Go Away Hal, I'm Busy Writing!

 Q: Chime in with your thoughts on writers using AI. Is it okay to use it for some tasks? Where do you draw the line?

-from Susan

 

Full disclosure: I’ve never tried it and have only read about it - facts and opinions. Read an Advice column Sunday in which a college administrator asked the columnist if it was okay to use AI to mock up a draft administrative report, and the advisor said, sure, but the specifics in the report, obviously, had to be customized. I read an article last week that wondered if film and streaming companies might just sub in AI instead of the striking writers. What is that about? I guess if you’re the Hallmark Channel, it works fine?

 

To the raised-with-a-typewriter generation (me), it sounds crazy and impossible. Yes, Shakespeare, Faulkner, and Mantel can be imitated, but there’s no brain at work to come up with the perspectives, the individual creativity, bravery, the sheer chutzpah to take on kings, rapists, or deeply flawed characters from history. What I hear in opposition to that is, “Just wait!” As AI moves into successive iterations (generations?), it will become richer, more capable. In fact, proving great human writers of sci fi right, eventually AI will be smarter than we are.

 

To answer the question directly, no, I don’t think it’s okay for writers of fiction to let AI do any writing tasks that will become part of manuscripts. Why not? I want to read what Terry and Jim and Dietrich and the rest of my Minds colleagues dredged up from their fevered imaginations, labored over, and produced with their, er, minds.

 

In a few years, maybe 10, I have a hunch the battle for our individual talents will be over and we will have lost. I’m not sure consumers of our work  in the greatest numbers will care. With short attention spans, screen addictions, virtual reality in place of real lives, the notion of sitting in one place in real time with a book, be it in print or e-format, will be seen as quaint. We writers of actual books will become part of a small niche of suppliers to clubs, like the people who make costumes for Revolutionary War re-enactments. Ray Kurzweil predicted this, didn’t he?

 

Change of subject. I’m working with my book designer to finish the new editions of the Dani O’Rourke series - great covers and handsome interiors for the POD, and they’ll be available again as e-books. Just got a rave email about one of the three from someone new to the character. Dani lives!