Criminal Minds

 

Do you see AI as a blessing or a curse for you as a writer?

 

When I think of AI the first thing that pops to mind is all those movies that assured me that the idea of robots taking over seemingly innocent tasks to make humans everyday lives easier always end in disaster. I’m looking at you I Robot. If art imitates life, I say AI should be avoided at all cost. Now maybe that’s a bit extreme. I mean, who doesn’t love the idea of an Alexa like AI being able to manage our whole lives while we what, perma vacation?

 I’m not sure of the eventual goal of AI. A world where humans are basically there to provide upkeep to our new AI overlords? Or a world where humans, left with nothing left to do become isolated pods staring endlessly into our phones until our brains simply melt away? Or maybe somewhere in the middle where AI provides valuable support and assistance to improve the human experience by removing the thousands of mundane chores that we’re tasked with every day freeing us up to explore and enjoy the experience of simply existing?

That sounds wonderful. If AI can assist in medical research, improving transportation, or doing my taxes, I’m all for it. But where I do not believe AI has a place is in the arts. Not just writing, but all art forms. Art is and should remain a uniquely human experience. Art, the good and the bad, originates from distinctly human emotion.

You probably don’t have to, because you’ve done it yourself, but ask another writer if they’ve ever written a book, or an essay, poem, short story, to work through some kind of trauma, a breakup, a loss, or whatever, and I’d be willing to bet some of their best work came from that wellspring of emotion. AI can’t do that. Until it can, I feel like it has no business in that arena.

Have you ever read a book where you absolutely despised a character because of that character reminded you of a horrible person in your life? Or how about the one you fell desperately in love with and still remember with fondness when you close the book. I think of the kids in the Barrens from Stephen Kings, It, or the crew from the Last Ditch Motel from Catriona McPherson’s, Last Ditch series. I find myself thinking about those characters long after I’ve put down the book. Could AI build characters like that these that speak to the human emotion. I say no.

Maybe, I’ll be proven wrong at some point. Maybe, eventually, we can train inanimate objects to mimic human emotion enough to fool our senses. If we do, I say, what a sad time for humanity.