AI-Written Article Makes a Case for Your Attention: Will You Read It?

As we stand at the cusp of a new era of artificial intelligence, we are faced with a curious paradox: humans reading articles written by machines.

Francesco Marconi
2 min readJan 5, 2023
Source: DALL·E 2 — prompt: “Draw a surrealist painting of J Scott Fitzgerald writing, while a robot stands next to him.”

Imagine, if you will, a writer sitting at their desk, pen in hand, composing a masterpiece. The words flow from their mind and onto the page, each one a unique and beautiful snowflake, a testament to their individuality and creativity. Now contrast that with a machine, churning out words with cold, calculated precision, devoid of emotion or personal experience.

As we read an article written by AI, we are confronted with a worldview that is fundamentally different from our own. While we as humans are bound by our emotions and personal experiences, the machine is unfettered by such limitations. It is a strange and unsettling sensation, as if we are looking at the world through a distorted lens, one that is both familiar and yet fundamentally alien.

But the consequences of acquiring information that has been machine generated go beyond simply the way it makes us feel. It forces us to confront the very nature of knowledge itself and ask ourselves what it truly means to understand the world around us. Do we rely on the unique perspective of our fellow humans, or do we cede that role to the cold, calculating machines? The answer, as with so much in life, is a complex and nuanced one. But one thing is certain: as we move towards a future where AI plays an increasingly prominent role in our lives, we must not lose sight of the importance of human perspective and the value of individual experience.

So, who is the true author of this article? The human who provided the prompts, or the machine that transformed them into words?

The headline and body of this article have been algorithmically generated by chatGPT using the following prompts:

Headline Prompt: Make this headline sound more newsy: “Will you read this thoughtful article written by AI?”

Body Prompt #1 “Describe the paradox of a human reading an article written by AI, highlighting the consequences of acquiring information that has been machine generated. Write it using the literary style of J Scott Fitzgerald.”

Body Prompt #2: “In the second paragraph, juxtapose the process of human writing and machine writing”

Body Prompt #3: “Add a thought provoking sentence at the end questioning the authorship of this article.”

--

--