tech
I wrote a novel using AI. Writers must accept artificial intelligence – but we are as valuable as ever
Mastery of banal style is losing its usefulness – but language is more powerful than ever. It’s up to the writer to do what machines can’t
TL;DR
- Children quickly understand AI as generating language that sounds meaningful but lacks substance.
- AI is a disruptive tool, not an end-of-the-world scenario or a universal solution.
- The ability of machines to generate meaning is an existential curiosity.
- A significant percentage of college students regularly use AI, impacting traditional writing training.
- Writers have two perceived options: avoid AI or automate their writing practice; the author suggests a false binary.
- The Transformer architecture, powering generative AI, highlights the power of language.
- AI excels at generating convincing expressions of 'dead language' and formulaic tasks like software coding and average essays/film scripts.
- Mastery of the banal is no longer adequate for writers; skill will be found in the purpose and uniqueness of the work.
- Chess serves as a model for AI integration, where players use AI as a tool after developing their fundamental skills.
- The author advocates for controlling AI rather than being controlled by it.
- Fear is not the only reaction; AI is not good at replacing people, and controlled language requires control, whether using AI or a pen.
- The surrealists adapted to linguistic destabilization by inventing games and focusing on expression and altering human experience.
- Adaptation to new modes of generation and dissemination has always been the cost of freedom for artists.
- The task of writing in the age of AI remains the same: to see through manias, unpack mechanisms, and create new language or shock old language back to life.
- Norbert Wiener's advice suggests rendering unto man what is man's and unto the computer what is the computer's.
- Most art throughout history has been of low quality.
- Humanist skills like thinking, creating, and understanding cannot be replaced by AI, unlike merely technical skills which are vulnerable to automation.
- Writers must distinguish between language that sounds meaningful and language that is meaningful, waging war against cliche with or against AI.