Who/What Are You?
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I’ve been writing a Substack once a week, but something just happened and I need to get this down.
I was working on an edit for my new novel, due out this fall. I need to do this edit in Word, though I prefer Pages. I am getting used to the differences, and telling myself I am growing new brain cells in the process. I clicked on an icon that read COMPOSE. I clicked on something else, and suddenly a line moved slowly across the screen, I think the word WAIT was above it, I watched and hit STOP, but it didn’t really want to stop, and up came a regurgitated draft of my entire novel courtesy of AI.
My first chapter had been cut down, the soul ripped out of it. Dialogue was replaced by tepid explanations. Sentences I had killed myself over had zero resonance. Here, I looked at a story that I have, no kidding, worked at for a few years on and off, and it had turned into… what? I thought of John LeCarre’s line about the hazards of having his novel become a movie: “It’s like seeing your oxen turned into a bouillion cube.” That’s how I felt, although a bouillon cube, when put into boiling water, still has flavor. This AI rendition of my work was utterly bland.
And, strangely, I was reminded of a time years ago when I had a new head shot taken and the photographer was on a mission from God to take every wrinkle and acne scar from my face. He photoshopped my neck, he “fixed” my eyebrows, gave me cheekbones, and sharpened my chin. When I saw the photo, I was appalled. I said, “Put me back.” He was stunned. I didn’t care. “Put me back. I earned those lines and scars.”
I looked at my reconstituted novel. I hit the RESTORE key. Instantly, my real draft re-appeared. I was grateful, but still semi-terrified. What I needed was a EVERYTHING’S OKAY NOW, WE SWEAR key. I went to my husband who knows about deep things, being an IT genius. I tried to remain calm. That didn’t work.
“I’m in danger, right?” I shrieked. “They/it — what are we dealing with here — can take all my writing and all my inner thoughts on this computer and turn them into pablum?”
“No,” Evan said with certainty.
“How do you know that?”
Evan looked at me. He knows things like this. He gets paid to know them.
“It’s probably watching me, listening to us right now…” I mentioned.
Evan shook his head. “It’ll be okay.”
I slumped in my chair. “What if it’s not?”
“Do you want me to tell you about probabilistic pattern-matching engines and Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem?”
“No.”
“You did the right thing,” Evan assured me in his soothing, tech support voice. “You pressed the wrong button and you fixed it. Well done.”
“Thanks,” I whispered.
He had a meeting.
I sat at my desk, turned my computer on and typed:
Nice try, AI. Guess what? You’re not me, you’ll never be. You don’t have a clue.
I hope you have a really, really awful year.
Please help spread the word…
I use AI for work. It is good at synthesizing data (take the comments from this survey, break it into themes, and develop a short-term and long-term action plan to address the issues). Snap. Done. Cool
Most AI tools can write very basic sentences. You know: He got the ball. She read a book. But it can’t come up with witty sentences found in every Joan Bauer book. It can’t bring me to tears the way your protagonists do when they share their inner monologue and I feel validated. It can’t make me laugh out loud in the middle of an ER when I read a sentence that perfectly captures the heartache of being a teen, even though my teenage years now qualify for AARP discounts.
What AI is excellent at is taking the emotion and passion out of writing. You know, the part that we want it to do. The thing that makes you keep typing even when your main characters aren’t playing nice.
AI can’t write what Evan says. That’s the beauty of human interaction. AI may mimic it, but it’s only regurgitating what it’s been fed. AI is artificial intelligence. You are real intelligence.
So I can promise you that as long as you continue to share your heart and soul with us, we’ll be here. AI needs to leave the writing to the (human) experts.
Joan..... I feel for you. I am same with Apple software & iPhones since I'm PC and Android. There is one 2 key motion I share with others.... It's Ctl Z. It goes back a step. You'll thank me (and Evan) later!