The whole world is in love with Artificial Intelligence. I don't know all the things AI is capable of accomplishing, but people seem to love is that it makes writing easier. Letters, emails, term papers — no more struggling to find the right word and build a smart sentence. Let AI do it.
You know who doesn't love AI?
Writers.
My good friend John Burns, a man who knows a thing or two about future predictions, speaks of the "coming AI nightmare for writers." We're having a beer on Friday, giving us a chance to speak about this in more depth. I don't spend much time thinking about AI but I do believe it is within the realm of possibility that publishers will cut out the main financial hindrance — writers — and type in a topic so a computer can churn out a book in an instant. No more late deadlines, no more sloppy prose. An instant book, ready to send to the printers. It's not just writers who will suffer if this comes to pass. Editors, copyeditors, fact-checkers…we'll all be out on our ear.
I have two thoughts about this. The first is that I'm sixty-three, not twenty-three. I've got a few more decades of writing left in me. Maybe I can outlast the AI phenom before it really takes over. I fear for the young college student planning on a writing career.
My other thought is this: storytelling is a tale as old as time. I think I just cribbed a line from Beauty and the Beast. I hear Angela Lansbury's voice. Chaucer, Dickens, Twain, Salter. The storytellers keep our era alive long after we're gone. They're irreplaceable. The best stories are personal, hewn from someplace deep in our soul. So while AI may take over the kind of writing I do (how easy to tell a computer, "Write a book about the Battle of Britain"), the unique personal twists myself and other writers give a tale is not easily duplicated.
I can easily visualize Burns reading this and chuckling about my naïveté. But like I said, I'm trying to stay one step ahead. I am positive that computers will someday find a way to mimic my style word-for-word, so I take this as a challenge: I need to push myself and continue changing my voice to make my writing better and harder to duplicate. Maybe do more fiction or memoir, because those stories are personal and unique to my life.
To play devil's advocate, I could just give in to AI. Tell the computer to write my books. But where's the fun in that? Literally. Writing can be slow and painful and terrifying, a tightrope without a net. But the rewards in terms of creativity, increased confidence, a growing comfort with taking chances, and satisfaction bordering on the sexual when the job is done well transcend the act of writing. Even if AI could give hand jobs it wouldn't be worth selling my soul. I need to put my own words on the page. It's all about the process.
I don't want to reach my deathbed regretting the books I did not write. At a time in life where I want to slow down and savor the writing process, I must do so with the awareness that the future is chasing — and coming fast.