Robots Don't Know Shit
Aug. 10th, 2024 07:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingBefore I start talking about this, it's important to state that my official position on machine-generated writing is that it sucks and I hate it. It's boring, it's annoying, and its environmental impact is not inconsequential.
Still. Having dyslexia also sucks. One might even say that I hate it. I love writing, though, so I'm always looking for ways to work around this disability. Machine editing programs are one of the categories of tools I've been experimenting with. Ironically, these tended to work much better (really, much better) before the largescale development of LLMs since the end of 2022. These days, the "edits" suggested by these programs are ridiculous. To give an example, a sentence like "the late May breeze carried the bright scent of fresh oranges across the island" will have the word "May" flagged with the advice to use more forceful and declarative language.
Also, just out of curiosity, I tried checking some of my work against AI detectors. This was wild.
Here’s a short passage from the opening chapter of my most recent Legend of Zelda fanfic, Lay the Gods to Rest:
The paintings of queens and statues of heroes passed in a blur as Ganon was dragged into the throne room. The hall was crowded, and its galleries were packed with onlookers. The dazzling lights of an intricate chandelier cast a cruel shine on the helmets and breastplates of the soldiers standing at attention in the bays between columns. It seemed that even the officers of the Hylian army had left their posts to witness his sentencing.
Ganon’s face was bruised, and he suspected his nose was broken. He hadn’t been allowed a change of clothes since he’d been thrown on a horse and forced to ride. His tunic was torn, and his trousers were caked with mud. He hoped he left footprints on the plush carpet. He hoped it was ruined.
According to AI writing detectors like GPTZero, Scribbr, and Sapling, this passage is between 25% and 45% likely to have been generated by AI. The two most commonly flagged sentences are:
"The hall was crowded, and its galleries were packed with onlookers."
"His tunic was torn, and his trousers were caked with mud."
Those two sentences were meant to mirror each other in a deliberate parallel between Hyrule Castle being at the height of its power and Ganon being at the lowest point of his life. I mean, it's nothing special, but I definitely fucking wrote that shit myself.
I'm also working on a short Final Fantasy VII story about Marlene accidentally discovering an evil cult devoted to Sephiroth in the ruins of Midgar (and then being rescued by Tifa of course). This is the opening paragraph:
The ruins of Midgar unfolded across the blasted earth like a tapestry of desolation. Amidst the sprawling remains of the metropolis, vines crept along the jagged remnants of skyscrapers. The crumbling towers reached for the heavens with skeletal arms, their exposed steel girders a monument to the fall of the plate just a year earlier. Silence hung heavy in the air, only occasionally broken by the groan of shifting debris or the scuttling of the small scavenging creatures that had claimed the abandoned city as their own.
If you know me, then you know that this is 100% the sort of pseudo-Lovecraftian purple prose garbage I love to write. According to AI writing detection software, it's also 95% likely to have been machine-generated.
Goddamn it. Now I can't even write about abandoned city ruins in peace. This is a shitty first draft that still needs to be polished, but come on. The only person I'm plagiarizing is myself.
In conclusion, AI should stay in its lane of detecting cancer cells and predicting weather patterns and leave me and my writing in peace.
Still. Having dyslexia also sucks. One might even say that I hate it. I love writing, though, so I'm always looking for ways to work around this disability. Machine editing programs are one of the categories of tools I've been experimenting with. Ironically, these tended to work much better (really, much better) before the largescale development of LLMs since the end of 2022. These days, the "edits" suggested by these programs are ridiculous. To give an example, a sentence like "the late May breeze carried the bright scent of fresh oranges across the island" will have the word "May" flagged with the advice to use more forceful and declarative language.
Also, just out of curiosity, I tried checking some of my work against AI detectors. This was wild.
Here’s a short passage from the opening chapter of my most recent Legend of Zelda fanfic, Lay the Gods to Rest:
The paintings of queens and statues of heroes passed in a blur as Ganon was dragged into the throne room. The hall was crowded, and its galleries were packed with onlookers. The dazzling lights of an intricate chandelier cast a cruel shine on the helmets and breastplates of the soldiers standing at attention in the bays between columns. It seemed that even the officers of the Hylian army had left their posts to witness his sentencing.
Ganon’s face was bruised, and he suspected his nose was broken. He hadn’t been allowed a change of clothes since he’d been thrown on a horse and forced to ride. His tunic was torn, and his trousers were caked with mud. He hoped he left footprints on the plush carpet. He hoped it was ruined.
According to AI writing detectors like GPTZero, Scribbr, and Sapling, this passage is between 25% and 45% likely to have been generated by AI. The two most commonly flagged sentences are:
"The hall was crowded, and its galleries were packed with onlookers."
"His tunic was torn, and his trousers were caked with mud."
Those two sentences were meant to mirror each other in a deliberate parallel between Hyrule Castle being at the height of its power and Ganon being at the lowest point of his life. I mean, it's nothing special, but I definitely fucking wrote that shit myself.
I'm also working on a short Final Fantasy VII story about Marlene accidentally discovering an evil cult devoted to Sephiroth in the ruins of Midgar (and then being rescued by Tifa of course). This is the opening paragraph:
The ruins of Midgar unfolded across the blasted earth like a tapestry of desolation. Amidst the sprawling remains of the metropolis, vines crept along the jagged remnants of skyscrapers. The crumbling towers reached for the heavens with skeletal arms, their exposed steel girders a monument to the fall of the plate just a year earlier. Silence hung heavy in the air, only occasionally broken by the groan of shifting debris or the scuttling of the small scavenging creatures that had claimed the abandoned city as their own.
If you know me, then you know that this is 100% the sort of pseudo-Lovecraftian purple prose garbage I love to write. According to AI writing detection software, it's also 95% likely to have been machine-generated.
Goddamn it. Now I can't even write about abandoned city ruins in peace. This is a shitty first draft that still needs to be polished, but come on. The only person I'm plagiarizing is myself.
In conclusion, AI should stay in its lane of detecting cancer cells and predicting weather patterns and leave me and my writing in peace.
