Blogging About Communication

You’re conducting research online for a project.  Maybe you’re writing an article. Maybe you’re going to issue a report. Or perhaps you’re creating a novel or screenplay. Whatever your subject and purpose, it’s common for an AI bot to respond to your search prompts with a narrative summary of the information it finds. You marvel at its work.

What Do You Do with the Narrative the Bot Produced?

Do you integrate it hook, line, and sinker into your work? Do you tweak it? Or do you dig deeper and consult a host of primary and secondary sources?  If you integrate the bot’s words into your work, are you crossing an ethical line? If you fail to credit the bot, are you guilty of misrepresentation? Would tweaking the bot’s words, adding your input to its narrative, make things better? Or should you use the bot’s narrative as you would other research, and continue probing, writing, revising as people did “in the good old days” before Bots?  The choice ultimately is yours.

Responding to the Bot’s Temptation

Plagiarism has always existed. Are Bots offering researchers “the apple” offered to Adam in the Garden of Eden? While we’re not suggesting that Bots are snakes and we should toss what they offer us aside, we are saying we need to carefully contemplate the limits (if any) that we place on our use of the information it presents. Bots have their strengths. Humans have their weaknesses. When you let a Bot put words in your mouth, you give it permission to replace you.

Your Game Plan

Make the effort to maintain control and not give in to temptation. Use the Bot to help you brainstorm, summarize, and eliminate clichéd thinking. Treat the Bot like your assistant, not your successor. Don’t outsource your brain.