It  is my firm belief that nei­ther the hype-artists nor the doom­say­ers in the explod­ing “arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence” mar­ket are to be tak­en at face val­ue. The two parts of the con­cept are con­tra­dic­tions in terms, for starters. Nonethe­less, I am assured by the dai­ly arrival of unso­licit­ed adver­tise­ments in my com­put­er that AI could write this blog.

How that jives with French philoso­pher Rene Descartes’ famous sum­ma­tion of human­i­ty Cog­i­to, ergo sum, “I think, there­for I am”, issued in 1637 and still extant, isn’t addressed in the sales pitches.
In search of an answer, I asked Google: “Can AI write blog posts?”
This was the reply: “AI tools exist today that can write full sen­tences and para­graphs. Depend­ing on the blog top­ic, these tools can actu­al­ly write most of a sim­ple blog post. This is extreme­ly use­ful. Using AI, you can cut down the time you spend on basic con­tent creation.”
Since I quite enjoy the time I spend on con­tent cre­ation, the next obvi­ous ques­tion is: “Can AI get me beyond ‘basic’ and inter­est readers?”
I have found no rea­sons to think so.
The Cam­bridge Advance Learn­er’s Dic­tio­nary, 2006 defines intel­li­gence as: “The abil­i­ty to learn, under­stand and make judg­ments or have opin­ions that are based on reason.”
One web­site has more than 70 vari­a­tions of that. None of them suc­cinct­ly sum up the sup­pos­ed­ly intel­li­gent half of AI.
As for arti­fi­cial — AI can­not feel empa­thy, sym­pa­thy, anger, joy, admi­ra­tion, dis­dain, inspi­ra­tion, exas­per­a­tion, curios­i­ty, or any of the oth­er human emo­tions that go into cre­ative writ­ing, or thought.
Nonethe­less, one of the many web­sites ded­i­cat­ed to AI claimed: “In the future, a good per­cent­age of the arti­cles post­ed online will be assist­ed by arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) and machine learn­ing in some way.”
That’s all fine, except:  “AI relies on exist­ing web con­tent and data to devel­op word­ing”, which  expos­es the user to spu­ri­ous  con­tent, and worst of all, the crime of pla­gia­rism.

                   ‘CAN’T BUY ME LOVE’

And all that aside, where’s any sense of accom­plish­ment in con­ceiv­ing and fin­ish­ing a blog  if AI ‘writes’ it?
Where’s the learn­ing process and devel­op­ment of style that re-writ­ing and edit­ing your work spurs?
Quite often my week­ly perch rumi­na­tions start out as one thing and end up anoth­er. I make no claim to lit­er­ary great­ness, I’m just enjoy­ing myself, and hop­ing the same goes for the reader.
But I don’t sit at my key­board and won­der, as AI by its process alone does: “How can I please everybody?”
Some­times it’s more “I won­der who’ll be out­raged by this one?”
On occa­sion I can make a good guess at who I might upset, and pro­ceed with glee. Bet AI can’t give u that feeling.

                  A WASTE BY ANY OTHER NAME

The esteemed Amer­i­can psy­chol­o­gist Robert Stern­berg summed up AI in one neat sen­tence: “The world sup­ports a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar indus­try of intel­li­gence and abil­i­ty research, but it devotes vir­tu­al­ly noth­ing to deter­mine why this intel­li­gence is squan­dered in amaz­ing, breath­tak­ing acts of stu­pid­i­ty.”
One of those is the grow­ing use of AI by stu­dents to cheat.
Edu­ca­tors are increas­ing­ly con­cerned that AI tools will mean “stu­dents will not have to write their own essays, mak­ing them func­tion­al­ly use­less as an assess­ment tool.”
Anoth­er fret is that “With a lit­tle bit of prac­tice, a stu­dent can use AI to write his or her paper in a frac­tion of the time that it would nor­mal­ly take to write an essay.”

                WHY NOT USE WHAT’S AVAILABLE?

It won’t be long before a mini-indus­try of prod­ucts and pro­grammes to detect and counter cheat­ing will be flood­ing Inbox­es with adver­tise­ments. But that will still be anoth­er form of AI.
A solu­tion more in keep­ing with Descartes would be to teach stu­dents a sim­ple les­son: if you pass an exam by cheat­ing, you have learned noth­ing.  You’ve wast­ed your time and that of teach­ers who’ve ded­i­cat­ed their time, knowl­edge  and ener­gy to enlight­en and inform you, to spark your curios­i­ty, not just for your ben­e­fit, but for every­one with whom you come into con­tact for the rest of your life.
Cheat­ing by using AI may seem like a lit­tle thing, a fib, a ver­sion of “every­one does it”.
But if you’re will­ing to cheat on some­thing so fun­da­men­tal to your own future, why should any­one ever believe any­thing you say or do is com­plete­ly hon­est and honourable?
Like it or loathe it, AI is now an inte­gral, and metas­ta­sis­ing, part of our lives.
I sug­gest we approach and embrace it by comb­ing Stern­berg: “The essence of intel­li­gence would seem to be in know­ing when to think and act quick­ly, and know­ing when to think and act slow­ly”  with Descartes: “Cog­i­to, ergo sum”.
To which I feel con­strained  to add, and a robot didn’t write this.

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