Jun 12, 2023·edited Jun 12, 2023Liked by Henry Oliver
I appreciate your having replied, but I can't see how being more productive is going to be relevant, let alone actually help matters, when the problem is a client base (built up over the course of 18 years) all-but destroyed (i.e. reduced to a level below that of critical mass for consistently good months) by a growing reliance on "AI" use. Truth be told, "ChatGPT" is entirely inferior to good human editors, and in fact, is not even fit for purpose in terms of the strict maintenance of deep-level syntactical, tonal, "voice" and logical coherence:-- or the effectiveness, and efficiency, thereby, of the writer's conveyance of meaning to the sensitive reader. The problem is, however, that with declining standards, "ChatGPT"'s sloppily churned out prose or edits is considered "good enough" these days. Regardless (even if "AI" as applied to writing and editing were actually as good or better than humans, which it is not), I really do not understand how any self-respecting scholar could touch "ChatGPT" with a 19-and-a-half-foot pole. It is an intellect- and faculty-destroying monstrosity that should be utterly proscribed. And I would say this even if my livelihood were not being destroyed by that monstrosity. I'm sorry to say this, as I have really enjoyed your work and would never want to insult you (though I've probably done that already). I'm sorry.
No insult at all. This is a free speech forum! Variability in how good ChatGPT is can be high depending on how you use it. Suspect there will be lots of ups and downs as to how much it gets used. If you think of it as a way more sophisticated Google it’s not intellect destroying but a complement. Agree many jobs will be affected but I can’t see how we can go back and we ought to make the most of it at the societal level. I don’t see it replacing editors but it will change their work significantly
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. Did you note my colon/dash combo there? :) Very Carlylean too, though as you said, it was used by a great number of writers in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Henry, I'm curious what prompts you used to experiment in it producing Audience identification and Marketing plans. Did you have to feed ChatGPT your manuscript for it to work? And finally, does ChatGPT need to have a source file uploaded or does it need to have the text available on a website for scraping? Thank you! -Christina
Yes you do need to give it the manuscript, I think, but of course, if you have a really good summary (such as from a book proposal) that would also be pretty good. I asked it for audiences *after* I got it to summarise the book etc, so that I knew it was understanding the aims etc. I used GPT-4 with plugins. The PDF readers simply didn't work for me (i.e. linking to a google doc, and I am not sure how to make them work). So I temporarily put my whole book online on a webpage no-one would go to (!) and linked to that using the web browsing feature. I would think if you got an API key and used the GPT function inside Google Docs it would work as well. I cannot find the specific prompts, but as we were mid-flow they were fairly simple. Get it to list audiences and what would appeal to them, then get it to make a plan to fit those audiences, then get it to elaborate for three sentences on each part of the plan. I have sent it to my publishers, so let's see if it works...
A discovery that you may already be aware of: If you begin the ChatGPT session by asking it to "read" and retain a style guide and to then apply that specific style guide to subsequent requests, it follows that style guide resulting in less mechanical editing.
I have to say that as a professional (academic) editor, this is all very, very disheartening.
I can see that but it will make you more productive!
I appreciate your having replied, but I can't see how being more productive is going to be relevant, let alone actually help matters, when the problem is a client base (built up over the course of 18 years) all-but destroyed (i.e. reduced to a level below that of critical mass for consistently good months) by a growing reliance on "AI" use. Truth be told, "ChatGPT" is entirely inferior to good human editors, and in fact, is not even fit for purpose in terms of the strict maintenance of deep-level syntactical, tonal, "voice" and logical coherence:-- or the effectiveness, and efficiency, thereby, of the writer's conveyance of meaning to the sensitive reader. The problem is, however, that with declining standards, "ChatGPT"'s sloppily churned out prose or edits is considered "good enough" these days. Regardless (even if "AI" as applied to writing and editing were actually as good or better than humans, which it is not), I really do not understand how any self-respecting scholar could touch "ChatGPT" with a 19-and-a-half-foot pole. It is an intellect- and faculty-destroying monstrosity that should be utterly proscribed. And I would say this even if my livelihood were not being destroyed by that monstrosity. I'm sorry to say this, as I have really enjoyed your work and would never want to insult you (though I've probably done that already). I'm sorry.
No insult at all. This is a free speech forum! Variability in how good ChatGPT is can be high depending on how you use it. Suspect there will be lots of ups and downs as to how much it gets used. If you think of it as a way more sophisticated Google it’s not intellect destroying but a complement. Agree many jobs will be affected but I can’t see how we can go back and we ought to make the most of it at the societal level. I don’t see it replacing editors but it will change their work significantly
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. Did you note my colon/dash combo there? :) Very Carlylean too, though as you said, it was used by a great number of writers in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Haha yes I did! The revival is underway and gpt cannot do that
Henry, I'm curious what prompts you used to experiment in it producing Audience identification and Marketing plans. Did you have to feed ChatGPT your manuscript for it to work? And finally, does ChatGPT need to have a source file uploaded or does it need to have the text available on a website for scraping? Thank you! -Christina
Yes you do need to give it the manuscript, I think, but of course, if you have a really good summary (such as from a book proposal) that would also be pretty good. I asked it for audiences *after* I got it to summarise the book etc, so that I knew it was understanding the aims etc. I used GPT-4 with plugins. The PDF readers simply didn't work for me (i.e. linking to a google doc, and I am not sure how to make them work). So I temporarily put my whole book online on a webpage no-one would go to (!) and linked to that using the web browsing feature. I would think if you got an API key and used the GPT function inside Google Docs it would work as well. I cannot find the specific prompts, but as we were mid-flow they were fairly simple. Get it to list audiences and what would appeal to them, then get it to make a plan to fit those audiences, then get it to elaborate for three sentences on each part of the plan. I have sent it to my publishers, so let's see if it works...
A discovery that you may already be aware of: If you begin the ChatGPT session by asking it to "read" and retain a style guide and to then apply that specific style guide to subsequent requests, it follows that style guide resulting in less mechanical editing.
Very cool--you can also ask it to “filter” i.e. filter out all instances of a certain words, or certain sorts of information.