Remember that time I made an AI generate a blog post for me? Well, the recent memes of AI generated greentexts and of course Markiplier making a video about his adventures with Inferkit have gotten me back into trying to generate an entire blog post with AI assistance.

First the results. Here we go!

I’m not a morning person. I don’t like getting up early, and I’m definitely not a fan of mornings. But there are a few things that I’ve found that make morning a little bit better. Here are my top five tips for making morning a little bit better.

5. I Get to Relax

I don’t know about you, but I’ve definitely missed out on some of the fun and relaxation when I was out trying to get things done early in the morning. I get up at 4:00 a.m., and I can barely make it to work on time. By the time I do, I’m usually so exhausted that I’m ready for a nap.

6. I Get the Day Off

One of my favorite things about working at home is that I don’t have to worry about getting to work at a certain time. I get to work when I want to, so I get the day off. Even if I do have an appointment, I can reschedule it. And if I do end up working past 9:00 a.m., I can take that rest time I need to recharge and be able to get back to work without any problems.

7. I Don’t Use the Bathroom in the Middle of the Day

There’s nothing worse than getting up in the middle of the day and realizing that you have to go to the bathroom. As hard as it is to get up earlier in the day, I have to admit that this can really be a lifesaver for those mornings when I know I won’t be able to make it to the bathroom on time.

8. I Get to Spend Time With My Family

I love spending time with my family, and I know that they enjoy spending time with me. But I also know that they don’t always want to be around me when I’m working. So, getting up early in the morning gives me the chance to spend some quality time with them without having to worry about work.

9. I Get to Exercise

I know that some people don’t like to exercise in the morning, but I really enjoy it. I find that it gets my day started off on the right foot and it helps me to stay focused throughout the day. And, it’s a great way to get some of my daily steps in.

10. I Get to Enjoy the Peace and Quiet

There’s something about the peace and quiet of the morning that I really enjoy. I can’t explain it, but it’s just something that I love. I find that I’m able to get a lot more done when I don’t have to worry about the noise of the day.

So, those are my top five tips for making morning a little bit better. I hope that you find them helpful and that you’re able to use them to make your mornings a little bit better.

And that’s as far as I got. I used two different AI tools to generate this – the first is Open AI’s playground, source of the memetic greentexts that you sometimes see on social media. Open AI allows you to ask the AI a question and get an answer. I asked it to ‘Write the beginning to an interesting blog post’. I then input what I got into Inferkit, and then back and forth between Open AI and Inferkit.

The results aren’t exactly what you would call stunning. You can still tell that an AI wrote these – or maybe just someone who isn’t a very good writer but an excellent blogger. We’re a far cry from the structured stories we sometimes see produced on social media, which leads me to think – and I almost never think this – ‘Yeah, that happened.’

I don’t usually care about truth and veracity on the internet. I gain as much entertainment from the story if it was fake as I would have if it was true. Finding out a story was fake usually makes me think ‘Oh, really?’ and I go on praising the story as I would have. In fact, I kind of think those people who call out stories for being fake humorless bastards. Who cares? I don’t need a story to be true to be entertained by it. I don’t need it to have actually happened the way it was told. I could read a true account and be bored to tears. Also, from personal experience writing this blog, not a lot of interesting things happen on the reg for me to only post interesting things written in an interesting way that actually happened. Two out of three is good enough. Listen, if you’re one of those ‘that happened’ people, go outside and touch some grass. Reality ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. Not everything has to be real to be entertaining.

Okay okay rant over.

This time, though, I feel a bit disappointed. Not in the story, that’s still hilarious, but the fact that we can’t actually generate such stories using AI yet. I know, I know – as a writer, I should be afraid of the fact that an AI can do my job better than I can. But as I mentioned in my review of AI 2041, I’ve been turned on to the excitement, the possibilities that can occur with AI. Once machines learn how to write, they’ll learn how to DeepFake – once they learn that, they’ll learn how to drive, and after that they’ll learn how to pilot unmanned drones that eliminate targets without mercy (confused? Read AI 2041).

It’s also a bit frustrating that despite the fact that this technology is in its infancy, access to the full features of the software requires payment. I am in full support of people getting paid for their work, but with the current state of the technology I don’t think it’s worth the money just yet. The most value I can see in it is in generating or continuing a prompt, trying to get the brain juices flowing, yet for the most part the text generated is…well, see above. I had planned to just get a few lines out and take it from there – I really did – but the text generated is just so…boring.

I think it’s way too soon for me to start worrying about dem robots taken oor jerbs.

Perhaps that’s what we mean when we say that a robot can’t write with soul. When you try to guess what would most likely come after a certain word, the next word would be the most common word possible to come after that word, given what has come before it. And when it’s the most common word…you lose all inventiveness, all layers of meaning. You don’t get sudden twists of language, the turns of phrases, the rising build up to something meaningful in the end. That’s what I wanted from the AI because that’s what the meme said was possible. That isn’t what I got.

AI writing tools shouldn’t replace humans – in fact, I think what will happen is we writers would use them to create better pieces of writing, stuff that is both as well written as possible and yet touches the souls of people across the world. The marriage of technical ability and human connection – that was the future envisioned by Kai – Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan. A world where AI enhances the human ability to live, not destroy it or replace it. For some tasks – like write up a paragraph describing the pleasure dome in which the Shah lived with his fourteen queens and thirty consorts, for example – we may leave that to the AI with a simple command.

Describe a palace, similar in style to the ancient Persians. Draw attention to the water features, and how people move through the building.

Meanwhile it is up to the writer to make the important decisions. To decide which of the consorts love him and hate him, if the Shah is cruel or meek, if a war is brewing if there is a lasting peace throughout the empire.

And you know what? I think I have just realised why the text generated wasn’t very good. I didn’t do any of that, instead I expected the AI to do the heavy lifting. Didn’t I say AI and writer needed to work in tandem to create a story, a piece of writing that can only exist with the advent of AI and AI assisted writing? Too much of the AI leads to boring writing – too much of the human can be messy, and take too much time without automation.

Well, one thing’s for sure. This isn’t the last time I try blogging without an AI’s help.