Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence

As we age, it’s a reality that those younger than us are more and more aware of changes in the world than we are. Not too long ago, I was visiting my daughter’s house when her husband said he had something cool to show me. We went to his computer, and he opened ChatGPT. He typed in details about my grandson Casper and asked for a story about the boy interacting with a fire truck. Within seconds the screen was filled with an admittedly bland, but rather typical looking children’s book tailored to Casper.

My first reaction was something like I would have watching a clever magic trick. The result didn’t mean much but something about the process was impressive.

My feelings lurched when my son-in-law commented that people might not need to buy kid’s books anymore.

This struck closer to home. The idea that a computer program could replace writers is chilling.

I hadn’t paid much attention to AI generated books before this incident but shortly after I started seeing discussions of the phenomenon in just about everything I read about writing. Then I came across an article in the Atlantic that outlined the database used to generated AI letters, stories and books. The database, called Book3 was put together from torrented ebooks ripped into text files.

The article included a link to a list of the tens of thousands of books that were used. Of course, I had to look through the list and was surprised to find my book, Creatures of the Rock there.

Parts of me were thrilled that my writing was considered good enough to be used alongside the works of the greatest writers on the planet. But really, my work was stolen. No one asked me or my publisher if they could use Creatures and no one was paid anything for the use of my work. It is small consolation that I was robbed alongside the likes of Stephen King and Haruki Murakami.

It’s hard to know how something like AI generated writing can be stopped once it is available. Pandora’s box is open.

My first objection to AI in writing (I won’t call it literature) is that it is dishonest. A machine is taking words and ideas from other writers, shuffling them, and claiming that what results is new work.

The situation reminds me of the section in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy where the greatest computer ever built is asked the meaning of life. The philosophers are enraged and go on strike. After seven and a half million years of computation the computer comes up with the answer of 42.

Perhaps our situation with AI today is similar. Writers are worried that computers will take their place and there will be no need for people to make books.

But writing is an evolving art. The books from any time in the past don’t look like the literature of today and today’s books look nothing like what will come in the future. If machines create something entirely based on what has already been written, they will never be able to produce new and exciting literature.

As well we must admit that we have always used the work of others to write. No one thinks badly of a writer using a thesaurus. It is commonly understood that writers need to read in order to write. AI examines and uses work from the past just like writers do. The difference is that writers then pour their humanity into what they produce. A bit of the writer is in every book that they write. The chance that some part of a machine might show up in a book doesn’t suggest great things for the possibilities of AI in writing.