AI don't think so!

This week I found out that LinkedIn had started using our posts to train AI without telling us. It’s a site that encourages you to share your ideas and now it’s using them to feed into computer programs without checking with you first if that’s ok.

I don’t know why anyone thinks that because words are available on websites or in books that they are fair game for being copied.

I also don’t understand the value of computer generated material when it comes to sharing ideas and sparking conversations.

The value in creating ‘content’ – whether that’s writing a story, telling people the latest developments in your area or industry, talking about your favourite TV show, or sharing information about you and your business – is that it’s come from you. We’re humans and we communicate with each other.

Writing isn’t for everybody, just as talking on camera, or on stage isn’t, but you can use your words from one medium to create material in another medium.

We might need help with messaging, but that’s done through talking about the topic and working out the best way to present it.

A computer program can search a whole load of information very quickly and pull out key details. You might feel the computer ‘knows’ more than you do. But the information it has all came from research, books, and other materials made by humans who aren’t credited.

You might also wish you sounded more like someone you admire. For example, I’m not funny. I know people who are funny get a lot of traction for obvious reasons, but that’s not me. I could put my work into a computer program and ask it to make me funnier, but then when you met me, you’d be confused because I don’t come across that way in real life.

If we end up in a world where computers are generating material for other computers to read and agree to show to us what the heck is the point?

It all ends up being tick box, dull, tropey, and formulaic.

All this begs the question: where are creatives to go?

And is this another nail in the coffin of social media where algorithms decide what you see, and what you don’t?

There’s nothing social about computer generated dross being traded across the ether.

I want to know what you think. I want to hear what you’ve been doing. I want to know your approach. I want to find out what you’ve read, watched, or listened to and what you enjoyed about it.

If everything ends up grey, none of us will be looking at it anyway. We’ll all be searching for something more interesting to occupy ourselves with elsewhere.

UPDATE

LinkedIn has updated its Terms of Service and said the UK will not be included in AI training at the moment, so the opt out/in has been removed because it doesn’t apply. It is still there if you live in some other countries. You can read the update here.