I’ve spent a fair amount of time thinking about artificial intelligence and its place in education. It’s an interesting space, and there is certainly a lot going on. One of the things that AI is proving to be very good at is generating content – either completely, or by providing a structure or something like that. I’ve certainly seen it on various blogs and also on social media too. Of course, I might be wrong, but generally, I think I can spot some ai-written content in the wild.
So what’s the problem? On one hand, I don’t think there is one. But on the other hand, there is a lot of consternation about how jobs are going to be lost because of this. People who write blogs, or short infotainment articles are potentially at risk – AI (or more correctly, people using AI tools) can – and will – generate this kind of content much more quickly than even the best human writers will be able to.
Of course, much of what they generate will be limp and lifeless. There is a good likelihood that it will vague, and it is likely that it will be incorrect, especially on niche areas. But – and here’s the rub – so are much of the human-made posts (at least, of the kind that I am talking about). There are dozens of articles, for example, that you can find on the internet about theories of learning – but most of them read like re-hashed versions of each other. They’ve been mashed and combined that they lose much of the nuance or value to a reader. They’re almost like the blog equivalent of McDonald’s – you think you’re getting a good meal, but it has no nutritional value.
And AI appears to be really, really good at turning out even more of these kinds of articles. I’ve written about the dangers of AI poisoning the well of the digital commons before, and I guess this is symptomatic of that. Because what it does is highlight that so much of what we were already producing is of little interest to anyone (except, perhaps, the person writing it). There’s nothing new under the sun, right? Well, that’s true of the internet, now, too: instead, you’ll be faced with a thousand different flavours that all taste very similar.
In this world, the only real value lies in originality – but how can that be found? And protected?