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Dear readers.
This is the first time I’ve ever addressed you, dear readers, as “dear readers”. I know this because I did a search of all my previous columns. Never, ever have I said it.
Dear readers? Really? Stab a pencil in my ear, pour acid on my keyboard. Who the hell am I now? Jane Austen lite?
However, it won’t be the last time when Artificial Intelligence comes for my job, which it already has. And then you will indeed be “dear readers”.
Robotic me will also say cheery things like “greetings, my fellow adventurers in the realm of ridiculousness!” and “buckle up and prepare for a laughter-inducing expedition!”
You’ve probably guessed what I’m going to say next, even with your limited, non-computer-generated human comprehension. Yes, I AI-ed myself. I went onto ChatGPT – the thing everyone’s going mental about – and asked it to write a column in the style of Jennie Ridyard.
Frankly, I’m offended. But also, I’m relieved. It was rubbish. This wasn’t simply an exercise in ego though, but in survival. A woman I do copywriting work for admitted she’d tried someone else, cheaper, who very quickly sent her a heap of generic gumph.
On questioning it she discovered it was AI-generated, with a few tweaks. According to a recent survey, over a fifth of high school kids in Ireland admitted they had already used AI to write essays, particularly in history, English, and languages, and to generate code for computer classes. Clever kids.
They know regurgitating Wikipedia will always be caught thanks to plagiarism technology, but AI? You can claim it as your own boring, banal work, and get a B.
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AI is going to get better too. It already is, daily, even though all it’s actually doing is scraping the internet for existing human-created content; even though my conversation with ChatGPT possibly has me on an international police watch list, because I told it I have no friends and want to kill Jennie Ridyard.
Maybe one day I’ll read something genius by AI purportedly written by me, and pat myself on the back.
Meanwhile, dear readers (vomit), I’ll give AI the last word: “So, my fellow adventurers, let us revel in the absurdity of progress and relish the laughter it brings.”
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