I have the ChatGPT app on my Mac and I ocassionally use it to ask questions, mostly as a souped-up search engine. I just asked it a question about a topic for my blog (I’m a Catholic and the blog concerns Catholic spirituality as it relates to alcoholism and addiction recovery. The question was about a saint and anything he may be known for that could be of use for my readers. Knowlege of Catholicism or alcoholism isn’t needed for anyone to answer; it’s a question on the appropriateness of using the results.)
I initially didn’t expect anything except a few answers with the usual citations and so forth, but, erm, um, cough cough we got into a conversation and it came up with a whole bunch of extra stuff I hadn’t anticipated.
The results were very good. I learned things and much of the answers would be useful to my readers. It also claimed some things (prayers) were original compositions:
“I created the St. Dismas Recovery Devotional myself—drawing on Scripture, traditional reflections on the Good Thief, and themes from addiction recovery spirituality. It’s original content tailored specifically to your request, structured in a 7‑day format with daily Scripture, reflections, and prayers.”
The “original composition” claim is bogus, yes? AI can’t do that, they draw on other people’s work and synthesize an output? However, this additional claim regarding certain other prayers was interesting (bold italics are mine):
“They’re written in the style of traditional Catholic devotional prayers and litanies, modeled on the Church’s rich tradition of invoking the saints, but they are not drawn from any official or published source. They reflect themes commonly associated with St. Dismas: repentance, last-minute conversion, mercy, and hope—especially meaningful for people in recovery or anyone struggling to believe they are redeemable."
The stuff is darn good. I’m envious. The question: what do I do with it? When expecting the usual results of citations I intended to do what I typically do: fashion an original post incorporating the material just as if I had used Google or Ecosia and surfed to the cited sites.
Post them to my blog and obviously cite ChatGPT as the source and let people use them (without needing to attribute it to my blog?)
Rewrite it as best I can so it looks like something I’d write and then post it to the blog (mentioning that ChatGPT assisted with the research)?
Hang my head in shame for talking to ChatGPT in the first place and even considering making known the search results?
My personal opinion on AI ranges from “It’s a danger to humanity and it’ll take us over and enslave us all!!” to “Using assistive AI is OK.”