The trouble with AI

[eller]

AAARGH. I just wanted chatgpt's help to structure a text. You know - what should be in the introduction, how long should each part be for easy reading, and so on. Unsurprisingly, I'm shit at this stuff, but usually, the AI is of great help - at least when it comes to nonfiction with clear structural requirements. (Letting the AI write texts is, of course, hopeless, so I won't even try. Letting the AI organize text structures before I just write stream-of-consciousness stuff, however? I mean, that could save me some headaches.) Trying to let it organize fiction, however? Wow. WOW. Today, I learned that chatgpt is really Very Fucking American.

Things I learned:
- The AI will not just try to reorganize the plot around an acceptable novella structure (which, after all, is what I asked it to do) but flag any character behavior for editing that does not conform to American cultural standards.
- The AI told me that my characters are too obsessed with honor and duty and I should consider editing that. I'm like... WAIT... I'm actually writing a Fantasy!Medieval!North!Germany setting. With Fantasy!Medieval!North!German characters with according cultural background and mindset. (Come on. It's fucking Germany. At least some of the characters take their oaths seriously...) Apparently, Germany written by a German is not acceptable by genre standards...
- The AI completely unasked (!) changed a scene description from a male character making tea for the group to a female character making the tea. Thanks for the casual sexism, I guess.
- The AI described a female character as "flirtatious". She's... not. She is, however, speaking to male characters. In, you know, plot-related ways. Apparently, that's yet another thing the AI can't handle. (Not a problem with the technology itself, I know, but definitely with the training dataset. WTF.)
- The AI completely unasked (!) tried to give a genderfluid character an issuefic subplot centered around Gender!Angst!American!Style. I mean, I onbviously don't expect an American piece of software to understand historical German ways of gender expression... which is why I didn't ask it to. This character has a perfectly acceptable subplot centered around military technology and espionage, and.no gender issues whatsoever, thanks.
- The AI really wants to change the magic system (which is, of course, North German as fuck, considering the setting) to something ripped off Tolkien.
- The AI is shit at interpreting character motivations in ways that are actually pretty hilarious.

Thanks for the non-help. -_-

Comments

[sabotabby]

Honestly, I think those kinds of thought experiments start to get into Effective Altruist/Rationalist territory. Eventually you get to "well what if AI could solve all of humanity's problems and upload us into a utopian singularity would it be worth it then" and that is just not useful on a policy level, because it's fantasy. We need to look at real consequences now, real places experiencing drought where these companies are building data centres, real economic damage caused by VC speculation, real layoffs because middle managers can't distinguish between good and good-enough news reporting, real misinformation, real dead kids in Gaza. Material reality, not what ifs.

I don't think defining "new" is nearly that hard. Is the thing generating a report on where it finds a pattern in medical data, or is the thing pretending to be a poet?