I will not accept AI and writing - no way.

Being called a "Luddite" is sort of a badge of honor for me.

Up to a few months ago, I was posting on my other Substack newsletter, “AI is For Sheep.” As a writer and English teacher 63 years old, I am not buying in to the rush to use AI. While teaching 6th graders since 2015, I refused to allow my students to use AI for anything. It was an automatic zero on any assignment.

I was in the minority. I’m still a bit angry about how my principle in 2023 told the faculty we needed to become “experts’ on AI so we could teach it to our students. I immediately blurted out, “This is terrible! I hate this.”

I refused to do it. I was teaching 12-year-olds to read and write and think, and the last thing they needed was was an AI program doing any of that for them.

I began having my students read articles about problems with AI systems. They needed some balance. I know some of my colleagues didn’t like my opinion, but I didn’t care.

People can say things like, “But AI is coming, you can’t stop progress!” Maybe not, but others can teach it if they want. I retired from full-time teaching last spring in part due to the big push to implement AI in our classrooms.

On “AI is for Sheep” (It is still there), I really tried to write about legitimate problems with AI and make valid arguments. I posted 47 issues of the newsletter. I even started a comic, “Sheppy”. I’m no artist, but it has been fun.

Here is the first one:

I just found I didn’t have the time to work and write and keep up two newsletters, so I have stopped posting there. I have also been happy to see others on Substack joining the anti-AI team with their newsletters, so I’ll try to reply there. when I see something. I’ll also post occasional AI articles here. I’ll also post all the Sheppy comics. Let me know if you would like me to create more. I had fun with it and would like to post more here.

So with that off my chest, Here is a link to an article I spotted this week:

The AI Industry Has a Huge Problem: the Smarter Its AI Gets, the More It's Hallucinating.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

To some experts, hallucinations may be inherent to the tech itself, making the problem practically impossible to overcome.

"Despite our best efforts, they will always hallucinate," AI startup Vectara CEO Amr Awadallah told the NYT. "That will never go away."

Please check out the article. It seems there are more and more problems with these AI systems, even as some people are addicted to using them. Just in the past few days, I’ve read 5 articles about problems with AI being unreliable. Often the programmers admit to not understanding how it works. Yet people praise it. I can’t believe how money people are wasting on these AI programs. Billions.

On another topic, I’m still considering going the self publishing route with Shame of Kings. I did get a bit of a positive message from an editor, and it felt good. I just don’t love the gatekeeper aspect of getting an agent. It is so subjective. If I decide to self publish, I want to do it with a clear strategy and plan. One decision will be if I want to spend any money on that process. What do you think?

Thanks for reading,

Will