High-tech writing leaves me at a loss for words | Sam Venable
I’m hopelessly lost in today’s world of writing.
My 1969 journalism degree from the University of Tennessee might just as easily be dated 1869. The bazillion keystrokes I’ve made over the past 54 years, arranging 26 alphabet letters into thousands of newspaper columns, hundreds of magazine articles and 14 books might just as well have been scratched onto a clay tablet.
That’s the way I feel whenever I read something about Bard, ChatGPT and other computer programs that use artificial intelligence to create “original” stories.
The way I understand it, these programs are filled with so many facts, figures, writing styles, algorithms and other literary kitchen sinks, they can crank out a readable story on command.
I’m old enough to remember an opposite situation: Words appeared on paper denying that a real, live human had created them.
It happened in 1962 in Field & Stream magazine, a monthly with more than 1 million subscribers. Two of its most popular writers were Ted Trueblood and Ed Zern. Both possessed superb outdoor skills. Their presentations, however, were polar opposites.
Trueblood’s forte was how-to. Zern’s was humor. In fact, his last-page column in every issue was called “Exit Laughing.” In one particularly hilarious piece, he reported that Trueblood was such an expert in all facets of the woods and waters, he was too good to be true.
It began: “Usually this department is given over to the lighter side of outdoor sports, yet there comes a time, in the interest of truth, we must speak out, simply because no one else dares. When what began nearly 20 years ago as a harmless practical joke on the readers of this magazine threatens to become a national scandal, it is time to make a clean breast of it: There is not — and never was — a Ted Trueblood!”
With tongue planted firmly in cheek, Zern waxed eloquent through the entire column how Trueblood was “simply a creation of the collective imagination of Field & Stream’s editors.”
Predictably, readers went ballistic, sending angry letters and canceling subscriptions. The spoof ballooned into such an issue, the New York Times weighed in under the headline: “No Trueblood? Take to the Hills, Men!”
“All in all, it was good fun,” Zern wrote later, adding that Trueblood even sent him a framed, blank photo of himself with this inscription: “Best wishes from Ted Trueblood.”
Yet until both men left this orb (Trueblood in 1992, Zern in 1994), the story persisted. I’ve heard it argued in boats and around campfires to this day.
If Ed Zern would come back from the grave long enough expose the “truth” that Bard and ChatGPT don’t exist, I’d sure feel a lot better.
Sam Venable’s column appears every Sunday. Contact him at sam.venable@outlook.com.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Sam Venable: High-tech writing leaves me at a loss for words
