New Year, back on this with a post

 I've been dancing around blogging again. So here's in a public post I made on LinkedIn about AI-generated writing with services like ChatGPT and the anxiety over authenticity, from a Communication perspective. 

I talk about my favorite precalculus teacher and getting acting headshots done during grad school--all in one post. :) Enjoy! 

Clearly, the race to cover our bases when it comes to automated paper writing through services like ChatGPT, is definitely on.  The popularity of my last post indicates that the anxiety over automated processes encroaching on the creative, as well as the need to engage in dialogue about this with some perspective is also warranted.

The comparisons with calculators are a common one. During my undergraduate Computer Science days, my first year precalculus instructor banned calculators. It wasn't terrible, because he designed our pen and paper exams with that fact in mind. The test questions centered around whether or not we understood the concept. If we got it right, the correct answer would spit out a pretty round number. No need for a calculator (which, in a typical hastily constructed exam, would have spit out a messy number that I would have had to put into its memory in order to reuse etc etc). It was pedagogically brilliant.

A less common comparison has me thinking about When I was getting headshots done for my talent agency, the rules at that time (20 years ago) were strict: black and white, no digital alterations. I had very little control over my self-presentation. My agent went through the Casting Workbook service (online, digital), but it was primarily my agent submitting me for gigs. This helped suss out legitimate outfits that were worth the time and trouble, but also relied upon the imaginations of the casting directors and higher level executives which were more limited at the time.
With each year, more and more became digital. Mistakes (like makeup catching a scar the wrong way in a photograph) could simply be blurred out, teeth whitened, or a slight asymmetry made symmetrical.  

This change was fast but the distinct changes in practice were shocking to me each time. Compare that to the range of practices we can now readily observe via apps like Instagram.  
As the written word goes through similar disruptive changes in practice, we'll see more discourse about authenticity along the way.

We hobble along in our imperfection nonetheless.