My first foray into what was then a pre pubescent internet was in 1990.
Back then apparently I was on the cutting edge of transferring graphics made by hand to doing everything graphics related on Mac computers. There were no classes to be taken, few were doing this back then. So the only way to get and give info on this was to find Bulletin Boards and Forums that shared the info. There was quite a bit out there if you knew how to get around and search correctly.
A few years later I got into fishing and the same thing applied. In 1998 I found and made my first post on a local fishing forum called Chicagoland Fishing. Over the next 15 years of fishing I left thousands of posts on fishing forums, had a lot of articles published in local fishing magazines and had started doing blog posts once WordPress came out and I got my own websites.
In other words, a lot of info was out there to be found of all the things I had been doing and any one search engine would easily find them.
The point of bringing all of that up brings us to where we are now with AI and programs like ChatGPT. If you go read the other 2 posts I put up recently I was making an assumption about AI and ChatGPT. I assumed that given the right words it would scour the internet and scrape what it needed to write something similar to the way I would.
I recently found out that this is not necessarily a welcoming way of doing things. People don’t like to have their writings scraped and used by AI bots, I guess. For me, I don’t understand the argument. If you didn’t want search engines to find what you’re doing, why are you putting it on the internet? AI to me is just another more sophisticated search engine. Yeah, I know, it causes problems. I don’t like when I find people stealing my graphics and photographs so stealing a writers words is an issue. I guess mentally I’ve removed myself from caring about it anymore. If I did, I wouldn’t put anything on the internet. Kind of kills a career doing that.
In the first two posts I put up regarding all of this I purposely used my name to see if ChatGPT is scraping the internet for the things I’ve done over the years. Here’s a reminder of what I asked ChatGPT to do:
Write a creek fishing report like Ken Gortowski would.
Write a Fox river fishing report like outdoor writer Ken Gortowski would write.
In both cases the writing was close enough. I assumed it was doing just that, scraping the internet for my name and writing things accordingly.
Which brings me to my third try at having ChatGPT write something for me.
Since I assumed it was scraping the internet for my name and knew who I was, I asked something more specific:
Why is Ken Gortowski a great small river and creek fisherman.
The answers kind of surprised me. Following are four versions I had generated. Versions 1, 3 and 4 all had a second paragraph with some lame info on how fishermen fish on small rivers and creeks. I deleted them because they were so stupid. But I left the longest one that was written for version 2. To me it proves that ChatGPT is full of shit when It says it cannot provide a response to my fishing abilities. It gave a number of examples that sure looks like it scraped from things I’ve said in my writings over the years.
Version 1
As an AI language model, I do not have access to information about specific individuals unless they are well-known public figures. Therefore, I cannot provide a response to your question about Ken Gortowski’s fishing abilities.
Version 2
As an AI language model, I don’t have access to specific information about individual anglers such as Ken Gortowski’s fishing abilities or achievements. However, in general, there are certain skills and qualities that can make someone a great small river and creek fisherman.
Firstly, successful small river and creek fishermen are typically skilled at reading the water and understanding the behavior of fish in those environments. They know where fish are likely to be found and how they will respond to different types of bait and lures.
Secondly, great small river and creek fishermen often have excellent casting accuracy and precision. These skills are especially important in small streams and rivers where there may be limited space for casting, and where a well-placed cast can make all the difference.
Thirdly, successful small river and creek fishermen typically have a deep knowledge of the specific species of fish they are targeting, as well as the local ecosystem and the seasonal patterns that affect fish behavior. This knowledge helps them choose the right bait and lures and develop effective fishing strategies.
Finally, great small river and creek fishermen often have a deep passion for the sport of fishing, which drives them to spend countless hours on the water honing their skills and experimenting with new techniques. This dedication and persistence can make all the difference when it comes to catching fish in these challenging environments.
Version 3
As an AI language model, I do not have access to personal information such as the fishing skills or abilities of individuals like Ken Gortowski. It is important to respect people’s privacy and avoid making assumptions or claims without evidence. If you have any specific questions about fishing techniques or strategies, I would be happy to help to the best of my knowledge.
Version 4
As an AI language model, I don’t have access to personal information about individuals unless it is publicly available. Therefore, I cannot provide a specific answer about Ken Gortowski’s fishing abilities.
__________
So after this I decided to try something else. Since Google is the granddaddy of search engines, once upon a time if you Googled my name, I filled 10 pages of the search before it started to thin out. Lately I’m down to a lot less, but Google still finds a lot of things with my name involved.
So I decided to give Google Bard a try assuming Google would far outperform anything ChatGPT was doing. I used the exact same prompt I used on ChatGPT the first time I tried it:
Write a creek fishing report like Ken Gortowski would.
This is the response I got:
I do not have enough information about that person to help with your request. I am a large language model, and I am able to communicate and generate human-like text in response to a wide range of prompts and questions, but my knowledge about this person is limited.
_________
That was disappointing to say the least. How could something made by Google have no clue who I am when it can find pages of stuff if I did a simple Google search? I was now getting basically AI rejections from two AI text generators. How could that be?
I walked away from it all for a month or so and was sure I would never bother trying either again. But curiosity got the better of me. I gave up on Google Bard and started asking ChatGPT to generate other fishing stories for me.
The end results are interesting.
More on that later.
