Hi everyone,
Until now I have remained out of the debates about the rapidly expanding uses of AI. Today I’ll share an experience I had with it last night that I think needs to be shared. Our son, JEFF, decided on a whim to ask Google’s AI, Gemini, to quote a poem by David L. Harrison. It did so immediately.
But I didn’t write the poem. I never would have written such a poem. Anyone anywhere who might try the same approach to find a poem by me would see, instead, a fabrication created by AI or at the least a poem written by another party and be misled.
Jeff sent a note back to Gemini and said the poem was not written by David L. Harrison. Gemini responded with an apology. It said, “You’re absolutely right I apologize for the oversight. It seems I accessed a poem that wasn’t by David L. Harrison. To rectify this, I recommend visiting his official website or exploring his published works. If you’d like, I can try to find a specific poem by him if you provide a title or theme.”
If I had received that response in the first place, no flags would have gone up. So why didn’t AI do that instead of sending a poem that was either written by someone else or by AI itself?
Curious now, Jeff sent a similar request to Gemini, asking for a sample of work written by a writer friend of his. Back came a sample of work. But his friend didn’t write it. Who did? Who knows?
There is a very loose and very large cannon among us now. I know that it has many fine applications and is only beginning to grow and insinuate itself into our daily lives like it will in the future. But we need to be quite careful about how we use it.
Children's Author David L. Harrison's Blog 