AI for Writers, Cusp of Next Stage of Human Evolution?
Plus 4,000 steps or 10,000 steps and Avocados
Welcome to a fortnightly newsletter for those who aim to remain positive in the face of the challenges ageing brings. Let’s explore the ideas and experiences related to living in the second half of life, together. I’ve spent the last 30 years following the science of living healthily, mentally and physically, and putting it into practice. I continue to learn and share this knowledge in posts, podcasts and sometimes, videos. Subscribe to my newsletter for access to them.
This post was first published a year ago, when my substack was only five months old. The subjects are still very relevant today and we have many more subscribers, so I thought you’d find it interesting. I hope you do.
AI for Writers
There’s hardly a day goes by when I don’t find a conversation about AI on one or other of the forums for writers and Illustrators of which I’m a member on Facebook. It usually shows a complete divide in whether AI is a good thing or one to fear. Take today, for instance. A writer posed the question: who owns the copyright of text generated by AI?
A fellow writer responded with a news flash from Reuters he’d obviously been keeping for such an occasion which stated that ‘A work of art created by artificial intelligence without any human input cannot be copyrighted under US law a court in Washington DC has ruled’. That was countered by someone who said he had legal knowledge about the subject and that the Court’s finding could be overturned with the right information being put forward. After all, he said, there is human input in the prompt given to the AI chatbot.
Whether one should use AI chatbots as a writer is always at the heart of these discussions. Some see it as a useful tool for generating ideas to help with writing articles, books, social media posts, emails, etc. Then there are the ones who deplore the notion of using anything that the writers themselves haven’t produced from the depths of their own minds. There’s no doubt, books have been published that have been written and illustrated with AI apps. YouTube has evidence of this with self-publishers showing how they did it. The books are usually for children.
The new generation of AI chatbots such as ChatGPT has certainly created massive interest and much anxiety in many areas where the new technology can do the jobs of humans. Two facets seem to make it different from its predecessors. The first is that it can interact like a human when it’s being given instructions and can engage in conversation.
The other area is the way it generates its answers. It works a little like predictive text. It has been fed a massive amount of text from books, articles, conversations, and various other sources. From this it has built a model of what words tend to follow the previous text.
When I first read about it I wanted to see for myself, so I signed up to ChatGPT. First, I wanted to see if it could write a convincing short story. I had recently been studying the plot of a short story called The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant, a nineteenth century French author, and so asked ChatGPT to generate a new story based on the outline of the plot of The Necklace. At the end of the story, there is a twist. ChaptGPT came up with two new plots. Neither of them had the twist at the end that made the original story so memorable. This, to me, demonstrated a shortfall. The story wouldn’t work without the twist at the end.
However, I have continued to use it to generate ideas for and help with social media posts. The key seems to be to never use unaltered text from an AI chatbot but to paraphrase and rewrite it in your own words. One YouTuber suggested that you could feed examples of your own writing into ChatGPT so that it “gets” your style, then prompt it to write your blog posts, including the topics you want in your posts. Afterwards, feed the result into Quill Bot, another AI app, that will make it more “human” sounding, apparently. I haven’t tried this, but it sounds plausible.
Cusp of Next Stage of Human Evolution?
There’s clearly going to be a plethora of AI generated text in one form or another that’s thought to be originated by humans. Student assignments is one area that’s a cause for concern. ChatGPT can generate the software needed to create a website. Just how much is AI going to change human life? Looking at the bigger picture, it makes me wonder if we are on the cusp of the next stage in human evolution. The proponents of transhumanism may well think so. This is a philosophical movement that believes that humans will be able to transcend death eventually by technology, where a human personality is uploaded into a robotic body. Its the stuff of science fiction yet it doesn’t sound too far fetched now that AI has exploded on the scene.
After all we can’t put the genie back in the bottle. It’s not difficult to imagine a world where AI in various forms is doing all the work and society has to be reimagined. Humans wouldn’t need to work to live - to survive, even. It would be the end of capitalism. Scientists would have extended life way beyond what is imaginable now and perhaps the dream of transhumanists will be achieved: death will be overcome by technology.
Meanwhile, scientists continue to work on how to lengthen human life healthily and we regularly receive news of developments in the field. Billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg and Steven Bezos have poured money into this area. The publishing of the ongoing research enables us to use the results in our own ageing process. Life expectancy in rich countries was extending over the last hundred years, but lately it has slowed down, despite the new knowledge and medical developments. This is probably because there’s more poverty and inequality than might be expected in the 21st century.
I’ve been interested in all this for a few decades. It seemed common sense to me that taking responsibility for your own ageing process would help you go into older age with a better chance than if left to fate. So, for a long time I’ve been following the science and putting into practice the results of research on diet, exercise and other facets affecting our health as we age. I’m now in my mid-seventies and have written and published a book on how I got here guided by science.
4,000 Steps
I came across two findings from research recently that are currently influencing my lifestyle. One results from a meta-analysis of studies showing that 4,000 steps a day significantly reduces your risk of a premature death from cardiovascular disease, regardless of age. We’ve long been told that we need to walk 10,000 steps a day to gain longevity benefit but, apparently, this was a figure pulled out of the air by step tracker promotion and not based on evidence. Obviously, the more you can do the better, but it’s comforting to know that 4,000 steps, which can be accomplished in around 35 minutes, is beneficial. 10,000 steps take about an hour and a half, which is harder to find every day.
Avocados
The second scientific research result I discovered is much more of a disappointment for me. It involves avocados, which I love. The study was mentioned in a YouTube video I was watching, with two scientists discussing food and longevity (The Moss Report). One brought up the subject of a study from 2012 into the consumption of avocados, and the results were surprising. The study looked at the diets of a large number of people, over time. They found that men who ate more than one portion of avocado per week had 15% fewer incidents of cancer than those who ate none and in three common kinds of cancer, it was about a 30% decrease, an amazing result. However, there was no overall reduction in cancer amongst women who ate avocados.
In fact, in older women, there was a twenty-one percent increase in breast cancer cases. Well, I’m an older woman and I was eating around two avocados a week. I also have a gene that puts me at a higher risk of breast cancer! Apparently, as avocados are considered a health food, the scientists working on the study were so confused by this result that they ran a similar study on younger women. They found that the pro-cancer element was lacking with them. There was no effect either way. So! No more avocados for me unless this finding is discovered to be an error.
Leave a Comment:
What do you think of AI? Good or malign?
Were you surprised by the study on avocados, as I was?
I’d love to know in the comments. If you enjoyed reading the post tap, the share button and send the newsletter to friends who might enjoy it, too! Tapping the heart icon will show you liked it and help others find it. I appreciate each one of you who reads my posts.
If you find the newsletter and content I provide entertaining, get value out of it, and share my ethos of paying people for their work, please consider a paid subscription. It will give you access to the posts behind a paywall and a monthly video and chat for the paid subscriber community. Thank you for being here.
Great post 🙂
I’d say the approach you’re taking with AI seems to be a good one which is to try out and discover how to use it and then discover what you like about it and what you don’t like about it I guess I’d call that informed choice about this .
What fear is when people are so afraid about AI they don’t find out about it and they try and ignore it and hope it goes away while I understand that, emotional reaction it doesn’t seem to be a very good long-term approach for one’s own self being or even professionals survival we need to understand what these things are to be able to know if they’re good or not and engaging with them trying them out seems to be the best way to have an informed opinion about them and then to be able to say well, this is good because of this or this isn’t good because of this because it’s based on evidence and not only our feelings even though it’s important to acknowledge our feelings whatever they are
Just as social media was created with a positive purpose in mind, AI will probably take a dark turn. Bad actors always find ways to ruin a good thing. I haven't used it yet, so I need to learn more about it. Thanks for getting me started!