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RamsesThePigeon t1_jc42xl3 wrote

Programs like ChatGPT have mesmerized a growing number of people, many of whom have taken to praising said programs for their abilities, their versatility, and their speed. While writers, editors, and people who read for enjoyment typically have no trouble detecting (and criticizing) details that make these machine-produced offerings utterly atrocious – the stark mismatches between concepts, word-choices, and emotional tones, for instance – the "magic trick" has nonetheless resulted in a lot of hype, especially amongst individuals who only pay attention to surface-level elements.

How do you, as professional ghostwriters, explain to writing-averse (or reading-averse) clients that your work – which is slower and comes with a monetary cost – will likely always be superior to what a glorified algorithm can offer?

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unemployedprofessors OP t1_jc49jc6 wrote

I love this question.

I think of ChatGPT like a Faberge egg (or maybe at least like the original Mechanical Turk). It looks very fancy and valuable, but it's hollow. There is no internal reasoning within it. It is auto-correct on steroids and the things people say about it are frightening. It's not sitting there making algorithmic decisions based on questions like "What is the best way to write a five-paragraph essay on this topic?" or "As a large language model, what is my opinion?" or "What are the best resources to use to make this argument?" ChatGPT is just parsing through its memory of the corpus to which it's been exposed and making calculations based on what words or patterns it's seen previously.

ChatGPT can generate text and we can parse that text and think "Yes, these are definitely words, sentences, and paragraphs." It glitters with banal transitional phrases and its absolute adherence to rubric-driven writing. But if you tap on that facade of error-free, style-free sentences, it falls apart. It's all just filler, as I'm sure you know.

The problematic Venn Diagram is the intersection of expectations for algorithmic writing, under paid / apathetic / burned out educators or readers who just skim and look for writing with features that tick off boxes, and people who either cannot or who choose not to acknowledge the value of critical thinking and writing. That's where the real "magic" of ChatGPT lies: People who don't know good writing when they see it and perceive anything with written language as a horrible burden, who are producing content for an audience that is mostly only able or willing to identify superficial stylistic deficits, and an underlying structure (school, algorithm, whatever) that has created this, I don't know, golden calf of what "good" writing is: Something that can be crammed into five-interval rubrics and graded by AI and that keeps lowering the common denominator down to another level of hell.

So if ChatGPT is a Faberge egg, maybe we're the golden goose (or geese), because we write something that's more than just not incorrect. It isn't algorithmic because writing was never really supposed to be, because writing is supposed to be for humans: Messy, holistic, heuristic humans, not robots that are only capable of skimming for algorithms.

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RamsesThePigeon t1_jc4bky8 wrote

That's a great response. Thank you!

As a writer who has encountered similar challenges, I've taken to making comparisons between fast food and chef-prepared meals: Yes, you can get something from McDonald's in as much time as it takes you to groan out an order and swerve past the pickup window, and yes, the FDA has reluctantly classified the menu options there as "probably food," but you won't get nearly as much enjoyment, nourishment, or satisfaction out of the experience as you would from eating a dish that was prepared by a devoted and attentive professional.

If I feel the need to be less snarky, I just say that it's "bespoke" writing.

That brings me to my follow-up question: You mentioned that you specialize in "fast, effective writing," but "effective" can mean very different things in the contexts of different projects. How do you guarantee (or prioritize, at least) speed when effectiveness requires a slower pace, as with – to quote you once more – "your wacky aunt's self-published book," for example?

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unemployedprofessors OP t1_jc4t9gp wrote

That's another great question. Pragmatically, as in, as a business, we guarantee effectiveness by offering revisions, refunds in certain cases, and we work hard to try and understand what our clients want and need on a general level. Most of the time, they have pretty specific, transaction-oriented goals in mind and that is where our domain expertise comes in handy.

From the writing perspective, a lot of effectiveness has to do with understanding goals and managing expectations. I don't do the wacky aunt crackpot ebooks anymore.

Apparently this post was deleted and we have no idea why :( so I'm not even sure this comment will go through, but I do appreciate your thoughtful questions.

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Raescher t1_jc4e2bd wrote

"It's just ...". Humans describing any revolutionary change ever.

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Ashendarei t1_jc4p75b wrote

I mean sure, in this case it robs a fair bit of nuance from what the AI does, but it seems to get the point across well enough, particularly to people with a layman's understanding of the tech involved.

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Raescher t1_jc603x9 wrote

It does not give it justice though. A few years ago plenty of people would have argued that AI could never emulate human speech properly. Now it does and people who claim to understand it are like "it's nothing special. I could have done it myself."

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sophware t1_jc57gsr wrote

>utterly atrocious

In your opinion, does this atrociousness show most in long essays? I don't picture ChatGPT writing for The New Yorker or The Atlantic Monthly; but its short work and code is… well… mesmerizing. Maybe my wonder is based on results relative to expectations I had and will wear off. I do find the code it writes to be useful (though too flawed to be a direct threat to my job, in spite of the hype).

I decided to give ChatGPT one chance to answer the question "what is a ghost writer?" The plan was to post the result, no matter what it showed. It's like a blind taste test, though maybe not of the thing you're slamming (a few paragraphs vs a many-page student assignment or book).

>A ghostwriter is a professional writer who is hired to write a book, article, or other type of content on behalf of someone else, without receiving any public credit for the work. In other words, the ghostwriter's name does not appear on the work, and the person who hired the ghostwriter takes credit for the writing.
>
>Ghostwriters are often hired by individuals who want to publish a book or article, but lack the time, expertise, or writing skills to do so themselves. Ghostwriters may also be hired by companies or organizations to write speeches, press releases, or other types of content.
>
>Ghostwriting is a common practice in the publishing industry, and many well-known books have been written by ghostwriters. However, the role of ghostwriting is often kept secret, and the general public may not be aware of the extent to which ghostwriters are used in the creation of written content.

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RamsesThePigeon t1_jc5bdsk wrote

The "uncanny valley" feeling is still pretty damned profound there, don't you think?

For instance, have a look at the first paragraph:

>A ghostwriter is a professional writer who is hired to write a book, article, or other type of content on behalf of someone else, without receiving any public credit for the work. In other words, the ghostwriter's name does not appear on the work, and the person who hired the ghostwriter takes credit for the writing.

To my eye, that almost reads like an on-the-nose parody of AI writing: It says essentially the same thing twice, prefacing its second second with the phrase "in other words." Had the piece actually been intentionally humorous, it might have continued with "to reiterate" and another repetition... but instead, it just went right on repeating itself in the second paragraph.

A human who was casually reading the above passage might think that it was decent enough, but the façade would crumble pretty quickly once that same human started to pay attention. Put in slightly harsh terms, AI output reads like what you'd expect from a supremely average tenth-grader following along with a book entitled "How To Write Your Term Paper In Ten Easy Steps." There's no motion or melody or meter to the words; no change-ups in tone or timbre that might match the meaning that's meant to emerge.

(What I just did there was pretty clunky, but I daresay you get the point.)

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sophware t1_jc5qdid wrote

To each their own. I don't see uncanny valley, like Polar Express. I might see mediocrity, like Law and Order episodes once you've seen more than a dozen.

I have seen many dozens, by the way, and enjoyed them for what they were. DUN DUN!

To my taste, ChatGPT used "in other words" well enough, better than some of my writing, and slightly better than writing that includes phrasing choices like "supremely average" and "pretty damn profound." 10th grade English teachers, writers, editors, and even some people who read for enjoyment might just judge those to be weak or lazy language. (Hopefully, the teasing comes across as good-natured. If not, I apologize.)

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