When I think about the school work that I had to do when I was in 4th grade, I remember going to the public library to study from other author’s books and collecting pieces of information that others didn’t have. It was confusing, but it made me realize I was exploring new territory, on my own, and actually digging up to look up for more details on a given subject. Of course, that was before the web. I used to make collages, also, and pick a pair of scissors to cut objects, people, scenes from movies, animations and all sorts of graphic design inventions at magazine editorials to make my own work look like a version of a story that I published myself, and so I took some time thinking about presentation, but also about the text. It was hard work, but today, you can find entire chapters of history summarized on Wikipedia.

The thing with this network is particular because it is, after all, free and made possible by its editors, who don’t earn any money from it. You see, the thought of having information available to the public sounded like a perfect world that we were seeking to live in, and now that we have all the tools, we have to worry about things like misinformation, scams and many other security related subjects. The libraries had a card with our name, address and phone number; the websites collect all sorts of information about us via cookies, and we have to be somehow content because they’re going to use them to improve the service. Enter the discussion of AI training, which allegedly started as early as 2007 by Facebook, and is being followed by the media closely.

If you have software like Designrr, which apparently relies on one of the latest ChatGPT versions, it generates a full book with just a few prompts. I’m gonna be honest: I use AI, but I write all my text and then I use a lot of Google News and some of Bing/Copilot to answer questions for me, like: “how many books do teenagers read on average in the United States?” (four to five, say Pew Research and Book Riot, so although I haven’t heard of the latter, I’m gonna go with it because Pew has a distinct name). But without this filtering, I’m not being accurate. When was the information collected? What were the highest and lowest percentages? Do other factors come into play (as Bing points out, school assignments)? It seems that if people use AI indiscriminately, they’ll just write the full essay, the full book, the complete work, all with a few clicks and they’ll be ready to go. But who approved this? Is the new skill the skill of labeling and categorization? Are we suddenly all librarians, instead of people doing school work at the library’s table?

It ticks me off a bit, especially because, in the case of Designrr, these are paid tools, and they burn my work to the ground. I’m a self-published author, and I care immensely about the themes I’ve brought into debate with society and with students. If someone’s got better ideas, maybe I don’t wanna hear them, out of sheer spite. But if I can learn to use the tools available to me to make my work more relevant, accurate and updated enough to be put at the forefront of a debate, then I suppose I can still call myself a teacher, a blogger, an author. But let’s not even discuss what’s happening in the Academia.