If a new type of author arises, the curator/editor, would you help improve his process and evaluate his generated and edited stories like in any other workshop? This is assuming he partakes in the workshop like any other member, of course. And since critiquing improves the person performing it, do you think you yourself would still have something to gain from critiquing a segment of a gen/edited story instead of a purely human created one?
My first thought is sure, if I were contemplating making AI stories. There must be some tricks to it. My second thought—I wonder if AIs can learn from critique? If there were some way to get it to them. Or if it needs to be programmed in? In a way critique is what the human partner provides. "Make the crooked man live in a crooked house, and carry a crooked stick..."
Oh, yeah. I was thinking more of critiquing final edits and product but I suppose AI tweaks may well be a part of those critiques too. The generators seem to have a little bit of functionality that way, which I'm sure will get expanded in the future.
I've done that critique already, in general, of the handful of ChatGPT stories I've seen. After seeing some more, and/or especially when a new version comes along or I see stories by a different AI, I might do another. I've heard there are better ones for writing—ChatGPT is, as the name implies, designed as a chatbot, not an author.
No, I wouldn't critique a story written by a machine that can't feel anything. It flies in the face of everything I understand about writing.
When I did it it was out of curiosity, to see what they were capable of doing, how it compares to human-written stories. So maybe critique is the wrong term. Evaluate might come closer.
My gut says no. But on second thought I could be pushed to a "maybe" on some very specific circumstances. Basically, if the "writer" (person using AI) was a friend/writing partner and we discussed how they were using the AI before and probably during the 'writing' process. In other words we had some kind of existing collaboration, and I knew and approved of how they use AI. But if it was just someone in a regular writing workshop who wanted fresh eyes on a piece he got his AI to write for him. No. Ask an AI to cirque it.
I don't think it can learn from our critique, but I watched a video where the AI was asked to critique it's own story and it did find flaws and redundancies that it then proceeded to fix when prompted. You can prompt the AI to expand on what you think needs fixing and it will do it. I don't think it learns from this though. It follows your command and changes the text you highlight. I tried the free trial for Sudowrite and it did seem more writer friendly than Chat gpt. The prices are outrageous to me, so I would stick to the free chat gpt, it just requires more knowledge of how to prompt it. Jasper and Suduwrite seem better, just crazy expensive if you ask me. As far as critiquing an AI story. I would say can and have done it. I was at the library with a friend who is all into this thing and he asked me to critique a 15k word sci-fi story he created. He did have the AI critique the writing before he showed me, so some parts were edited and fixed, but I must say that it was a pretty good story. A little bland at some parts and the dialog needed some tweaking, but all in all it flowed great and kept my interest throughout. It did seem an little, how do I put it, 3rd grade level to me, but if you proof read it and make some small changes to the dialog, I would not have noticed a computer wrote it. My friend then told me that he uses the free version, but chat gpt 4.0 is supposed to be way better.
They need to be taught some of the important principles of writing. What I did was read a bunch of stories made by ChatGPT, and then evaluate the average. They tend to be extremely generic, written very distantly in terms of POV, and all done in telling rather than showing. Like chidren's stories or fairy tales. But these are probably not things they can be taught to improve on, more like hard limits of a computer trying to write stories. They simply can't understand human feelings, or present parts of a story through close showing. That requires being human and having feelings so you know how feelings work. At best I think they can only imitate or copy/paste passages like this. Yes, Sudowrite is one of the better ones I've heard of. I wonder if you can see stories written by it? I'd like to see how it fares compared to ChatGPT (which really is a chatbot, not designed for writing stories).
I've looked into it very briefly. It looks like Sudowrite doesn't actually write stories, it's designed to be a virtual writing partner or assistant. It can apparently provide a plot outline (which is what the ChatGPT stories I've seen looked like), and make suggestions. I scanned over three pages of searches and haven't yet found an actual story written using it as an assistant. There's apparently a section on Wattpad for AI stories, but you have to create a membership. I don't care enough to go to that length. If I could find a few short stories created using Sudowrite I'd gladly read them. Maybe I'll watch one of the tutorials or something. I'd like to see how it can help an experienced writer, who's well educated in the principles already, as opposed to an absolute beginner who's delighted with everything it can do. Likely it can really help develop a story and work through some rough spots, help get you unstuck maybe. As I've said somewhere (not sure if it was on this thread), I have no problem at all with people using it as an assistant. It's when it comes to an AI doing the final writing that I have issues.
That's what my feeble mind was trying to say, not third grade level, but more Once Upon a Time. The stories seem to start like this. I believe you are correct here also. It is not going to write better than you now, but could be a good, cheap editing tool. If you get writers block, it could help you there also. The Sudowrite is hard to figure out when all you get is a limited free trial. If you don't know how to make it write the story for you at the get go, it is limited. I think I used almost all my free words for the month before I discovered how to make the story on its on. It was something you do with the describe tab, I think. Videos on you tube from the creators of the AI were pretty cool, just a little long though. It is crazy expensive though, for me at least.
I just watched a couple of them. In one a guy had ChatGPT (a special new version not available to the general public yet, it functions more like Sudo) and Sudowrite both write the same chapter for his novel. He said Chat is a bit more generic and tends to go off-script more often toward the end of a chapter or story, but otherwise they're pretty similar. From the small parts of the story I could see, everything was pretty middle-of-the road and generic, but not horrible. Like a competent but somewhat amateur writer, but done very mechanically, and I would agree, like a third grade level or maybe sixth grade. It just never seemed to get inside anybody's head or do anything involving POV. They tend to start like "There was a man named John who lived in the town of Glendale. He was trying to keep his mother from starving, and had to work hard at two jobs." This is very basic exposition, not a good way to start a story. My thought is that if people come to rely on AI to do much of the writing they'll never learn how to do it themselves, and you need to be a knowledgeable writer to know if it's any good or not. It will make a lot of lazy writers who only know how to feed prompts into an interface, who remain on the wrong side of the Dunning/Kruger effect. Yeah, I'm not a fan of this new subscription-based model. It's a way of them getting your money continually rather than you just paying once and owning it. As a point of thread clarity—I don't really critique individual stories written by AI, but rather the overall abilities of the AI to write. And I do it out of curiosity—I want to see how they're progressing and what they can do.
You got this perfect and this is my biggest fear with AI. Books are being dumbed down, and in a few years, people will not want to read our stories because they will be too complicated and will need the reader to think instead of being spoon fed. The other scare is that publishing houses our going to be using AI to screen the massive amounts of novels that they are going to be getting. Some are already using AI editors to go over manuscripts now. My fear is that they are going to start dumbing down quality work that we put out.
Given all the real writers producing original work asking for critiques, I wouldn't waste my time critiquing the product of someone who uses a program to generate their first draft.
Absolutely, I believe in supporting all types of authors, including the curator/editor who's working with AI-generated content. Critiquing and providing feedback is a valuable part of the writing process, and it can help improve anyone's skills, including my own. It's not just about human-created content;
Nope, absolutely not. I wouldn't waste my time and energy. If an author uses AI, it is tantamount to cheating in my book. ... I do not support AI-generated content.
AI-generated stories can also benefit from constructive input. As for using best AI writing tools, they can enhance the creative process and add new dimensions to storytelling.
