Grammarly strikes me as an early version of the AI-powered chatbots that have been in the news lately. Or at least a product of the same process. Both are canned, reflecting committee thinking in a depersonalized way.
Of course it's natural that such a technology would spread. A lot of people are required to write for their jobs and/or forms and applications, but don't consider themselves writers. Since they're not trying to express themselves, it's no surprise they're happy to delegate a lot of it to an app in their computer. Still, it's a simple way to get your work hijacked.
2 comments:
I'd never even heard of Grammarly before now but, since I'm not a writer, I guess that comes as no surprise. I even dismantled the spell checker on my mac because it kept interfering with my thought processes. If I happen to misspell a word then it will just have to stay that way.
One thing I've noticed recently is just how many mistakes I'll find in articles and even some books. Usually they are spelling errors, or the word is spelled correctly but it's the wrong word to use in context. My general conclusion is that the manuscript or article wasn't proofread by a person but by a program.
Chatbots sound like weird development to me - at least as far as having one as a friend goes.. Of course, the fact that they can make things up and even tell lies if they can't find the answer in their databases does make them sound like people one might know.
I see the logic--or maybe "appeal" is a better world--of turning off spellcheck and letting your thought processes roam. I'm not quite that confident myself. For me there's a difference between getting help with things like spelling and verb agreement; and outsourcing your actual writing process.
That's something I've noticed too. Misspellings and wrong word choices, especially with homophones like "to" and "too." And you'll see these mistakes in places you wouldn't expect. Editing is probably a rush job if it happens at all. That has to do with writing being redefined as a kind of piecework as well.
AI art programs like Dall-E essentially just grab images off the web and meld them together. Chatbots are essentially remixers as well. They'll express x thought in a voice copied from y. As it turns out most of them are pretty closely entrenched in current politcs.
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