more so, since these bots “like” to lie as much as people on the Internet do.
AI also is incapable of being truly original. Its speciality is recombining that which has already been said into that which has not exactly ever been said, based on original work often used without the author’s permission. (But wait… doesn’t that sound a lot like what people do all the time?) I might also argue that this, in fact, is a working definition of originality. But that starts to get deep in a way that doesn’t belong in a listicle.
I’d offer that AI is not yet at the point where it can be truly funny. There’s something uniquely human about comedy (so far) that machine learning (the more proper label for AI) doesn’t seem to get. Again, yet.
Know which AI product to pick:
OpenAI’s CHATGPT is currently the ubitquitous “Kleenex” of AI bots, probably because it’s made itself freely available. But Google, with its BARD, Microsoft, with its BING, and many, many other companies are quickly catching up. Each product has been tooled to sound and feel a bit different, resulting in distinct “personalities” and hazards. You need to experiment for the best personal fit.
From a screenwriting perspective, I find ChatGPT to be a great brainstorming partner and, to a lesser extent, a quick way to start research on on a factual query that’s subtle or complicated. Asking Google or DuckDuck Go for a list of notetaking apps that store files locally, do not use proprietary formats, allow file attachments and have a freeium pricing model is awkward and time-consuming at best. Querying an AI bot for this is a relative snap. But you must be prepared for outright falsehoods. The preceding is based on a true story.
As a supplemental service, try SUDOWRITE, a front end for ChatGPT that’s tooled specifically for fiction writers. Sudowrite has virtual buttons to, among other things, add elaborate description, brainstorm ideas, make writing more terse, imitate someone else’s style, or, in fact, attempt to improve your writing along any lines you suggest. Its overly-ambitious toolset means the results are often disappointing. But if you use its work as a springboard for your own, vastly superior wetware, it can be worth the effort. And that’s the same advice I would offer for this entire category of trendy high-tech tool.
More to come!
