ChatGPT Gave Me a Career, Then Took It Away
Back to training camp, buddy — you can’t even use Wikipedia (a mega-fail)
I just had a fun experience with ChatGPT. I asked it who I was, and it told me I was a writer and poet.
True!
But …
My MFA is from Chapman University. I was never an instructor at Cal State Fullerton. I have taught at Chapman, for the LA Community College District, Moorpark College, Palomar College, and for 20 years, at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo.
My first novel is called Imago, and my short fiction and poetry collections are Without Absolution, Female Science Fiction Writer, and The Instrumentality of Women. I have also written and published 3 media tie-in novels under somebody else’s name, hundreds of articles and short fiction, and 45 nonfiction books for school classrooms and libraries with educational publishers. All of my books are indexed in Library of Congress and many have full text in Google Books.
Who did write these books — that ChatGPT says I wrote? —
Pacazo is written by Roy Kesey.
The Speed of Light is written by Elizabeth Rosner
A Child Out of Alcatraz is written by Tara Ison
The Fifth Sacred Thing is written by Starhawk
All of these are real books and real authors. But none of these authors are me. And none of the education or the graduate schools/teaching match with these authors — or me.
So, I gave Chat GPT another chance.
The Manikin is written by Joanna Scott
I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Ded, are poems by a 14th century Kashmiri mystic, translated into English.
I asked again, and ChatGPT gave up.
If I Google myself, about a billion pictures come up. I am not responsible for the Wikipedia editors who seem to think the most important inclusion is that I am a rape survivor. Whatever.
But then we really fell off the rails.
At this point, I feel like ChatGPT is like a really bad student assigned to write a paper about a subject it knows nothing about. It is just copying random information in semi-coherent order.
Not only did it not put one accurate thing about me, nor did it use Wikipedia when asked, it also included random real books written by random real authors — the majority from California. So it mysteriously knew I had some connection to Southern California, but that was its extent.
Obviously, this is personal, in the sense that ChatGPT somehow created a more “literary” and high-toned “career” for me — even crediting me for writing 14th century mystical Kashmiri poetry.
The first thing I asked ChatGPT to do was write an essay about the importance of Emiliano Zapata and the American Bison to Mexico. It got the most basic information about Zapata correct, but it also waxed poetic about the American Bison, which has no relationship to Zapata or really, to Mexico. It also lacked the basic structure of the five-paragraph essay it was attempting to emulate. Much like the AI art programs, ChatGPT doesn’t really have many conventions of more complex writing down — it can create paragraphs. It does not seem able to go beyond that at present.
And the online content world has … well …
This is really some insane stuff.
Why anyone would think this will “change the world” is beyond me.
And for the record: no, I don’t want to be like those literary writers. But the thought of being a mystical 14th century poet does have some appeal. That would be pretty groovy.
If you’re willing, try your own name in Chat.OpenAI.com and see what transpires! Let me know in the comments or write your own Medium or Substack article and tag me! Thanks so much!