AI [Artificial Intelligence] is so hot these days (I’m writing this on 3/10/2024) I feel I have to comment on it. Generally, I’m not too much in favor of writers using AI to “write” a book or story or any kind of written communication. AI takes away the personality of the writer which always infuses into any writing, regardless of how the author may try to hide it. AI produces a bland, undistinctive, almost tasteless product, devoid of the human touch. I suspect many years will pass before computer scientists develop a program that can write something—even a dry scientific paper—that will imitate the personal subjective style of a human author. I’ve read literally thousands of scientific papers, and in many if not most, the personality of the writer shows through to one degree or another. I’ve found certain authors who reproducibly write papers that are easier to read and follow the logic of than others. That’s hard to duplicate.
But there’s another aspect of AI that I’ve been wondering about over the last few days, related to the aspect of subjectiveness. As I understand it, AI can produce a story or even a novel in a very short period of time, measured in seconds or minutes. I took over twenty years to produce my first novel, and the second and third took five and three years respectively, and I’m still making changes: revising, deleting, adding new content, and so forth to those second two. I don’t know any biological author who can turn out a book in, say, fifteen or twenty seconds. Or a short story in two or three. And therein lies my concern. AI doesn’t sweat over a book. AI doesn’t revise or edit or rework or reorganize or tighten scenes or replace characters or make sweeping changes, or do any of the usual modifications that most of us human authors do just to get a book we feel is suitable to send to an editor or agent. In short, AI will never know the pleasure of producing a magnificent story, or the pain of thousands of hours of revising. AI doesn’t throw the computer across the room when a character refuses to conform to the author’s preconceived notion of how he/she should behave, or feel the warmth and congratulations of others when an (real) author announces a new book to world-wide acclaim. (Should there be any.) And any “author” who does feel that way after announcing an AI written book should be roundly thrashed. One of the most fundamental rules of authorship should always be: If you didn’t write it, you can’t put your name on it.
And that brings up another question I have about AI. If you are so foolish as to submit an AI-generated book or story for publication, and the editor sends it back to you with suggested changes, marked, of course in the ubiquitous red pencil, what do you do? How do you make the changes? If you didn’t write it, how can you know what changes to make? If it wasn’t your work in the first place, how can you modify it in the second place? I suggest staying away from AI as a method of generating written works. It’s a minefield loaded with unexploded ethical mines.