Why the emergence of A.I. text generators should concern entire writing community | Opinion

I love to write. I love words, and I enjoy putting them together on paper or a screen to convey my thoughts.

I first starting writing over 60 years ago when I was in the first grade. My teacher, Mrs. Oswald, wrote the 26 letters of the alphabet on a blackboard at the front of the class. She then instructed my classmates and me to write each of these letters on our Big Chief paper tablets using pencils the size of small baseball bats. Once we accomplished this, she taught us how to put these letters together to form words. The first word I ever wrote on my Big Chief tablet was “Bill,” not coincidentally my name.

By the end of first grade I was putting together words, writing every day. Letters, thank-you notes, even little poems and jokes.

As I advanced through elementary school and into middle school, my teachers gave me writing assignments, including at the start of the school year the classic “How I spent my summer vacation.”

I loved it, and by high school I was writing columns for “The Rampage”, my school newspaper.

I attended the University of Tennessee where I became a columnist for the best newspaper in Tennessee, The Daily Beacon.

I then went to law school where I started writing legal case summaries, and then went into law practice where I wrote the ironically-named “briefs” even though I soon learned that “legal brief” could be an oxymoron.

For decades now, I have written columns for newspapers, magazines, and my own blog.

Writing has been my avocation, not my occupation, and I have loved it.

But I have recently found I have a competitor that threatens to replace me and other writers and journalists.

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It is not another writer. It is not even a real person. It is Artificial Intelligence.

One can now find on the Internet all sorts of “text generators” that can write term papers, business reports, masters theses, doctoral dissertations, and even novels and (gasp!) columns. I call them 'robo writers.' And by the way, I came up with that reference all by myself. It was not generated by software.

My daughter who is an award-winning writer recently told me about something called ChatGPT, a text generator or “chatbot” developed by Elon Musk.

I am not sure how these chatbots work. I understand one just inputs (if that is a verb) information you want in writing, and the chat box cranks out a report or essay or whatever written words you need. Businesses across the country are using these Robo Writers to generate financial reports. Law firms are using them to write briefs. (Again, gasp!)

Colleges and universities across the nation are concerned about virtual plagiarism by students, and even high school English teachers believe they may be grading papers that should be entitled “How A.I. spent it’s Summer Vacation.”

I don’t know if this is the best of times or the worst of times. Call me Ishmael. But I believe it is a dark and stormy night for us real writers, particularly if Robo-Writers take over newspapers. I just want to assure you that the column you have just read was written by yours truly, all by myself.

Bill Haltom is a writer who lives in Memphis and Monteagle.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: A.I. text generators could change journalism, literature for the worse