A few days ago, I was asked “Do you use AI?”. I also noticed some recent blog posts and emails about it.
So let me explain how I use AI on this blog.
Grammar stuff
If you look through this blog’s archives you may see how terrible my English grammar used to be (not that it is particularly good nowadays). Back in 2010 I started attending English lessons to improve both my grammar and vocabulary. And it paid off.
Still, my writing style can be described as ‘Hrw English’. I try to keep it British English rather than American (I learnt the British version throughout my formal education). My vocabulary includes words from American, Australian and other variants.
Let me ask ChatGPT
My previous post about my arm problem went through ChatGPT:
Take text below, fix grammar to British English and show changes side-by-side
So let take some examples from the result:
| Original | ChatGPT |
|---|---|
| Some time ago my right arm started to hurt. In the beginning it was a bit annoying but then got serious. So I went to orthopaedist. | Some time ago, my right arm started to hurt. At first, it was a bit annoying, but then it became serious. So, I went to an orthopaedist. |
| MRI was the other thing. My daughter told me already that I need to be prepared for loud annoying noise. What I was not prepared was some shitty pop played over some shitty headphones. zOMG… | The MRI was a different matter. My daughter had already told me to expect loud, annoying noise. What I wasn’t prepared for was some dreadful pop music played over equally dreadful headphones. zOMG… |
| I know that those headphones have to be as plastic as possible to survive inside of MRI machine but next time I will ask for not playing anything. | I know the headphones have to be made entirely of plastic to survive inside the MRI machine, but next time I’ll ask them not to play anything. |
| BTW: Can anyone recommend some good Linux application for watching DICOM images (other than AlizaMS)? | By the way, can anyone recommend a good Linux application for viewing DICOM images (other than AlizaMS)? |
| Most of cases are related to professional sport people. A group where I do not belong. | Most cases are related to professional athletes—a group to which I definitely do not belong. |
| I promised my daughter some trips during summer vacations. One set of attractions will slip for 3rd time. | I promised my daughter some trips during the summer holidays. One set of attractions will be postponed for the third time. |
Review of suggestions
So what do we have here? Some vocabulary changes like “professional sport people” -> “professional athletes”, the usual missing “a/an/the”, more commas, work order changes etc.
I review the suggestions and choose some of them: vocabulary tweaks, missing articles and some word order changes. Most of the time I ignore punctuation related ones as I always had problems with commas — never mind which language I was writing in.
I am leaving several errors as they were — I wrote that text so let it show my mistakes instead of hiding them. And I prefer to use ‘some’ rather than ‘few/a few’ as I always forget when to use which ;D
Style variations
After some updates I got question:
Let me know if you’d like it shortened, rephrased in a more humorous or technical tone, or formatted for a specific blog engine like Hugo, Ghost, or WordPress.
Fun starts with mixing all of them:
updated text below. give me British English version, differences side-by-side and then more technical tone version and more causal one plus more humorous one. render markdown
Look how one sentence can change:
- So, let me explain how I use AI on this blog.
- In this post, I’ll outline how I integrate AI into the workflow of this blog.
- So, here’s a quick explanation of how I use AI on this blog.
- Yes, I use AI. But not for evil. Mostly.
Those are original, technical, causal, humorous versions.
I have to admit that the ‘more technical tone’ version was a bit too much for me. It looked completely different from my writing style. Anyway I read it twice and took some wording from it. The ‘more causal’ version looks what I could write but still not quite my style. And the humorous version is pure fun to read but nothing to copy from it.
Conclusion
Will I continue to use of AI on this blog? Probably yes. It gives me good suggestions and fixes some of my language/grammar mistakes. And I do not have to apply all the changes so text keeps my style.
Is it a way for other people? No idea but I recommend giving it a try and seeing it for yourself. The results can be interesting.