I’ve been updating my website (No Script for Life.com) and noticed a new feature. Or maybe it’s always been there and I’ve only just noticed? It doesn’t matter because the point is the world is changing!
Deepfake, Chat bots and other stuff once the preserve of trashy science fiction novels a century ago, is here. Hello new tech!
Except it isn’t really new tech. It’s been around for ages. But it is new to a lot of people, including me.
You might find this hard to believe but I do not subscribe to New Scientist. There’s no point. I wouldn’t read it. But I do subscribe to various newsletters that tell us what new wonders those clever kiddies in silicone valley have developed next. (Saying I ‘subscribe’ might be a bit of an exaggeration. I look out for them. Well, the ones written by people I trust, anyway) so I’m not left feeling out of date when things start becoming part of daily life. I may not like technology and gadgets that much, but I wouldn’t like to feel left behind.
It feels like those who write the science pages have been saying for simply yonks the chat ‘bots are on their way, so now that they are actually here it’s kind of like ‘woah’. (Do you see how you can tell this has been written by a human? Because I just wrote “kind of like woah”. The bots aren’t nearly as sloppy as that!). But it’s got me wondering, should all my posts and my website now come with a disclaimer that tells the visitor that what they’re reading has been ‘written by a human person’? Would anyone actually care?Should my writing contain human errors to prove it, such as several grammatical errors, typos, bad sense and general gibberish to differentiate my writing from those chatty robots? Actually, no. At the moment the complete absence of grammatical errors, typos, bad sense and general gibberish is what differentiates things written by humans and things written by wacky sci-fi software. But things will soon change.
The truth is those bots, those generators of grammatical errors, typos, bad sense and general gibberish are going to get better. Better at writing than me? To be fair a guinea pig with access to a touchscreen and Office 365 is likely to churn out less nonsense than yours truly, but I would at least like you to know that it’s my gibberish. Those are my typos, and that they alluded the spell checks naturally, through my own incompetence.
In all likelihood these blogs will look the same and you good folks reading, aren’t going to know the difference. The day of the wordsmith is probably over. Blog writers like me are going to look like forgotten relics from a pre-bot era.
Or the reverse will happen.
I’ve never been one to sell my readers short when it comes to mindless optimism, so here’s a little bit. For old time’s sake.
There is a chance, a possibility. It’s a slim chance, very slight possibility. In fact, it’s so comically frail and dangerously underweight I will call this possibility the ‘Maris Hypothesis’.
The Maris Hypothesis states that ChatGPT and all the other crazy writing bots will be so good, so accomplished, so perfect that they bore the absolute pants off of every reseacher, every casual reader and every single human to surf the net, that people like me, blog writers who earned pittiful pennies, or worse nothing at all, for putting out millions and millions of words every single year, will suddenly be in great demand. There will be a slight in-credulousness at first, as all the second generation millenials realize that yes – there really were people who could churn out words at the same incredible rate as a piece of outdated software. And by the nose of the moose, they might even come to prefer us.
I did say it was a thin, slight bit of mindless optimism. But you won’t get that from the bots. They’ll probably give you all that dull old logic instead, with linear causality and stuff that makes sense. I suppose if you’re the kind of person who likes your blogs to be professional, thought-provoking and of sound quality, then you might well be happy with machines writing prose or covering press conferences. But if you want a spark of humanity. To know the ideas and the words you’re reading have come from the mind of a fellow flesh and blood human, then book mark NoScriptForLife.com now, and I’ll stick by you. Even if every other blog writer has packed up their keyboards and gone home, I’ll still be here. Little, crappy me in my pajamas, tapping and typing long into the night. Still here when the lights go out. So don’t leave me alone in the dark. The robots might get me.
DISCLAIMER: Everything written here is by a human
Martin Gregory 6 March 2023
Photo credits: dreamstime.com / istudiotech.in
THE TALL TALES OF ANGLESEY HERMAN by Martin Gregory
Regular visitors to my website will know Anglesey Herman and some of his mercurial adventures. Now they have all been collected together in one amazing volume, with some new brand new tales.
Includes classic escapades involving bizarre phobias, a stomach that howls like a wolf and the time Herman ended up impaled on a swordfish. There are new tales too. Read how Anglesey Herman’s immense fence-building prowess was curtailed, thanks to a viscous rumor about a tortoise. And find out why Herman ended up on remand for criminal damage.
Available to pre-order now (opens another window)
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This new chapter of the Legend, told through prose and poems is the true story of Arthur’s demise, and is far stranger and more frightening than anyone – even Merlin – could possibly have foretold.
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