Ian Is Typing
On the use of an AI author alongside humans.
Near the start of this week, I tried to express to my coworkers on Slack that their upcoming test of a clearly disclosed AI author for UploadVR should do a couple things:
The bot’s submissions should favor brevity, making clear to UploadVR’s audience that its voice is different from the humans writing for UploadVR, and it is focused on giving people what they need to know without any extra time wasted on extra words. It has no views or thoughts, the words provided to readers should reflect that. If you are using it to rewrite press releases, the “article” should be much much shorter than the release.
Readers should be offered a simple toggle to turn off the bot’s submissions to keep UploadVR as a place for some of its readership where they only scroll through headlines made by humans. This is absolutely critical to me and my work, and the space I work to make for other staff writers and freelancers. I do not want to see their work competing for eyeballs with a robot.
The bot’s submissions should be “assigned” to it only after humans have right of refusal to the subject matter.
Despite my title “Editor in Chief” of UploadVR, I could not see any of these concerns addressed before they planned to move forward with a public test that was to be performed this week.
Unable to shift the direction of my colleagues and out of options to affect what was coming, I stepped out of Slack and sent a final email to them on Wednesday morning with a number of my contacts in the industry copied, raising some of these concerns. Not long after, I was called by my boss and fired.
Let me tell you something I’ve learned at age 40 after a single divorce and a single firing. You’re afraid of both before they happen, but the relief at dissolving a partnership that isn’t working is 100 percent the same.
My exit frees UploadVR salary they can now use to bring in and train new human writers. And if my former colleagues return to the subject of the bot they were going to launch this week, my hope is that the features I’ve asked for here are present for the good of everyone.
The only thing that’s real about VR is the people. That is my focus and always will be.
As little as we wanna play games entirely made with AI and prompting. As little we wanna read articles by a AI. Thanks for standing your ground.
I am sorry you are not part of UploadVR anymore but taking the same action, (sending such communications about internal discussions to outside people), at anyplace I have ever worked would have resulted in a termination.