Generative AI and the VII of Swords — The Willow Path Tarot

Preface: This is a post about how I feel about using GenAI to write my blog posts. It is not how I feel about the use of GenAI in all contexts. It’s my personal opinion and you are welcome to have a different one- no problem! Ok, that being said, you may read on if interested.

You can rest assured that I do not use generative artificial intelligence tools to write my blog posts. I do use spellcheck and sometimes the synonym finder, the one that comes with Microsoft Word 2015, which is pretty basic and just being polite, really. No AI was used in the writing of this post, or any other post on my website/Substack. It’s just me here stringing words together, trying to express my ideas.

VII of Swords from The Spacious tarot deck.

And the more I think about it, the more I may be leaning towards coming out against GenAI for writing creatively like I do here. I’m here to write! I want to use my brain and my skills and my muses. It’s a process that comes from within, not through the medium of a computer program. There has to be a line somewhere for me, between myself and technology, when it comes to expressing myself, and I’m drawing it before GenAI. That feels right to me.

It seems like GenAI is touted as this means to increase productivity, create more, get faster at the creative process. But that’s not what I’m doing here. I’m not showing up here each week simply to create content for you. I’m here to write. It’s nice if the outcome of that writing connects with you, or has some beautiful word choices, or makes you think some useful or poetic thoughts that increase your happiness or life satisfaction. The outcome also shows that I put in the effort to write. It’s evidence that I tried to write. That’s the point.

As far as I can tell there are maybe a dozen people reading these blog posts (that’s my high end estimate!), so there really isn’t any reason to be cranking out content to satisfy my insatiable fans. But that last sentence just makes me sad. Are there people out there who are using ChatGPT to write endless blog posts just to engage the eyeballs of followers? I’m sure there are, but I don’t think that is a good thing.

Do we really need MORE content in the world? And stuff that we didn’t even write, just more machine made bullshit floating around the internet. We are running out of room for machine made physical items, overflowing into massive landfills and storage units spread out over the countryside, so now we have to move on to cluttering up the digital space with random crap that no one really needs or even made themselves?

We do love to fill up space, don’t we?

I don’t know about you but my brain is pretty full these days. There is so much information and content to consume. It’s endless, literally endless. Who knows how many pieces of digital content get made each day (maybe someone does, and that must be an interesting study for them to figure out), but for me it’s too much. Having large language models make more and more creative digital content is not something I need, no matter how good at writing and synthesizing information they get. I want to read the creative work of humans, and possibly aliens, but not computer programs.

VII of Swords tarot card from the Rider Waite Smith tarot deck.

I spent a good long while going through the tarot deck to try and figure out which card represents GenAI. I was leaning towards The Magician or possibly the VIII of Pentacles. But then I got onto this jag about not wanting to use GenAI to write blog posts and realized that that is a very VII of Swords energy that I’m exuding. The VII of Swords gives me this sensation that I’m trying to get away with something. Like we see in the image from the Rider Waite Smith deck shown here, a lone figure carries a bundle of Swords away from a gathering.

The way this guy on the VII of Swords is looking back over his shoulder makes me think he is contemplating taking even more than the abundance he already has. The Swords represent ideas, right, products of the mind. This guy could be an AI running off with all our human ideas and making even more out of them. The machine is greedy and wants all of human knowledge. It wants more, more, more and to make more and more and more. Ugh.

Using GenAI to write blog posts makes me feel like someone is getting away with creating something without putting in the effort. You can create more and more, really it’s endless, but is it right? Is it ethical? Is it how we should be expressing our creativity? There is a feeling of deception here, of the thief or the trickster. GenAI feels like a party trick: “Write a blog post about the VII of Swords in the style of the rest of the writing on thewillowpathtarot.com.” It is based on me, sure, and it’s my prompt that creates it, but I didn’t actually write anything that comes from this method. It feels like a con, very VII of Swords.

Yes, many people do put disclaimers on things that they create with the assistance of GenAI, but the awareness is still there- this isn’t my own creation. This didn’t come from me. Perhaps this is an aside, but usually after I read what I’ve typed up here I am a little astounded. I wrote these words? These thoughts came from me head? Amazing! If I read them a few years later, I will be even more astonished- “I thought that back then and wrote about it like that!? Wow!” I’m not going to get that sense at all if I use ChatGPT to write my blog posts. I’ll just think, “Oh, look what I had a computer write last year, they are even better at writing now.” That just sounds sad to me. Don’t you think?

I don’t think anyone really wants to pop online to read content from their favorite creator and see that it’s written by a GenAI. It’s a letdown, right? It feels sneaky and deceptive. You thought you were getting a piece of that person, but instead they shoveled up some artificial slop. No thanks, right? I was looking up the etymology of artificial the other day, because it’s about art, and I was wondering how that could have turned into something that isn’t real. But that’s the thing, something that is art isn’t the real thing. Even a beautiful photograph of a horse isn’t a horse. It’s an artificial representation, it’s essentially a fake horse. Making art with artificial intelligence has that artificial fakeness baked right into it. A blog post written by artificial intelligence is inherently artificial, it can’t be a real blog post.

Writing this has given me a new outlook on the VII of Swords. This isn’t just a card of deception and getting away with something on the sly. It can also carry the tone of being fake, a knock-off, artificial. When it shows up in a reading, ask yourself what is being offered to you or showing up in your life that isn’t authentic, that is trying to pass itself off as the real thing when it is just a copy? How are you acting phony or trying to give the impression that you are something that you are not?

I’ll tell you one thing that isn’t fake- this blog post. It may not be enlightening or well-written, but it is real. It came directly from my head and with a fair bit of effort. ChatGPT could have it written it with better grammar in 5 seconds, but this is what I’m capable of writing over the course of 3 days with lots of head scratching. I find that process more interesting and rewarding that how great an LLM can work. But maybe that’s just me.

What do you think? Do you think creators should use GenAI to write their blog posts? I’d be interested in your opinion. Bye bye for now!