Would you become engaged and married to an unseen and unknown person based on their thousand word letter to you? Would you base a future decision on words and phrases from the past? On where somebody else has gone rather than where you are going?
That’s what Artificial Intelligence (AI) is. It is simply paragraphs that are based on past use and not future directions.
We’ve had ample warning about AI. When we heard that garage attendants who used to accept our parking garage payments were being replaced, we bemoaned the new jobless but recognized the march of progress. We now self-checkout at grocery stores. We shake our heads with wonder about the marvel of engineering and software in our age as rockets land themselves. I remember the excitement of digital photography circa 2000 when we were awash with cameras that didn’t use Kodachrome but were based on the marvel of “megapixels”, automatically choosing the right exposure and shutter duration for the best photo.
We were surprised to hear that robots could perform appendectomies, although the first reaction of many patients was summed up by the phrase, “I’ll never let a robot do that”. But once they recognized that robots produce less pain, reduced blood loss, and fewer complications with quicker recovery time and shorter hospital stays they warmed to the possibility. The fact that robots do not show up late for surgery, do not arrive drunk, don’t go on strike, don’t abuse staff, and don’t negotiate wages (although their programmers might), sweetened the deal.
Yet, these tools are not creative. AI doesn’t develop new surgeries, Surgeons do that. AI does mechanically what the surgeon’s hand cannot do physically. Note that there is no AI interface that controls the complex interplay with patients that a primary care physician must manage.
Of course self-driving cars for which there has been much ado has run into implementation problems. And this is just mechanical. We certainly don’t want creative AI car driving.
Yet we must admit that AI is not just coming. It’s here, and now injected into the arts. An AI authored painting won an award at the Colorado State Fair, stunning and angering many artists.
A Google search (of course, implementing “search-engine AI”) for AI and novels generates an enormous number of hits. Even website building sites are chocked full of “AI” tools. AI is writing book reviews, and has now written novels (most are novelettes for children) We thought that since AI would not displace the imaginative and the creative, it would be no threat, Now, AI claims to have breached that line.
The current version of these devices (if you keep track of them as they go by) is ChatGPT, the latest manifestation of AI in writing. It’s is increasingly popular and controversial now with many proponents, as well as critics concerned for its sudden injection into society. For many novelists confronting ChatGPT is like waking up one morning to a small wasp nest in your bedroom. You have two choices. You can ignore it, ceding the room to these attention getters, or you can deal with them.
So, let’s deal with it. I will focus on AI’s role in novel writing. What value does it bring? Once we understand what it’s algorithm does, we can answer that question.
It’s only fair to admit that AI has already wedged itself into our novel writing process. Fifty years ago, it took me days to manually spell-check a manuscript produced by an IBM selectric typewriter (and then retype the corrected pages). Now it takes an hour or so to run a spell checker. But spell checkers just examine each word of a manuscript against a list of words in its repository to see if it recognized the word you used and if not, recommend an alternative. Not much intelligence in that, like there is not much intelligence in a clock’s flywheel or a plumbing wrench. These are all tools. Grammar checkers are just a little more complicated.
ChatGPT though is more sophisticated. Based on a gargantuan database of words and sentences used in the past, it predicts the next most commonly used word or phrase and using grammar rules produces sentences, then paragraphs, then chapters.
While this is its wonder, it’s also a limitation. To ChatGPT, writing is nothing more than predicting from the past. It’s algorithm is based on past use. It has no imagination. It simply has history. It goes by what has been written before. It brings no new imagination to the forefront.
So, ChatGPT may be useful in authoring highly technical corporate reports. It may have some role in deep scientific or technical writing. There, the writing is predictable and prosaic. Good writing style has not yet found a place in the methods section of a complex genetics research manuscript, or quarterly stock performance report generated in preparation for a shareholders’ meeting. This writing is typecast. It’s not an attention grabbers for readers, begging the question, who is going to read them. Other machines, perhaps?
Alternatively, the days when novelists could think about being the next Tom Clancy, or the next Mary Higgins Clark, are gone. AI can reproduce these types of novels by the hundreds. After all, the database on the style of these writers is full. All of their writings are available for ChatGPT assimilation. The software owner comes up with a vague plot and ChatGPT rolls out the chapters. So that’s actually not such a bad thing if you’re a great fan of the genre.
But what ChatGPT can’t do is bring new imagination, not just a random thought, into play. As novelists we want to excite. Algorithms choosing the next word based on past word usage, one algorithmic use at a time, producing predictable paragraphs and phrases is what we don’t want as writers. We want challenges, stunners, and misdirection. Not readers being predictably lulled to sleep by predictable writing. So, in a real sense, ChatGPT is an anti-barometer for novel writers.
And now the heart of the matter, What is the difference between an AI-authored novel and a novel written by a human being? Let’s give AI the benefit of the doubt and say that it will always be improving its skills (as, of course, will we). Yet its heart is conditional probability. Precise calculations of what words should come next, given what has come before. It’s like building a bridge brick by brick, steel conduit by conduit, but not knowing its destination. Where it’s going? It doesn’t know.
However, I author novels to make a point to my readers. I know what issues the novel will contain and that these points have to be conveyed by interesting characters. Given that I know where my novel is going, and the role of this chapter in getting it there, I create, develop and edit paragraphs that keep the chapter interesting while it fulfills its goal. What thought, idea, paragraph should come next that helps me get there? This is forward thinking. My writing is pulled to the future by the direction that I set, and my paragraphs drive it to its destination. Looking for prevalent past phrase usage is of little help.
I know where I want to go with my writing. ChatGPT has no idea, but instead offers me a brick for the road. But I already have lots of those.
Also, novel characters based on their background, upbringing, and education have different word universes. A fifty year old computer chip designer speaks differently than a student at a divinity school, who has different ideas and words than a Honduran fisherman. Their word use is different. ChatGPT can’t keep this distinction clear from character to character. Human brains can. Injecting excitement and surprise into your writing brings life and heart to your novel; AI-generated predictability is its antithesis. Novels provide an order shattering future, through a positive, emotional experience. AI relies on the past, and therefore cannot surprise us, much less keep the reader reading.
Every human has unique value, reacting to a combination of events, forces and directions that nourishes, drives and sustains the spark of humanity. If that continues to be our source of inspiration, then its unlimited imagination will continue to successfully differentiate what we author from AI produced writing.
We as novelists are safe, as long as we don’t write like machines.
