41 Comments
User's avatar
Donna Elle's avatar

i'm in tune and attuned to the heart of the matter in one's writing - when i read something as when i meet people and get to know them deeper or a piece of writing for that matter, my heart and soul trace the edges of the outlines as an essay reads between the lines like feathered time and shade. It's how i'm feeling that discerns from which I honor my writing and of others thru the evidence of reciprocation.

John Gilbertson's avatar

I fear writing papers for college classes these days (if I'm ever able to attend college again). I don't want to end up in a rage-filled shouting match with professors and deans over being falsely disciplined for using AI. That would all but destroy me and might be too much for me to bear.

John Gilbertson's avatar

I'd be in an unrecoverable spiral at that point.

Lily Golden's avatar

I have used AI to get answers to a lot of health questions, because I have way more questions than doctors and nurses have time to answer. I regularly use it to help me modify recipes, which works well, although I find that the recipes it creates are not that great. I recently lost my job as an editor when my team was eliminated in part because AI can now do some of our work. The other day I wrote an email to a company about a product I had bought, seeking their advice, and received an incredibly kind and thorough response that I realized halfway through was AI-generated. I can see how it helps them be efficient but my reaction was to be immediately disappointed—I thought at first I had made a connection with someone but it turned out there was no one there.

Pauline Chandler's avatar

A colleague wants to write a book about the history of our work together.

Susan Bridges Gilder's avatar

I don’t like that AI is seeping into the work of our artists and writers. I also don’t like when I start to read a post on social media that has touched me and then realized I’ve been taken. I think AI could be a useful tool for everyone, but it shouldn’t replace human creativity. I use it at work to analyze data, create charts, and sometimes analyze, difficult problems. But in the end, it is my critical thinking, which must decide which direction to move. It’s only going to give me what I prompt.

Mary T. Migliorelli's avatar

Please contact me re: the bittersweet journal I was supposed to receive after my annual renewal a couple of months ago. I tried contacting the email you noted, but it kept boomeranging back to me as undeliverable, & I haven’t received the journal yet. Thanks for your help.

Susan Cain's avatar

Hi there, this is Renee in Susan’s office (I’m not sure why I couldn’t respond as me, sorry about that). I’m sorry your emails bounced back…in order to send you the information I need the email you use to sign into Substack. If you don’t want to write publicly, could you please send it to Renee@QuietRev.com? Remind me why you’re writing when you send the note and I’ll be happy to help you. Thanks so much.

Jacie's avatar

Susan, this is how I recently used AI successfully, not in writing, but in creating an image. How do I say this, I could wordsmith all day long, but I really can't see what isn't in front of me; in other words, give me a blank palette and I can't fill it from my imagination. I have a room I have not been able to decorate or be comfortable in for a decade. A "youngster" told me to take a pix and plunk it into ChatGPT, and voila, I mean there was a room image that was me! It was just home. I have been diligently spending money creating it. :(:

Susan Cain's avatar

Wow, Jacie - I would love to see it!

st's avatar

Creativity is breath to our soul, sacredness to the human spirit, form of life manifesting it being through our human desire to dream, imagine, our inner child play coming to light of that shining star kissing you good night... Sacred treasure, uniquely beautiful to each of us, worth protecting at all costs for technology had giving us many great things but if we give AI or creativity, our deep thoughts to we might as well be mindless zombies following the machine for the machine itself feeds off the creativity the knowledge us humans have given it... I suppose their somethings I never come around to for my body here and now, but my Soul was born from some distant star long ago... Much Love, Stay Kind to One Another and Hold on to your Soul your Heart's Spirit, there no AI that will take the Creative Beauty out that if you don't let it...

Steve Minchington's avatar

I have mixed feelings about Ai, (as I swap from Dvorak to Qwerty keyboard)!

Ai has obvious benefits for business, science and medical research, in its ability to analyse and process vast amounts of data. But when it comes to creative endeavours, I feel like we are being challenged to prove our humanness, which is becoming increasingly difficult since Ai is trained on human creations.

I recently produced a piece of art and felt compelled to declare that Ai wasn't involved in its production, because people may have thought it was, which would have completely taken away its worth. I enjoyed the process of producing the piece and was proud of the result, but Ai could easily have done it in seconds.

I feel like we are in a transition phase, feeling our way around this technology, on the one hand clinging to our human creativity, and on the other, pushing our boundaries to find new ways of creating.

One thing that bothers me about Ai is its environmental impact. Every time we use Ai, it is being processed in massive data centres that use huge amounts of energy and water for cooling the thousands of servers that run 24/7 and have a shelf life of about three years. It's easy to forget that when we are sitting at our laptop in our quiet space "chatting" with Ai. Energy and water are precious commodities these days that could be put to better use. If you search on Youtube for a video on data centres, I'm sure you will be shocked at the scale of them.

Howard Seidel's avatar

…the entertainment industry to use AI than to pay humans, even if doesn’t capture the depth of the human experience in doing so.

Howard Seidel's avatar

AI is becoming ubiquitous in every facet of life. There those who believe that AI will at some point be able to perfect replicate everything’s human do and create. I’m not smart enough to know if that’s the case but I think it would be a sad thing if it does. My fear with creative expression, particular in all forms of entertainment is more that it will become for economically enriching for

Rich Day's avatar

I just have to say, in the creative area, like writing, I just don’’t even like the very idea of AI. I think it offers a great deal of benefit in many areas, but when I’m reading a poem, or an essay, or a book, to know that someone separate from myself was actually feeling the words they wrote about feeling is indispensable.

Raed A Salman's avatar

Yes. Agreed, I prefer the natural writing even there is a kind of mistakes but it is ok

Joseph Bailey's avatar

I do find a dampening of my enthusiasm when something is revealed as AI. That said, in my Substack-Streamweavings- (em dash intentional)- I write about the time I decided to give Claude a try for a poetry class. It assisted me in finding words to express what I was thinking/feeling. After 7 decades I’ve come accept there are some things I’m not good at but can be surprised when a tool helps me in a way I never expected.

Donna Macdonald's avatar

I love dashes and have probably used them inappropriately in my writing for years. They are just so friendly and I will never stop. Helen Gurely Brown had a crafty way of writing...I can't remember what she did specifically because I haven't read her in a long, long time but she had a way of making the reader (me) feel like she was my big sister. Her style was chatty and friendly. Maybe it's time to revisit her. But I'm afraid AI will take away those special individual writing styles or it will mask them. When the words in my head are tangled and I can't seem to straighten them out, I'll use AI to help but just with a few lines or a paragraph at the most. Sometimes using AI this way puts me back into my own voice and rhythm. It finds the word I'm seeking better than a Thesaurus.

Jill Haas's avatar

I have no interest in A.I. generated creative content and am offended by the lack of disclosure about it. I read and listen and view creative output in order to connect with another human who is sharing their experience of what it's like to be human. I need to know there is a human behind the specific content, not a machine who has scraped human content, no matter how profound, to provide me with a product. I have no interest in connecting to a machine.

Rebecca Johns's avatar

I perceive of my work as me being the instrument. That makes me commit to being grounded, clear, focused, & willing to recieve. It comes through me As me & Through me.