From the Fall of Content Millsto the Rise of AI Content:
AI Shapes Content, Humans Own Emotion:
If AI was something distant to everybody in the year before last, it turned out to be a godsend for most professionals, especially those in the writing industry. Journalists like yours truly, so to speak, are not excluded. We stepped into 2024 from 2023 well aware that AI is simply a matter of giving a prompt about what the writers need, and then resting assured about content generation.
This reminds me of what I read elsewhere about the evolution of Google’s algorithm updates. Those in Search Engine Optimization are well aware of this ‘menacing’ thing called algorithm updates. SEOs work their best to align with the algorithm update introduced by Google to increase their rank and visibility on the search engine results page, only to be introduced to another update a few weeks or months later. The algorithm update functions in an automated form, and the constant updates stem from human intervention, with a significantly interesting reason.
When Google introduced its milestone algorithm update called the Helpful Content Update, they specifically mentioned that search engine results need to be user-friendly and SEOs must ensure that the content is written for humans and not just for search engines. Now, this is tricky. The primary duty of any SEO specialist is to increase the rank and visibility of a particular website, so they are catering to the search engine in a manner of speaking. This is where we need to get to the bottom of Google’s philosophy. The search engine giant certainly meant content mills that produce lorem ipsum-type content stuffed with keywords solely aiming for visibility increase. Google’s HCU specifically wanted SEOs and content creators to buck this trend and produce useful content that is helpful for the user.
Emergence of Content Mills
Content mills were the thing, and it still seems to be a menace springing up now and then. Key in some keywords related to avoiding Covid-19, and you will come across several web pages with almost identical results, or sometimes, the information is not really worth the time.
That issue seems to have subsided thanks to the constant rolling of Google’s HCU. Then again, any menace can surface in a different form – AI in this case. I came to know about the existence of Chat GPT during a content writing workshop conducted in a virtual sphere. My supervisor introduced me to both Chat GPT and subsequently Google Bard on one condition: never use them to generate content. I was, however, allowed to get assistance from these AI tools.
When I tried out both tools, their potential mesmerized me. It was just a matter of giving them a prompt on what we need, and they would take care of the rest. The impression at first use forced me to carry on with these tools clandestinely, but my supervisor was not one to be fooled. She detected whenever I solely made use of the tools rather than getting their assistance. At first, I was taken aback by her flair for detection. Later on, in my slow and steady journey of becoming au fait with the rules of the game, I developed an idea of how my supervisor came to detect the AI-written content.
Monotony is the key. Every time we praise Artificial Intelligence, we tend to forget the presence of Emotional Intelligence. Artificial intelligence acts robotic and produces almost human-like content but is nearly monotonous. Emotional intelligence, on the contrary, is quite different. Those who lobby for artificial intelligence can well argue that this phenomenon can be attributed to the nascent stage of AI and that it would overcome such hurdles in the future. Even then, we cannot simply forget the driving force behind such changes: human intervention, which represents emotional intelligence.
Predictable Pattern
Online tools are readily available for identifying both plagiarized and AI-generated content. In my limited understanding, AI-generated content is less prone to plagiarism concerns. Take Chat GPT, for example—it produces content based on its generative pre-trained data, which avoids direct copying. However, this content tends to exhibit monotonous sentence structures and a repetition of words. Savvy readers familiar with Chat GPT’s patterns can detect such occurrences easily without relying on online detection tools.
Herein lies the dilemma. While in 2023 there was a belief that AI could replace writers by generating massive volumes of content, 2024 perhaps compels us to reflect on the wisdom of entrusting AI tools with such tasks. Continuation of this approach risks building a readership fatigued by the predictable patterns of sentences and words.
To make matters worse, excessive dependence on AI dwindles our innate cognitive capacity. Enter the keyboard, and it made the job of 21st-century writers much easier compared to the previous generation. However, it weakened the human brain and memory capacity, as research suggests. Type quickly, and you often tend to forget much of what is typed. On the contrary, longhand writing compels you to go slow, yet proves resourceful for memory retention in the long run. Time was when writers were a distinct species, employing literacy, linguistic prowess, knowledge, and analytical skills in their craft. With all that now confined to a command prompt, writers run the risk of losing a combination of skills.
That said, let AI stay there for our assistance alone – rather than opting for a replacement. Imagining a future where AI entirely replaces human jobs, especially in professions like medicine, is a bit funny to imagine. Plus, expecting AI to generate original and creative content without monotony poses difficulties. Perhaps AI could effectively take over mundane tasks, such as data entry or even basic spell-check, but the prospect of it replacing jobs that demand human creativity and understanding is something unthinkable.
Humanity is becoming digitalized at a pace beyond our imagination and measurement. But a completely digitalized species in the virtual sphere would just be a mere fantasy that most of us would like to entertain. Digitality is a stratosphere where humans cannot alienate from their own species entirely. The humanness in the digitalize human would never evaporate. Humans would seem digitalized on the surface, but the humanness core would prevail as a parallel of sorts.
Sachitra Mahendra