Travelling Thoughts

If you tend to watch YouTube over the more traditional TV channels, Netflix, or anything with proper people, you will surely start to recognise a pattern. And the same pattern starts to become visible in written texts as well. The pattern reminds me of a Finnish proverb Fire is a good servant but a bad master. I am, of course, talking about use of the AI.

A Good Servant?

We live in an age where the AI language models, like DeepSeek, Gemini, and ChatGPT to name a few, can seemingly do anything for you. It was just a few years ago when they appeared, and back then the use was very limited. Today, I am certain that most of us use them for quick data sourcing, matering Excel formulas, or have them assist in using some, more elaborate softwares that cause us to have gray hair. At least I do.

I think that the AI is a great tool for these kinds of tasks, allowing more and more people to utilise programs, like Excel, more efficiently. And as using AI requires prompts, it means we need to craft these so that the AI understands what I actually mean is a task in itself. But when you manage that part of the job, the AI can truly be an asset for you.

But when this.. assistance becomes more and more prevalent and easy, where will it lead us?

“Can You Tell Me…”

As AI has become more and more inregrated to every aspect of digital world, it has become easier and easier to ask the seemingly easy questions, and seek out any information from it. I know I am prone to this myself, and something I feel stupid for doing it.

First, we lost the need for physical libraries as we got things online. And now we are losing the need for search engines, such as Google, because we have AI. What is next in line? Are we losing our intelligence next, just because we can ask AI what we are supposed to think?

A Terrible Master?

We humans have a trait that causes the best of us to falter—laziness. We want to take the easy way out, the fastest shortcut. And that is why we go and ask even the simplest questions from AI rather than spend a few more minutes researching the answer the traditional way.

And this also leads, or rather, has led, to something I mentioned earlier; recognisable patterns. And those patterns are the very stuff that can, and will, kill originality and creativity.

You too must have seen the adverts in Facebook and elsewhere which prompt you “to write your own book in five minutes”. As you know, I am a storyteller, and have published a book, called Buried Hearts. So seeing this kinds of ads makes me sad.

Sad because these particular language models seem to be darn good at what they do. Not just because of that, but because this is borderline cheating. With a press of a button someone can create worlds and characters that would take months for a proper author to do from the start to finish.

And then there are the videos, shoet and long where you start to see that people do the same thing; these so-called content creators just press a button and a script comes out with stock footage suggestions. Quick copy-paste to another AI site for voice, and voilà! Video is ready. And soon, your YouTube algorithm is full of content that doesn’t hold any value anymore.

Is this something we want?

Has the House Burned Down?

To be transparent, I do admit that in many posts here in HaveStories.com I utilise AI. But do I let it dictate what I write, and let it do all the work, whilst I sit down and hope you shower me with rewards? No.

As said, AI is a good servant, but a terrible master. Utilising AI as part of the writing process helps me to hone my style. It also allows me to be clearer in what I want to say, or write.

One of the reasons, why I have started to doubt that AI is even a good servant is that when you prompt it once, and keep that “tab” open to prompt it for a next topic, it veers back to the original topic. Many language models are supposed to learn about your style, and adapt to it, but it doesn’t. It really starts to feel like your assistant has become part of a group of people ranting about something on their coffee break, day after day.

When you realise that very aspect of using the AI, you quickly realise how valuable your own creativity is over that quick fix AI promises to be.

About Showering Me…

As you might already know, there is a multitude of ways you, who enjoy reading my blog, can offer assistance to make my voice heard.

One of them is liking and sharing this and other posts with your friends. This is much appreciated.

Another form is Buying Me A Coffee. Even if the price of coffee has risen globally, getting a virtual cup is still very much affordable. By doing this you show support to HaveStories.com and also for our YouTube channel: Open Road Tales, which is a work in progress.

These are a few ways, apart from buying my book, that you can assist me. Trust me, in modern world, we need all the help we can get.

And as a little thank you, I want to give you a little something to help you on your journeys… It is a discount code for Saily, an e-sim provider. E-sims, if you don’t yet know, are a brilliant way to save on your phone bill whilst roaming.

Just click here to be directed to my Saily shop, and after choosing your data plan for your destination country, apply the code: ROADTALES10 to get your 10% discount.