A Love Hate Relationship with Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is a touchy subject for many. A.I. art is filling social media platforms, choking out real artists, and many are using it to create propaganda. At first, it was a little funny to see people sharing A.I. images thinking they were real. But it has quickly turned in a major problem, for a multitude of reasons. I’m not even going to touch the subject of how A.I. steals from artists. What I do want to talk, er write about, is the complicated relationship I have with artificial intelligence.

For 20 years, I worked regularly as a freelance content writer for various companies. This career was very lucrative at times, and even acted as our main source of income for many years. I weathered all the bumps that came from freelance writing, like Google changing their search results to push what they considered “content mills” down on the search list. And while there where many instances that had me rethinking my career choice, work was always there and I could still make decent money.

That is until around Spring of 2023 when A.I., specifically ChatGPT and the like, came barreling onto the scene. It didn’t take long for things to spiral downward. Clients and platforms would accuse freelance writers of using artificial intelligence., thanks to bullshit A.I. detectors flagging completely original work as written by artificial intelligence. Then once companies decided that paying for high quality content written by professional writers was no longer worth the cost, the mass exodus of clients began.

I haven’t written anything for a paying client in 6+ months. And I don’t see the abundance of work at I once had pre 2023 coming back anytime soon. I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am.

So, it’s only natural that I would hate ChatGPT. But I also love it in some ways.

Confusing, right? I know!

The truth is, I utilize ChatGPT for our small business. It has helped us immensely, especially when writing social media posts. I’m not someone who can convey what I want to say in only a few characters. I write in paragraphs. I am long-winded. So it is hard for me to come up with simple messages that convey what I want to say in an interesting and concise way.

This is where ChatGPT comes in handy. I can write my paragraph, no matter how long-winded it is, and tell ChatGPT to create a social media post with it. And with a click of a button… Voila! I am presented with an almost perfect post that I can share on our business social media pages. This saves us a ton of time and energy, both of which we are in short supply of.

The irony of using a tool that has essentially taken away my ability to make a living with the career I have loved for 20 years is not lost on me. I know that corporations are going to use artificial intelligence to make the lives of workers and people who don’t have an abundance of money worse. I mean, look at what the movie industry has tried to do to SAG-AFTRA. Corporations are not our friends and will always value profits over people, but that’s a blog post or another day.

But how can I ignore a tool that can help us with our small business? Is it ethical for me to use ChatGPT to create social media posts for us? Am I just trying to convince myself that it’s okay? Or is it really fine?

I’m not sure if I’ll ever have these questions answered with certainty. What are your thoughts on the use of artificial intelligence?