Artificial Intelligence Affinity Group

I have been pretty vocal about my love for AI. 

My main take: It is a tool to elevate one's skillset; it isn't a stand in for lack of skill. I've had "authors" submit manuscripts to me that were entirely written by AI by someone who clearly is not a writer ... never again will I edit such a book. It was torture. It needed ghostwriting. If you use it to do something for you that you have no clue how to do, then your prompting will be poor and thus the output will be garbage. If you use it do something you already know how to do well, then you will have good prompts, and the output will be excellent. 

I just wrote my AI policy and added a Technology Use section of my contract where they can opt to give me permission or not give me permission to use AI in the use cases outlined in my policy. I've been wanting to do this for a while but been worried that the authors who are anti-AI (and I understand that sentiment, I really do) will then be like "Never mind. I don't want to hire you" even though I won't use AI without permission, but some might be turned off by the idea that I'm okay with AI. 

We shall see how it goes. 

I completely agree with you, Katie. I've taken both of Erin Servais's courses on editing with AI, and I've learned that AI is simply a tool like PerfectIt, Editor's Toolkit, etc. I find it particularly helpful for tedious tasks (e.g., formatting reference lists to a particular style, making all items in a list parallel in structure). And you are correct: garbage prompts = garbage output.

Marcella Weiner

I agree. I've used AI for podcast outlines, idea generation, and suggested titles. But it's definitely not suitable for writing a book. Besides the copyright implications, there are other issues with it such as it doesn't give you correct facts. One of my friends, who's a copy editor, went through a manuscript with a dozen quotes. All wrong and all created with AI. He went back to the author and told him he can't use AI to come up with quotes, and the author did it again! They ended up paying him for the time he spent researching quotes. Honestly, people need to figure out what AI is good for and what it's not. It isn't going to do the same job a human does, well, because it's not human! The AI algorithm doesn't think or process the same as a human brain, and people seem to think it's this machine that's going to power what we do forever.

Should we tell everyone that we've been using AI (SIRI AND Alexa) for almost a decade now, and no one got this bent out of shape about it before?

Yeah, isn't it weird that people haven't figured out Hey Siri, Hey Google and Alexa are all prompts and they've been using them for years. I am glad you all have joined the AI Affinity Group because this is exactly our intention: to make our fellow editors aware of AI's limitations and capabilities. You don't need to be a super user of AI but working knowledge never hurts. And with more and more people using AI to "write" we will need to take up the responsibility of educating them just as we do about what each stage of editing involves. Thank you for being here.

I have been bent out of shape by Alexa and Siri for almost a decade. I don't have them in my home, and I feel uncomfortable when I am in my sister's house, where Alexa is in use (although it is summoned with the word "Computer" – I come from a family of Trekkers). Amazon's abuse of privacy via Alexa was headline news several years ago (so at least a few people got bent out of shape): https://time.com/5568815/amazon-workers-listen-to-alexa/

L. Smargis, I completely agree with your sentiment about the "need to figure out what AI is good for and what it's not." Looking forward to discussions here.