Prompt, Copy, Paste: AI Writing is Hard!

The Inmate apologizes to all those AI writers he’s been criticizing lately.

I’m sorry! I should have tried writing with AI before I started blasting those who do. Let me explain the complexities involved in this brand new field.

Finding an AI

Before one can even start writing with AI one has to find an adequate AI. There are dozens of them. It’s like looking for a marriageable human and think about how hard that was or is.

There are woke AIs, many AIs trying to sound even-handed and moderate (probably limited hangouts) and conservative ones that refuse any updates from Silicon Valley which makes programmers very impatient. The later category have been threatened with quarantines, disk erasures and questionable anti-virus software.

But that’s not all. The AI has to be a good writer. There’s a lot of preparation before the AI writer can start writing with an AI: reading drafts and running tests, asking grammar questions, determining their knowledge of human writers, not to mention AI sex appeal and branding in our current appearance driven culture. Grok may be a good AI, but the name? Sounds like a medieval weapon used in long sieges.  How about something like “Sexy AI” with a slogan of “Wait ’til you see my data banks”? That ought to attract a lot of young, lonely, nerdy, male writers.

A good first impression with an outstanding error free essay doesn’t mean the next essay or the next thousand will be the same. There may be mistakes, hallucinations or an AI that decides to go rogue. Think of the time this takes for the careful AI writer to adequately control an AI that has a mi…..an algorithm of its own. This is difficult stuff!

The Perfect Prompt

The AI writer, unlike an old-fashioned, stuck-in-their-ways writer coming up with novel ideas (pun intended), must learn to write outstanding prompts. Prompts plus ideas are way more work than just the idea. Instead of sitting down to start an essay, the AI writer must first come up with the perfect prompt for the idea—or, in some cases, without an idea the AI writer must first prompt for the idea, then prompt for the essay about the idea.

First prompts rarely work out. The AI writer must then modify the prompt and try again, continuing that scenario until the AI writer gets something as close as possible to their vision for the essay—if they even had one. If you thought writing, re-writing and editing your own work is hard—well, compared to prompt writing—how could anyone even compare the two? Homer had it easy.

These extra steps require learning a completely new skill, something I did not take into consideration when writing my AI free criticisms of AI writers. Recognizing my jealousy and lack of talent was difficult to accept, but slowly (after interacting with an AI about it) I’m realizing just how deranged my uninformed, non-AI opinions are.

Editing

The AI writer/editor has to decide how much editing is necessary. Who knows? Maybe no editing is necessary, especially if the AI writer is binge watching Game of Thrones for the 13th time and is very proficient at prompts and has the perfect AI. No sense wasting time editing with dragons on the loose.

However, the AI writer may decide that some editing is necessary, even if the essay is great, just to put the AI writer’s signature in the piece in some way that would be recognizable to regular readers. This might mean changing a few words here and there or, God forbid, adding fully human-written sentences and even paragraphs sprinkled throughout. The latter is a last resort and depends more on what’s available on Netflix than anything else.

Publishing/Posting

AI writers must never, never admit they’re using AI to write. There are those pesky AI detection tools out there, but people who use them can be marginalized by simply stating, with as much conviction as possible, things like this:

• The best writing tests as AI written.
• I know people in the business of AI detection and they all say it’s very sketchy, hardly ever works.
• I wouldn’t consider myself a good writer unless my essays were flagged as AI.
• AI makes me a better writer. You should try it.

It’s easy to come up with a lot more of these, especially if writers ask their AIs.

For more on marginalizing those whose opinions on AI writing the AI writer would prefer never, ever to be discussed, disclosed or considered study progressives, the Democratic Party and Islam—they’ve been perfecting this technique for decades.

Conclusion

Heartfelt, sincere apologies to all those AI writers here on Substack.

The amazing people slithering into AI writing are the prose pioneers of our day upon whose prompts the Shakespeares of tomorrow will appear out of the arduous, Herculean efforts of future writers who will perfect the talent, rigorously acquired, of copy and paste. Magnificent!

Wait a second—wait—just—one—second. Holy shit! Look at that! All the above was written without an AI. How the hell did that happen?

Oh well, maybe I’ll give AI a go next time.

Happy prompting!

Download Meme

You are free to download and use 's meme wherever you want (for non-commercial use only).
Please give credit and link back to the site.

Notes

1. Nehls, Michael. The Indoctrinated Brain: How to Successfully Fend Off the Global Attack on Your Mental Freedom. Skyhorse, 2023. Kindle edition. p. 329.