no p.A.I.n no g.A.I.n: AI and penmanship: Part 2

It has been more than a year since I wrote the first part. At that time, there was, what in Malay we’d say desas desus (hearsay) about the capacity of artificial intelligence (AI) invading anything and everything except your physical orifices. Or so, I hope.

Being a writer, I gave my pointers there, mostly pooh-poohing—or is it pooh-pooying? Damn. Let me check my browser co-pilot, an AI app, of course. It says:

“… The correct expression is "pooh-poohing." It means to dismiss or belittle something. The phrase is often used to describe someone who downplays an idea or concern in a dismissive way.

Have you heard it used in an interesting context recently?”

I hate it when it ends with what looks like a hook for continued conversation, the sort you do with some hot chick. Or, dude, depending on your orientation. Anyway, in that post, I mentioned this:

Features with interviews, unless written in Q&A format, can never have the flair that a writer who throws her character in the mix when fleshing out the page detailing the encounters to the readers, who will see the colour and taste the flavour the author had intended in the piece.

This is where, in fact, I welcome AI. It is going to separate the real writers from hacks.

This agrees with this fabulous quote:

To be an author, you must be a human. The threat for students and researchers is really the same—overrelying on the technology. — Rose Sokol, PhD, publisher of APA Journals and Books

Thank you, Rose. I owe you a bouquet of... roses? Let me see AI try to write a dumb joke like that.

Now, since that post, a lot has happened. Sadly, those instances have countered my argument that writers are immune from the threat of artificial intelligence taking over their job. Guess what? I am bloody wrong, and we can look at the examples concerning scriptwriting alone.

Here’s the list (again, courtesy of ChatGpt):

There have been several notable short films and feature films produced using AI-generated scripts. Here are a few examples:

"Sunspring": This was the first short film created from an AI-generated script, written by an AI named Benjamin using a recurrent neural network called LSTM.

"The Safe Zone": Created by Filipino entertainer Richard Juan, this short film was both scripted and directed by AI, with ChatGPT providing the script and instructions for camera movements, lighting, and wardrobe.

"The Frost": A short film by Waymark, where the script was written by Josh Rubin and the visual scenes were generated by OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 model.

"Date Night": Developed using GPT-3 by Built In, this short film showcases a unique approach to narrative storytelling through AI.

"It's No Game": A sci-fi short film starring David Hasselhoff, with a script generated by a neural network.

Now, the good news is, none of them were headline makers. Which is reassuring. 

I would still think that writers like me are safe from all of what I do (career and passion-wise) being taken over by AI.

AI. cannot make similes and metaphors, which are as useful as toilet rolls during diarrhoea (see what I did there), which are also creative, or as my case here, terribly cringeworthy. AI-generated stuff would be as dull as British soap operas (except the actresses, of course).

But as mentioned in the previous post, many branches of the writing profession would die. Like how human arms have been replaced by robotic ones, simpler writing tasks will be totally taken over by AI. They will be looking at the direction of creative writers next, but there is no way they can come any nearer.

I mean, no AI can stoop low to make films like The Underdoggs, starring Snoop Dog. Never heard of it? Then you got my point.