02/09/2024

Here’s the Thing AI Just Can’t Do

Understanding who provides AI's creative spark

A few months ago, I was called in at the last minute to participate in an onstage fireside chat at an Authors' Guild event. (I'm on the non-profit's council, but, of course, I speak here only for myself.) Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger and I spent much of the session exploring the implications of a future where AI robots could create viable literary works. For writers, it's a terrifying scenario. As we discussed the prospect of a marketplace flooded by books authored by prompting neural nets, I had a revelation that seemed to mitigate some of the anxiety. It may not have been an original thought, and I may have even come up with it myself earlier and forgotten about it. (My ability to retain what’s in my training set falls short of that of ChatGPT or Claude.) But it did frame the situation in a way that transcended issues like copyright and royalties.

I put it to the audience something like this: Let's say you read a novel that you really loved, something that inspired you. And only after you were done were you told that the author had not been a human being, but an artificial intelligence system... a robot. How many of you would feel cheated?

Almost every hand went up.

Please select this link to read the complete article from WIRED.