Healthy AI Usage #01: Idea Engine to Boost your Creativity
Source: Pixabay
For the last week or so, the whole Hive community is talking about one and only one subject: Artificial Intelligence.
Is it morally wrong to use AI content on Hive?
Is it against the rules of Hive?
Are there rules on Hive? Isn't it decentralized anyway? I should be able to post whatever I want!
Should AI-generated content be downvoted or not?
But AI is the future, shouldn't Hive embrace the future given the fact everyone's using AI anyways?
But I wrote the post myself and just used AI to fix grammar and enhance readability, should I be punished for doing that?
I definitely don't have the definite answer for all these questions. Obviously I do have my own opinion on each one of them, but there are dozens of other posts of smarter people than I talking about this whole drama. Go read them.
I'm not here to say if using AI-generated content is good or bad. I'm not here to defend that people posting AI-generated content should be downvoted to oblivion or praised with juicy votes.
I'm here to say that AI is, undoubtedly, a new tool that's now available to a content creator, and that can help a creator to unlock their own creative potential.
AI can help you as some sort of "Idea Engine" or "Brainstorming Assistant", by giving you ideas that you can develop by yourself. And I'm sure that no one, neither on Hive or anywhere else, would find usage wrong or illegal.
One can browse on an architecture subreddit to find ideas about architecture and, then, design a beautiful house on AutoCad.
One can browse a forum thread about "problems of modern gaming" to find what gamers complain about games nowadays and, then, write a blog post about how games can avoid those pitfalls.
One can browse a "very cute cats" gallery on Pinterest to brainstorm ideas to make their own cat cute and, then, make a funny costume for their cat.
Similarly, one can browse ChatGPT to have ideas about whatever they want and, then, use those ideas to create their own content here on Hive.
Let's take a look at some real world examples.
A few hours ago, 
Oh, my! Stained Glass! I just see stained glass windows when I go to the Church and, to be honest, I don't go that often to the Church.
And I'm pretty sure that everyone and their mother would probably write about Churches anyway, as it's the most common place in which we see stained glass windows.
Let's ask for some help from ChatGPT:
ChatGPT started with the most obvious choices, as I did: churches and other religious buildings as synagogues and mosques. But, then, it started giving lots of ideas of unusual buildings that can, indeed, have stained glass windows: town halls, castles and palaces, museums, court houses, hospitals...
Well, I personally like the idea of a hospital. I wouldn't have thought that hospitals could have stained glass windows by myself. But, now, with the help of the tool, I'm imagining a hospital that's using the building of an old, abandoned monastery that had beautiful stained glasses windows on the entrance hall.
Neat!
Source: Pixabay
The whole world is currently having a rising inflation problem. Everyone's talking why inflation is rising right now, why food and energy prices are hitting record highs, etc.
I want to write a post LeoFinance about inflation, and how it's impacting people's living standard.
The most obvious idea is to write that inflation increases the cost of living as goods and services become more and more expensive. But that's basic stuff that everyone already knows.
Let's see if ChatGPT can brainstorm some different ideas that I can write about:
Again, the first idea ChatGPT gave is the most obvious one that everyone thinks: inflation increase the cost of stuff and, thus, decrease the purchasing power.
But then it starts to give some interesting ideas that I haven't thought by myself: Uneven Distribution of Inflation, for example, is a very interesting approach to the problem, as inflation usually hits poor people harder than rich people (making the poor even poorer). Capital Flight is another one that's similar: poorer countries are usually hit harder by inflation, and the capital flight from 3rd to 1st world countries make the situation even harder for the poor.
Have in mind that ChatGPT is not magically perfect, and it WILL give stupid suggestions. His #5 idea (Currency Devaluation) is just plain wrong: if a country currency devaluates, it IMPROVES the competitiveness of its exports, as it becomes cheaper to buy stuff from that country with US Dollars.
You, as the content creator, have to filter out the stupidity from the tool. Similarly, not all cute cat images you see on Pinterest are actually cute, and not all architecture suggestions you read on Reddit are actually good.
2 days ago 
Well, when I looked at this image, I immediately thought that the plane was falling down.
Now I want to write a story about this plane falling down and crashing... but I can't think a reason for it to fall down. What could have happened to it before?
I don't want to write a story with a common/obvious reason like "electrical malfunction" or "struck by lightning", nah, no way, those are booooo-ring.
Let's overcome this creativity block with ChatGPT:
Some of the ideas don't really goes well with the beautiful image provided by the FreewriteHouse, like the "caught in a tornado" or "hit by a missile". Others don't even make sense, like "wheels got stuck in the mud". Let's filter those out, as we're human, we're smart content creators that can filter bad stuff from good stuff.
But there are also lots of unusual, interesting ideas to justify a plane crash.
The pilot had an allergic reaction? Interesting, did he eat something by mistake? Did someone poisoned him on purpose?
Plane overloaded with cargo? Interesting, has someone smuggled something heavy into the plane and caused the accident by mistake?
Distracted by a flock of geese? That's a great idea for a funny story with a pun.
We can no longer pretend that AI doesn't exist. It's right here for anyone to use.
It's natural that content creators will embrace AI into their work, but we have to use it in a responsible, ethical way.
Using it to improve your own work, like an "Idea Engine", is totally acceptable. It boosts our capabilities as humans. That's why humanity creates tools after all: to improve what we can do, to do things better and faster.
Using it to do your work for you and then pretending that you're the one that did it? Nope, no good.
Thanks for reading this post, and until next time!
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