The Rise and Fall of the AI Bankruptcy Mythos
It's time to dispel a popular myth: AI is not creatively bankrupt, or by necessity, plagiarist, or an unfair curse to the artistic and writing communities. In fact, it can be a helpful storytelling partner and can serve well as a useful editorial device. And to prove it to you, let me share with you what I've learned: Although AI systems -- or "Large Language Models" -- do in fact use popular and not-so-popular sources as their training material, it might surprise you to know that AIs do NOT actually RETAIN the data they are trained on. That data is there only to provide the AI with the STRUCTURE of images, stories, poetry, and so forth. So that it can produce imitative material. It doesn't actually KNOW what the 21st Psalm *is* -- it just knows that it sees those words in that order a lot more often. It doesn't actually have any "knowledge." Just maps of probability of a thing's occurrence or lack thereof. It's a heady concept. But no, they don't actually "know" or "create" ANYTHING. They simply know what happens MOST OFTEN in a sequence or series of observed events. They are, in the end, just as "DUMB" as your Microsoft Word's spellchecker is. Most of what they produce, creatively, IS empty and bankrupt. But on the quantum scale of individual words or sentences, it can actually DEEPEN an author's understanding of the form, style, and yes, even substance of their work. So it's not really useful for "creating" original stories. But, it can REWRITE like a mofo. And that, as they say, is all she wrote.
Years ago I wrote a draft of "The Reality Engineers" that became "The Wrath of the Con" eventually. If you haven't read either of those novels, then GOOD, because they were a right mess. Unedited, sloppy, full of errors both spelling and continuity-wise. A nightmare. Recently though, the advances in AI have made it possible for me, at long last, to SELF edit, and boy, what a difference it makes. "The Mad-Science Adventures of Dizzy Weatherspark and the Reality Engineers," the newest, most recent republication effort I've done (trying to put ALL -- or most of -- my work out there in the public) -- is only 363 pages long . . . and I suppose, could be considered a smashing self-editing job, given that the original ROUGH draft of "The Wrath of the Con" turned into 1,600 pages of editorial nightmare fuel. The new versions of these stories -- thanks to me now having an effective editing system -- are a lot shorter than their predecessors. And easier to read, too. And qualitatively better, or at least subjectively so from what I can tell.
Thanks to technological innovations, I can now write and edit with a lot more confidence. Just goes to show you that freaking out and yelling that "the sky is falling!" is dangerous and leads to stagnation, while embracing these new tools actually helps us bend them to our individual and collective advantage and will. They don't have to be our REPLACEMENTS but our AUGMENTS. We can either adapt, or die. Fighting progress has never, ever LED to progress. Just stagnation.
If writers don't adapt, they will croak both professionally and personally. Simple cold, brutal fact. Do you see Stephen King, Clive Barker, Brandon Sanderson, or either of the James S.A. Corey writing team, or maybe John Scalzi taking a backseat to AI, or resting on THEIR laurels? No, you don't. If you ask me who I'm going to follow the example of, I will choose King and that lot every time. Reason being, I strive to live up to the lofty heights of success my heroes and inspirational figures have enjoyed, not to simply exist as a supplicant to them.
And if you like, here's a little link to the snarky, witty, and banterish mad genius herself and her book (which is going to have a sequel sooner or later).
Dizzy Weaherspark is a mad scientist. She's also a superheroine. Really. And she has weird friends like an engineer, a hacker, an inventor, and the AI in her clockwork exosuit. She and her arch nemesis battle for control of quantum realm in this: A hard-rocking tale of lost technology, love, and electromagnetic fields. This girl knows how to party!
And here’s where you can grab a paperback copy: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F6KG91ZL
