A few months ago I’d had a gutful of people advocating AI as the answer to everything. I raised issues in an online thread about wholesale theft of creative works, how often AI gets it wrong, how AI generates bias and prejudice, and how individuals are suffering unfairly because of flawed algorithms.
A few opponents took me on with the usual pat answers and blind-as-a-bat responses about AI. And as the conversation went on, I realised I wasn’t ‘conversing’ with other humans. These were social media bots designed to promote (you guessed it) … AI.
Doh!
Anyhow, do I think AI is evil and the end of the world? Not necessarily. I guess there’s always a chance it is the beginning of the end, but I don’t pretend to know the future. And I do see the potential and benefits of AI in broad terms, but unlike the AI evangelists, I also see the risks.
AI promises (threatens?) to revolutionise writing and publishing. Everything from a prompt to rewrite a sentence through to writing a whole novel. This begs so many questions I can’t cover in this short piece, but the main question for me is one of trust. The reduction in trust AI brings between the reader and the writing, that is.
What does AI mean for my writing? Well, as a matter of trust between myself and you the reader, I want you to know I do not use AI to generate one single thing in my writing. No prompts, no rewrites, no ideas, no automated editing. Nothing. Nil, Nada.
And I never will.
When you read a book I have written, it is just that: a book I have written.
Will AI outdo me in the future? Never say never I guess. But in the meantime, bring-it-on. You might be light-years faster than me, AI, but I’ll out-create and out-imagine ‘you’ any day of the week.