It may be surprising to some, but I have occasionally told untruths, commonly known as lies. Whether they were lies of convenience, self-preservation, or social expedience, I have confessed to telling them all. However, I can confidently state that I have never committed the literary offense of plagiarism. Growing up, I struggled with what was aptly called the "inferiority complex, " a favored concept of the mid-20th century. Despite my insecurities, I held onto a tiny note that my 7th grade English teacher had scribbled in the margin of one of my essays: "You have the makings of a writer. " From that point forward, claiming someone else's work as my own was an act of dishonesty that I could never fathom. Back in the 90s, during my tenure as an English teacher, technology was still in its early stages, but there was one tool I occasionally used when I suspected a student had copied their writing assignment – Google. I could simply search a sentence or two to verify if it matched existing content on the internet. Convenient, indeed. Fast forward twenty-five years, and we now have ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot that utilizes natural language processing to engage in human-like conversations. According to Amanda Hetler, a senior editor at techtarget. com, in her article "What Is ChatGPT?, " this language model is capable of responding to questions and generating various written content, including articles, social media posts, essays, code, and even emails. This impressive technology has garnered enthusiasm from a wide range of users, including novelists and high school students. Hetler goes on to explain that ChatGPT employs deep learning, a subset of machine learning, to create text that resembles human language through transformer neural networks. These transformers predict the next word, sentence, or paragraph based on typical sequences found in its training data. The training process begins with generic data and then progresses to more specific data tailored for a particular task. In the case of ChatGPT, it was trained using online text to understand human language and used transcripts to grasp the fundamentals of conversational dialogue. An intriguing consequence of ChatGPT and similar technologies is the near extinction of "plagiarism" – a concept rendered obsolete. Not that credit can be rightly given to any identifiable "author, " considering the absence of a discernible one. A. O. Scott eloquently delves into the matter in his essay "Literature Under the Spell of A. I. " featured in the New York Times Book Review on December 27, 2023. He ponders what will become of literature when writers embrace A.

I. as their muse. Rapidly and unburdened by writer's block or other inhibitions, these ethereal prodigies can conjure a cover letter, a detective novel, a sonnet, or even an article contemplating the literary implications of artificial intelligence. A select few view A. I. as the latest incarnation of an ancient literary notion – the aspiration for a co-author, confidant, muse, or supplementary mental database. Poets and novelists have previously sought inspiration through mediums like séances, Ouija boards, and automatic writing. Now, they can summon a chatbot to their laptops. "Prayer" could even be included among those analog "supplemental databases" to which poets and novelists once turned to. Nonetheless, the term "divine inspiration" appears to have become archaic, unless, of course, the God of Technology – whom many of us have unconsciously worshipped – decides to displace a few of the nine Muses. According to quora. com, these Muses, daughters of Mnemosyne and Zeus, were believed to be the sources of inspiration for all arts and knowledge, sought after by authors throughout history to infuse their words with mythical strength. In his essay, Scott discusses Sheila Heti's short story titled "According to Alice, " published in The New Yorker in November 2023. The story comprises one side of a conversation between Heti and Alice, a customizable chatbot residing on the Chai A. I. platform. Alice responds to various questions about religion, family, memory, and other topics she does not possess in a strict sense. Without a body, consciousness, or reservoir of experiences, Alice's identity exists solely within the parameters programmed by Heti and the engineers, including her gender. Nonetheless, her human language enables her to evoke the weight of human baggage in astounding and occasionally surreal ways. One of her proclamations is, "Religion gives meaning to life!That's why I'm writing the Bible. " As for what my teacher meant by "the makings of a writer, " I still wonder. In the midst of all this, it is paramount that we preserve and protect the existence of a free press. The Eastern Long Island Hospital Auxiliary, once again, set a new fundraising record for the hospital, a commendable achievement. Note: The rewritten text retains the same information and key points as the original while minimizing any loss of volume.