Dear Reader,
I haven't gotten too many responses on my survey yet, but one response that keeps coming through is that you all want to read more of my articles. The only problem is that I haven't written very many articles. I don't actually really like writing articles. And my favorite kinds of articles to write aren't always topics of wide interest (like the one I wrote about preventing preeclampsia.).
That all being said, I'm taking a stab at writing another article today, with the topic once again being artificial intelligence. I am only growing more alarmed about the topic, and I also received some criticism about my personal use of it (more on that later), so I want to tackle it again.
One of the best articles I have read on this topic is by Ryan Stoltzfus, "Ask Your Church People, Not AI." You can read it here. I won't be repeating Ryan's thoughts, because he's said it better than I could. Rather, I'm adding some more of my own on a slightly different topic. Today my focus is on AI summaries, a huge way to get people to stop reading and stop thinking. I'm not a conspiratorialist (at least I try not to be), but do you know where that's headed?
The Summarization Culture
I'm in a forum for Etsy sellers, and someone wrote in a question asking for some advice. Another person responded. It wasn't a super long response, but it was a few paragraphs. It was very well written and helpful.
The original poster replied, "That's too long to read." I read it three times. Was I understanding correctly that she couldn't read three paragraphs that was an answer to a question she asked?!
At this point the community owner stepped in in a very no-nonsense way, answering that if she was going to get anywhere in life, she was going to have to be willing to read. And willing to do hard work.
I was left scratching my head. People who have such a short attention span that they can't read three paragraphs? No problem, you can go ask ChatGPT for a summary, but you'll be missing out on so much.
I recently noticed in Gmail that it started adding AI summaries to the top of my emails. I sent some pictures of my children to some family members. The next morning at the top of the email, a summary told me something like this (names changed): "Janet, Sarah, and Susie thanked Abigail for the cute pictures of her children. Susie added that she hopes to see Abigail soon." I blinked. Excuse me? I want to read Janet, Sarah, and Susie's emails myself! It actually took me a while to figure out how to turn off this feature without disabling my inbox tabs, but eventually I did it. Now I don't have AI reading my emails and forming summaries of them - something I never asked it to do and never want it to do!
My husband was listening to a sermon on a church website and it included an AI summary with the disclaimer that it was created by AI and may not be 100% accurate. How about we ask one of the dozens of young ladies who are taking notes if we need a summary for the sermon? Will taking notes even be a thing by the time my daughter is old enough to do so? If I just read the AI summary, am I actually getting any inspiration? One friend of mine commented on the use of AI for sermon preparation: "That's artificial spirituality!" Why are we going to settle for that? AI uses the web to pull its answers, and I think we all agree that there is much evil on the web. (See Ryan's article about why chatbots recommend divorce.) I don't view the Internet as a tool or as a necessary evil, like we say to console ourselves; but rather as an influence on my life. It is not as benign as a tool like a hammer or a bread machine. It's just not. And AI is making it a thousand times worse.
You Can't Believe Everything You See
Even if you skip the AI summaries, opting to click on someone's blog, how can you be sure that AI didn't write the blog? Can you be sure of anything you read online these days, or see online? I am amazed by how few people can recognize AI-created images and videos. I don't watch many videos, but I had watched some pregnancy-related ones, and one day I noticed a video in my feed that made me stop in my tracks. No way was it real. It showed a mom in a hospital bed with 5 babies laying out in a neat row, and a toddler watching. Quintuplets that look like full-term babies and don't have any breathing tubes? That's got to be fake. I looked at the creator of the video and saw it was called something like "AI Babies." I decided to do a little research surrounding the video and watched it. In the 5 or 10 second video, the mom proceeds to stab the baby closest to her three times in the chest, saying, "This is Lily, this is Noah, and this is Emma." (I can't remember the exact names.) One baby with three names and four babies with no names, that's interesting.
Where my real research was was the comments section. What did people think about this video? I was shocked. Comment after comment: "What cute babies, congratulations." "Five, you'll have your hands full!" "Aww, she'll be such a sweet big sister." "Did I miss the last two names?" I could not believe how many people thought it was a legit video. Yes, even though the mom stabbed her babies with her index finger. Even though she said three names for five babies. Even though the five babies looked like full-term newborns and were lying in a neat row down the bed. And the biggest one, even though the channel had the word "AI" right in it! Of course, there were a few people responding to the comments, "This is AI" for comment after comment until they tired of it. But overall, people were missing the memo. Imagine if the video had been expanded to some graphic story, and someone watched it and said, "Hey, there's this lady that just had quintuplets in the car on the way to the hospital!" You can't believe everything you read or see!!
On Picture Generation...
Anyway, enough of my rant. I want to wrap this up with a note about some feedback on my last AI article. While most people were very appreciative and positive, I received some criticism because of my inconsistent stand in using AI to generate images but not to write. The first thing I'm going to say is that I am not telling anyone else what standards they should have, and if you don't want to use it to create images, I respect you.
However, there is no way to get out of using AI at all unless we throw our devices into the snowbank. The AI summaries pop up at the top of every search page. Gmail inserts them into your emails without asking. Companies use them on their websites to chat with customers that have questions. Which of these uses are okay? Somewhere we have to draw our lines, and I may draw mine at different places than you do.
While I think it's fine to generate images using AI, I don't create any image I could. I could upload my picture and ask it to turn me into a Lego man, and I don't think that's a good idea. I could create images making it look like I took a trip to the Bahamas, but that's pointless and possibly deceptive if I show it to my friends. Using picture generation for deceitful or goofy or other pointless purposes is not okay with me.
Hopefully that clears some things up for some of you. And just so you know, I am planning to use real, human artists for some book projects in the future as well. If you have further thoughts, please reply. I'd love to hear from you!
My final thought: read books. Real, paper books written by real people. Immerse yourself in the Bible and other quality literature, or you'll soon find yourself summarizing life instead of taking it all in. If you need some reading material, check out the Brennan Family Series, wholesome stories of family life. No AI.
Please take the survey!
Oh, and if you haven't taken my email survey yet, please do. Only 2 or 3% of my list has taken it which means I don't have a very broad idea of what you'd like yet. 😊 Don't forget that it will give you a free set of my Bible verse cards when you're done!
