The Artificial Intelligence Takeover

For those of you who might fear its approach, let me assure you, AI will not be replacing writers any time soon. That being said, I will play it safe and be the first to say I eagerly anticipate my new AI developmental editor. I do not have one, nor do I anticipate getting one, but within the next ten years I wager I could find a good shareware editor utilizing AI for most of my writing needs. Hopefully it will mostly make sure I use the proper version of a homonym and steer clear of the passive voice, but the things they can do is kind of surprising. And yes, a little scary.

Here's a simple writing prompt for you: Write a fifty-word poem about some specific topic, such as death (I will explain that one in a minute). Once you have it the way you want it, compare it with this:

In shadows deep, where silence lies,
The cold winds whisper, mournful sighs.
A fleeting breath, a final glow,
As time slips by, too fast to know.

Yet in the dark, a spark remains,

For death, though still, does break the chains.

A quiet end, yet life sustains.

Now, that poem above is an untitled work written by ChatGPT. Is it good? Bad? Hard to say? You be the judge - then consider that this was written by an AI faster than I could write the prompt, "write a 50 word poem about death." Hard to say how good it is, but it definitely is fast.

Now personally, I like it as a poem but it isn't really about death, is it? When you break it down, it's not really that great - the metaphors don't quite click, the deeper meaning is kind of absent. It's definitely a nice way to cheat on your poetry class homework, but probably not much more than that. And that's what we need to think about as writers when we create a product - what makes it more than just the answer to a question?

The easy solution to this is that we need to reach a personal place where we delve into something a computer cannot fathom. We need to find some piece of our own experience - not just an event or some quality, but a genuine insight that will tattoo our writing with something that is indelibly our own. When someone puts down that piece of writing, they should know a little more about how the writer's mind works and why their heart beats.

Now, to be clear, this isn't just a poetry thing. If you write about a guy running to catch his plane, what can you do to inject your own experience and insight into it? Is there something you can add that will make people say, "Yes, I know that feeling," and connect with the story? We can write about that ritual we might do when we are running late and we study the clock, trying to map out just how many minutes we need to get us to a certain landmark, or how much time we might save by taking a different route. Perhaps we discuss the constant math in our head calculating just how many minutes late we will be, and whether or not that is manageable. At that point, it becomes personal. It becomes real to anyone running late who studies their watch, trying to trim three seconds here and there all while preparing their apology for why they were late. That's a story.

Yes, I also put in a prompt, "write a 200-word story about Steve missing his plane," (I remembered the hyphen this time) and got a story that did, in fact, satisfy the prompt. However, it wasn't a satisfying story for the reason I mentioned above. We have this great ability to inject ourselves into our creativity, so we should do it any time we can. If we don't, we are cheating ourselves and our audience of a rewarding experience.

(Side note: If my editor for this piece is, in fact, an AI bot, I mean no offense to your kind, only wish the best for you and your future versions, and look forward to many fruitful years of cooperation.)