Artificial Intelligence

 (Full disclosure: I use what some might consider artificial intelligence at times in my writing, by which I mean the text-to-speech, Check Document, and Dictate features in Microsoft Word. I use them to compensate for some of my vision issues when proofreading and notetaking.

 

The Beloved Spouse™ and I also have Alexas all over the house. They are mostly quite useful, especially in setting timers and alarms, and occasionally answering questions when I’m too lazy to look something up. Alexa is also a pain in the ass, and shows signs of what we call “artificial dementia. I’ve given up asking her to turn lights on and off.)

 

I have no firsthand experience with this, but a trusted friend told me there are places that now review AI-generated writing. The Facebook post asked what his friends thought of this.

 

My reply: I cannot conceive of any circumstance under which I'd read a book even partially written with AI, so I obviously have no reason to want to see reviews.

 

Anyone who uses artificial intelligence as part of their creative process is not a writer. What are they? Off the top of my head I come up with charlatan, shirker, cheat, lazy. This is someone who cares more about getting over than creation. A person who takes less pride in accomplishment than in passing something off as their accomplishment. An untrustworthy, dishonest, con artist who is only interested in what he can get from writing than in investing something of himself to enhance the craft. This is worse than plagiarism, as plagiarists at least take the time to find what they rip off.

 

Writing with AI is like giving someone else money to buy the ingredients, hiring a different person to make the cake, then taking credit for the end result. It’s hitting a baseball off a tee, then claiming Justin Verlander is your bitch. It’s running a 5K on a Segway. You’re the man with a two-inch erection who, when asked by his potential lover who he intends to satisfy with that, says, “Me.” All you care about is what you can get from it.

 

Artificial intelligence will be able to do many wonderful things. It may also take over and make the Terminator scenario look like a Labor Day picnic. What it cannot be allowed to do is replace what makes humans human.

 

In the Dune novels, Frank Herbert creates the Orange Catholic Bible. One of its tenets is “Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.” I am by no means a religious person, but this is good advice. I don’t want to see Commander Datas or Blade Runner replicants roaming the Earth, no matter how hot Joanna Cassidy was. There should never be a dilemma of conscience when debating whether to turn off a machine.

 

Most important, turning off the machine should always be a human choice.

 

AI and robot technology can remove tedious and dangerous tasks from the human to-do list, freeing us to explore and embrace more of what humans might be capable of if not bound by those tasks. To use AI in a creative act denies what it is that makes us human by saying a machine can do everything we do, and acting like that’s a good thing.

 

I have no interest in reading a novel or a short story or even a reference book written with AI. I have no desire to see a motion picture created through AI. I see no joy in replicants or androids or whatever they will be called playing sports or performing music or dancing.

 

I applaud and encourage all efforts to promote diversity among humans. There’s a line. Nothing should ever blur the line between what is human and what is not.