Don't Use ChatGPT To Write About Your Replay!
Why you need to make your replay your own.
Don’t Use ChatGPT To Write About Your Replay!
There was a Facebook post a few days ago about replayers trying to use ChatGPT to chronicle their replays.
I understand it. You love playing dice (or computer) baseball, but you’re really not all that good at writing game results. That certainly makes sense to me.
However, the problem is that the essence of writing about our hobby simply cannot be replaced by artificial intelligence.
An Experiment
Let’s do an experiment. Do you remember the 1908 game I posted about yesterday? If you don’t, you can get caught up here.
Let’s see what ChatGPT would have to say about it.
First off, I decided to write a brief summary of the game for ChatGPT to see how it would work. This is what I came up with:
I guess you don’t have to be that polite when you write to a robot.
Anyway, this is what it came up with:
Now, this isn’t bad. It’s descriptive and somewhat imaginative, and could pass for a pretty basic game summary.
There are problems, though. For example, with so little information about what actually happened in the game, the AI has to resort to superfluous adjectives and descriptions, repeating itself numerous times. Raymond “displayed exceptional skill,” put on a “masterful performance on the mound,” continued with “exceptional pitching … to stifle [Cincinnati’s] offense,” put on a “shutout performance” that “showcased his dominance on the mound and played a significant role” in the win (obviously, if he had given up 4 runs, St. Louis would have lost), and had a “remarkable pitching performance” that “solidified his reputation as a key player for the team.” You wouldn’t write that way, would you? I mean, how many accolades do you have to use to describe a shutout?
Note as well that Patsy O’Rourke and Red Murray received very little attention. I suppose I could have told the AI about the double column drama and how poor the two teams have been playing, but that would have required more work on my part.
Basically, when you write your own prompt, you’re already doing the work for ChatGPT. You might as well write up a full account yourself.
The Easy Way Out?
But what about simply inputting a boxscore?
I used a free Chrome extension called ChatGPT File Uploader Extended to upload the screenshot of the boxscore I uploaded yesterday. The system did a good job of parsing things out:
I cut this part off at the end, but the entire game is there. This is what ChatGPT had to say about it:
I then asked the obvious question:
And here was the response:
This isn’t bad, of course. ChatGPT recognizes Raymond’s excellent performance, though it doesn’t seem to realize that Coakley was actually pitching better than Raymond before the fateful 10th inning.
There are inaccuracies as well. St. Louis committed 4 errors, not 3. Patsy O’Rourke drove in St. Louis’ other run, not Bugs Raymond (Raymond scored a run, though). It’s also kind of hard to call the Cardinals defense “solid” when they committed 4 errors and played sloppily throughout the game.
It’s not just that the writing is a bit stiff and unnatural. Rather, the writing contains contradictions and falsehoods that an actual person simply wouldn’t write. The tone is also flat, which is one of the easiest ways to spot ChatGPT creations in the wild.
What You Should Do Instead
What should you do instead, then?
Write it yourself.
Don’t just write about the game, though. In the grand scheme of things, nobody really cares all that much about whether Raymond pitched really well, whether the player of the game award should go to O’Rourke or Murray, or how many hits and errors either team made.
The important thing about writing up parts of your replay is, well, the fact that it is your replay. The part that is interesting is your interaction with the replay. How did you feel when the game went into extra innings? How did the ending make you feel? Did you make a mistake? Is there a decision that you regret? Do you want to poke your eyes out every time the Reds come up to bat?
That’s the part that ChatGPT simply can’t come up with. It might give you a brief summary of the facts, though it will pepper that summary with inaccuracies, mistakes, and bizarrely excessive descriptions. But who cares about any of that stuff?
Writing is the art of interpersonal communication, of people speaking directly to other people. No robot can do that for you.