Personally, I'm very worried on how the AI writing tools are more and more used, even by publishers to "proofread" manuscript... Speaking from a French perspective, it's a disaster, because of our strange language, automatic proofreading (Antidote, ProLexis) exists for decades, are very precious and useful tools, but has proved its limits and need of human decision between multiple possibilities. Now, this has vanished, offering books on shelfs with things misspelled, or sentences that are more and more simple, easy to read by a machine, useless and tasteless for humans. But, I confess I am using Mistral more and more, as I used to use Google, because of how any search-engine are now only ads displays or very very very bad ad indexation... I would say that the trouble is the mentality of "it's good enough" that pushes our entrepreneurial world (and let's say capitalistic in the very bad way of it) to use AI generated content to feed AI powered social-networks to still have some kind of visibility with low effort, and then to any other communication support, since "it's good enough" and "meh" is the new "ok"...
The French example is so apt — language with genuine complexity (and French has plenty of it) exposes the limits of these tools immediately, in ways that flatter, simpler prose can hide. Your point about "good enough" is the crux of it: the problem isn't the tool, it's the tolerance.
You're right that the feedback loop you're describing — AI content feeding AI-curated feeds — is a kind of closed circuit that progressively lowers the stakes for everyone.
Appreciate your reading and sharing this perspective from France.
Thanks Lori. I think about this often - how so many people have good stories inside them, but struggle to tell them. It's not quite the same as my two cited examples, but in many ways it's close. And plenty of gifted writers struggle to tell a good story. Where do we go from here?
Personally, I'm very worried on how the AI writing tools are more and more used, even by publishers to "proofread" manuscript... Speaking from a French perspective, it's a disaster, because of our strange language, automatic proofreading (Antidote, ProLexis) exists for decades, are very precious and useful tools, but has proved its limits and need of human decision between multiple possibilities. Now, this has vanished, offering books on shelfs with things misspelled, or sentences that are more and more simple, easy to read by a machine, useless and tasteless for humans. But, I confess I am using Mistral more and more, as I used to use Google, because of how any search-engine are now only ads displays or very very very bad ad indexation... I would say that the trouble is the mentality of "it's good enough" that pushes our entrepreneurial world (and let's say capitalistic in the very bad way of it) to use AI generated content to feed AI powered social-networks to still have some kind of visibility with low effort, and then to any other communication support, since "it's good enough" and "meh" is the new "ok"...
The French example is so apt — language with genuine complexity (and French has plenty of it) exposes the limits of these tools immediately, in ways that flatter, simpler prose can hide. Your point about "good enough" is the crux of it: the problem isn't the tool, it's the tolerance.
You're right that the feedback loop you're describing — AI content feeding AI-curated feeds — is a kind of closed circuit that progressively lowers the stakes for everyone.
Appreciate your reading and sharing this perspective from France.
Thanks for this thoughtful piece, Monica. It's got my mind working, circling the questions, considering the past, and imagining the future.
Thanks Lori. I think about this often - how so many people have good stories inside them, but struggle to tell them. It's not quite the same as my two cited examples, but in many ways it's close. And plenty of gifted writers struggle to tell a good story. Where do we go from here?