Perplexity Personified

Is AI text better than human writing?

Writing is not just about putting words together, and human writers can bring a unique perspective and creativity to their work that AI tools may not be able to replicate.

Perplexity would say that, wouldn’t it? The phone-friendly AI (Artificial Intelligence) program’s been programmed to reassure humans that AI will assist rather than replace humans. Yes, well, notice the word “can” in “humans writers can bring a unique perspective and creativity to their work that AI tools may not be able to replicate.” 

The hidden implication: human writers can offer something unique and creative, but they don’t have to.

Truth be told, in the main they don’t. But even the ones who do are under the gun. Perplexity says AI tools “may not” be able to replicate a flesh-and-blood writer’s life experience and creativity. In other words, they may.

Putting that possibility to the test, I prompted Chat GPT to “Tell me the advantages of AI over human writing from the perspective of a professional rodeo rider.”  

As professional rodeo rider, I spend a lot of time on the road traveling to different competitions. Writing is not my strong suit, and I often struggle to find the time and inspiration to create content for my social media pages and website… allowing me to focus on more important aspects of my career, such as training and competing.

The Perplexity AI-generated text is totally readable and entirely credible. But it’s not very creative. So I asked the AI app to answer the same question in the style of Hunter S. Thompson.

Writers can benefit from imitation. Now, I’m not talking about plagiarism, mind you. No, no, no. What I mean is modeling your writing after what’s already successful and working.

The result is strangely maybe even suspiciously off-topic. It isn’t a good example of Thompson’s “Gonzo” style. But again, I reckon it’s only a matter of time before AI synthesizes and simulates any human writer’s “secret sauce." Which anyone can use without copyright infringement (more on that in the next post).

Meanwhile, flesh-and-blood writers who turn their back on AI are in direct competition with AI programs that are smarter, faster and more productive than they are. It’s already difficult to distinguish “real” writers from “artificial” ones. Not to put too fine a point on it, AI is an existential threat to authentic human writing. 

Union can’t turn back time. We can’t put the AI genie back in the bottle. But we can encourage, preserve, protect and defend writing by humans for humans. As rapper Aaron Carter advised, “The main thing is life is not to be afraid of being human.”