Healthy AI Usage #01: Idea Engine to Boost your Creativity
Everyone's Talking About AI!
For the last week or so, the whole Hive community is talking about one and only one subject: Artificial Intelligence.
Is it morally wrong to use AI content on Hive?
Is it against the rules of Hive?
Are there rules on Hive? Isn't it decentralized anyway? I should be able to post whatever I want!
Should AI-generated content be downvoted or not?
But AI is the future, shouldn't Hive embrace the future given the fact everyone's using AI anyways?
But I wrote the post myself and just used AI to fix grammar and enhance readability, should I be punished for doing that?
I Won't Answer Any of These Questions!
I definitely don't have the definite answer for all these questions. Obviously I do have my own opinion on each one of them, but there are dozens of other posts of smarter people than I talking about this whole drama. Go read them.
I'm not here to say if using AI-generated content is good or bad. I'm not here to defend that people posting AI-generated content should be downvoted to oblivion or praised with juicy votes.
I'm here to say that AI is, undoubtedly, a new tool that's now available to a content creator, and that can help a creator to unlock their own creative potential.
Healthy AI Usage #01: "Idea Engine" to Boost your Creativity
AI can help you as some sort of "Idea Engine" or "Brainstorming Assistant", by giving you ideas that you can develop by yourself. And I'm sure that no one, neither on Hive or anywhere else, would find usage wrong or illegal.
One can browse on an architecture subreddit to find ideas about architecture and, then, design a beautiful house on AutoCad.
One can browse a forum thread about "problems of modern gaming" to find what gamers complain about games nowadays and, then, write a blog post about how games can avoid those pitfalls.
One can browse a "very cute cats" gallery on Pinterest to brainstorm ideas to make their own cat cute and, then, make a funny costume for their cat.
Similarly, one can browse ChatGPT to have ideas about whatever they want and, then, use those ideas to create their own content here on Hive.
Let's take a look at some real world examples.
Worldbuilding Community Prompt #509 - Stained Glass
A few hours ago, @worldbuilder posted the Writing Prompt #509 on his WorldBuilding Community: "Describe a building that features a stained glass window. What is depicted on the stained glass, and who purchased or designed it? Write a scene set in this location that in some way mentions or involves the stained glass."
Oh, my! Stained Glass! I just see stained glass windows when I go to the Church and, to be honest, I don't go that often to the Church.
And I'm pretty sure that everyone and their mother would probably write about Churches anyway, as it's the most common place in which we see stained glass windows.
Let's ask for some help from ChatGPT:
ChatGPT started with the most obvious choices, as I did: churches and other religious buildings as synagogues and mosques. But, then, it started giving lots of ideas of unusual buildings that can, indeed, have stained glass windows: town halls, castles and palaces, museums, court houses, hospitals...
Well, I personally like the idea of a hospital. I wouldn't have thought that hospitals could have stained glass windows by myself. But, now, with the help of the tool, I'm imagining a hospital that's using the building of an old, abandoned monastery that had beautiful stained glasses windows on the entrance hall.
Neat!
Writing a LeoFinance Post about Inflation
The whole world is currently having a rising inflation problem. Everyone's talking why inflation is rising right now, why food and energy prices are hitting record highs, etc.
I want to write a post LeoFinance about inflation, and how it's impacting people's living standard.
The most obvious idea is to write that inflation increases the cost of living as goods and services become more and more expensive. But that's basic stuff that everyone already knows.
Let's see if ChatGPT can brainstorm some different ideas that I can write about:
Again, the first idea ChatGPT gave is the most obvious one that everyone thinks: inflation increase the cost of stuff and, thus, decrease the purchasing power.
But then it starts to give some interesting ideas that I haven't thought by myself: Uneven Distribution of Inflation, for example, is a very interesting approach to the problem, as inflation usually hits poor people harder than rich people (making the poor even poorer). Capital Flight is another one that's similar: poorer countries are usually hit harder by inflation, and the capital flight from 3rd to 1st world countries make the situation even harder for the poor.
Have in mind that ChatGPT is not magically perfect, and it WILL give stupid suggestions. His #5 idea (Currency Devaluation) is just plain wrong: if a country currency devaluates, it IMPROVES the competitiveness of its exports, as it becomes cheaper to buy stuff from that country with US Dollars.
You, as the content creator, have to filter out the stupidity from the tool. Similarly, not all cute cat images you see on Pinterest are actually cute, and not all architecture suggestions you read on Reddit are actually good.
Freewriter's Prompt: A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words
2 days ago @freewritehouse posted this writing promt on the Freewriters Community, with the image above: "Describe what you see. Describe what you feel. Write a story or poem or about what you think is going on."
Well, when I looked at this image, I immediately thought that the plane was falling down.
Now I want to write a story about this plane falling down and crashing... but I can't think a reason for it to fall down. What could have happened to it before?
I don't want to write a story with a common/obvious reason like "electrical malfunction" or "struck by lightning", nah, no way, those are booooo-ring.
Let's overcome this creativity block with ChatGPT:
Some of the ideas don't really goes well with the beautiful image provided by the FreewriteHouse, like the "caught in a tornado" or "hit by a missile". Others don't even make sense, like "wheels got stuck in the mud". Let's filter those out, as we're human, we're smart content creators that can filter bad stuff from good stuff.
But there are also lots of unusual, interesting ideas to justify a plane crash.
The pilot had an allergic reaction? Interesting, did he eat something by mistake? Did someone poisoned him on purpose?
Plane overloaded with cargo? Interesting, has someone smuggled something heavy into the plane and caused the accident by mistake?
Distracted by a flock of geese? That's a great idea for a funny story with a pun.
Conclusion
We can no longer pretend that AI doesn't exist. It's right here for anyone to use.
It's natural that content creators will embrace AI into their work, but we have to use it in a responsible, ethical way.
Using it to improve your own work, like an "Idea Engine", is totally acceptable. It boosts our capabilities as humans. That's why humanity creates tools after all: to improve what we can do, to do things better and faster.
Using it to do your work for you and then pretending that you're the one that did it? Nope, no good.
Thanks for reading this post, and until next time!
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And where does it end?
Creativity in its various forms are one of humankind's greatest gifts. If you think of great art, literature or music, these things are not created (Initially at least) for any reason other than the moment of inspiration.
Fame, money, notoriety may all follow as a creative artist is noticed, but it's not the reason why creative people do what they do. I know I write fiction or poetry both almost as a compulsion, mixed with catharsis, mixed with i don't quite know what, inspiration i suppose.
Anyway, my point is that the more we rely upon AI generated prompts, or content ideas, or good forbid, started to get them to write songs... the more we will water down our own creative intelligence and process.
It's not meant to be easy, or at least in my experience 90% of the time creative writing (and I'm not talking about on hive here) takes hard work and perseverance.
P.s. I didn't mean to downvote you by the way, i was trying to remove my origonal upvote because when i really considered the blog I realised i didn't agree with the main premise.
In the example for my (@worldbuilder's) prompt though, is that really any different than going to Wikipedia or google to search up what kind of buildings have stained glass?
Like... I don't think we should let AI content be passed off as real work because it has no creativity to it, but 5 seconds on ChatGPT to answer a question that may take me 10 minutes on Google feels like a good trade with no creativity lost.
IMO, it's exactly the same process, just using different tools.
One creator can go to Wikipedia and look for the "Stained Glass" article.
Other creator can go to Pinterest and search for pictures tagged with "Stained Glass".
A third one can go to reddit.com/r/StainedGlass (yes, it's a real subreddit) and sort the posts with the most voted from all times to see what's going on.
A fourth one can go to the nearest Cathedral, if he's lucky enough to live nearby one, and take a look at the beautiful artworks there.
And, finally, a fifth one can go to ChatGPT ask for buildings with Stained Glass.
Which tool is the best? There's no such thing. To each their own.
Exactly my thoughts as well!
That's a good point.
But you know not everyone will stop at using it as a tool in such a way. Many people will use it as a way to take from the reward pool with a simple 2/3 sentence query to ChatGPT.
I think why there is such a slew of AI and ChatGPT content around at the moment, is that there has always been so much abuse - plagiarism, spam comment farming and even the whole bidbot vote stacking cons that went on for years on steem - a lot of people saying zero tolerance are curators, or maybe people with big votes, who follow trails and want the people who assesses whomever their vote goes to not to go to people using AI generated content.
I know this isn't what you're suggesting in your article, but there will be a lot of it going on and it will be making curators jobs even harder. Lol, i stopped being a curator for one of the guilds years ago because i couldn't take the stress of the detective work i had to do on every post being published in The Ink Well, and i can only imagine how much more difficult AI gen content has made that work. I garuntee that there will be whole groups of people who post as much AI gen content as poss until caught, then they'll simply create 8-10 new accounts and repeat the same process.
Anyway, i think I'd still stick to my premise that the less we do that research, the less we engage our brains to remember all the places we've seen stained glass, especially over generations, it's going to be detrimental overall to the human creative process. But, I've never been married to my opinions. I could be completely wrong and missing out on a useful tool 😂
Yeah, I mean... there will always be bad actors that will use these tools in a negative way but on the whole, I think it's positive. I don't envy the folks having to sort through the tons of garbage posts being created entirely by AI, but it's not much different than plagiarism and we already did that on-chain.
For what it's worth, my wife also thinks it's going to hurt the overall creative process... but she also isn't writing fiction or doing creative things so while I respect the stance, I'm willing to ignore it and use the tools available in morally-justifiable ways to make my workload easier.
Yeah, I do think you underestimate how much more difficult it is going to make the work the curation guilds do, but that's just because of my past experience. And I have read another post that says they're already using tools that weed out AI gen articles etc.
In regards to the rest of our conversation, it is just a matter of opinion and I respect anyone who uses a tool responsibly to create something good. I'm currently working on a fantasy fiction novel, but no fiction of mine has gone anywhere near hive for a while now, and there is a reason for that.
I guess I'm just old school, but straight up, I get more inspiration (like enough to write whole chapters) from a walk in the mountains than I do by using any technological vehicle for inspiration. That doesn't mean I don't use the internet to get visual inspiration, and a lot for research, it's just the way my mind works I guess. A huge amount of the stronger work, writing that flows seamlessly (and rarely needs much editing) that is coming from my subconscious happens after I engage with nature, particularly walks etc in wilderness areas.
I can definitely get behind that! Walks in nature are a wonderful way to get writing flowing, and one of the things I miss most about no longer living on a farm with a ton of trees behind my house.
This is true, and yet every artist is working with all the ideas other artists had already, and if you check, everything is the copy of a copy of a copy.
Very few people come up with really original ideas that have never been there before.
Just check out the book with the title "Steal like an artist" by Austin Kleon
There is also a quote from a Hungarian poet Arany János:
Translated by J. G. Nichols translated
First thing you learn in the creative industry: Take all those ideas and form and spin them until you can make them your own.
I know exactly what you're talking about, another quote that reflects this is from Jim Jarmusch.
But I would question his use of the word 'theft' and 'steal'. I get why he uses them, he's trying to be hard-hitting. But the reality is that just because you find inspiration from for e.g. Norse mythology does that mean Neil Gaiman's American Gods is theft? Is it fuck.
Inspiration borrows from the past indisputably. But American Gods as a work of fiction isn't just a recounting of the Norse mythologies.
I agree wholeheartedly with what you're saying:
and
100% agree with both those statements. Any serious writer knows them to be true 👍
I (who also am @worldbuilder) will die on the hill that AI is a useful tool for prompts and getting ideas.
We get ideas from all around us. I have a whole book of phrases, ideas, and descriptions that have popped into my head that I pull from when I'm stuck with writing and as long as folks are using AI in that way (as a prompt generator) I will always support it. I did a whole blog post about it two weeks ago. I also point out it's flaws and why it's nowhere close to a copy/paste solution.
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I love your post, it’s very informative about using AI in a healthy way. We should continue to encourage the community to use their own creativity or at least use AI in a responsible and respectable manner.
Eu concordo em utilizar a IA com uma certa etica, não para criar tudo do zero e vc so colocar aqui o que acha, mas, como vc disse, utilizar ela como uma ferramenta para refinar e melhorar o nosso texto ou ideias criadas, acho q é valido, afinal a maior parte de tudo saiu da nossa mente.
É como usar um site para traduzir para o inglês ou corrigir nossos erros gramaticais, eles não seriam como uma IA também? Só que no caso são códigos que nos ajudam a melhorar algo que ja escrevemos.
I agree with using AI with a certain ethics, not to create everything from scratch and you just put what you think here, but, as you said, using it as a tool to refine and improve our text or created ideas, I think that it's valid, after all most of everything came out of our mind.
It's like using a website to translate into English or correct our grammatical mistakes, wouldn't they be like an AI too? But in this case, they are codes that help us improve something we have already written.
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