“Before we work on artificial intelligence, why don’t we do something about natural stupidity? ~ Steve Polyak
We have now reached the stage of human evolution where the robotic sensibilities of AI have reached far beyond academic research, sensitive medical procedures, and arcane developmental conundrums of science to students asking ChatGPT to write their essays, literary groups creating certification programs to confirm, “no AI was used in this book,” publishers cancelling contracts over profligate AI incursion, and authors scrambling to date every draft so they can’t be accused of allowing AI incursion.
What the hell, H.A.L.?
I know AI has many valuable uses; I know there’s no stopping it. I’m aware that many, many people gleefully dump their questions and queries into ChatGPT or Gemini or OpenAI every single day and just love love love what they get back, but here’s my stance:
I HATE IT.
At least as it pertains to the creative activities of human brains. That will not be news to anyone reading this Substack. I previously covered my seething disdain in, “Nope. Don’t Want Robots Writing My Fiction,” and, “Then They Came After My Books…,” and still there’s more to say because every day there’s more infiltration, new twists in the metastasizing story of, “what is AI doing to our creative arts?” (I cover those simply because it’s the angle I know; there are, no doubt, many other [mis]uses of AI in many other industries.)
Here’s the question I’d put to ChatGPT or Gemini or OpenAI if I deigned to utilize their insentient services: Why on earth—at a time when so much attention is being put on matters of mental health, on protecting our brains, on stimulating our thinking and doing everything possible to avert diminishment and dementia as we age—would we cede our very thought processes, our brain work, our creative explorations and exercises to the fucking robots?? Why?
Isn’t that in direct violation of the “use it or lose it” maxim? If we continually and progressively offload our creative processes—or the ways we puzzle out problems or questions, or the best wording for a letter or a class paper—to the robots, it seems to me we’re just handing them our brains on a platter saying, “Here, eat mine. I’m not using it cuz it’s too hard to conjure up a plot outline, or a letter to my boss, or an article for my school paper,” or whatever the challenge.
To which I say: Where did our pride of creation and accomplishment go?
I’m told current generations don’t see any/much value in “wasting their time” puzzling out problems or crafting their creations when AI can git ‘er done, which, if true, is quantifiably discouraging.
“Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.” ~ Aldous Huxley
And it does feel regressive to me. When sharpening our brains and fine-tuning our abilities is overwhelmingly encouraged and prescribed to maintain mental acuity, why would we offload such activities to AI? When providing enjoyment and insight with great stories, artistic imaginings, and emotionally rendered translations of life seems the elevated goal of humankind, why are we, instead, eager to dump our most salient creative questions and challenges into the swirling eddy of robotic interpretation and perception?
Cuz it’s easy. It’s novel. It’s fun to submit a prompt, a query, a question and, like pulling the lever on a slot machine, seeing what comes out. We can then take that easily-delivered data (“no taxing of my brain at all!”) and zhuzh it up enough to pass it off as ours.
Which means it’s also lazy.
Deflective. Passive. Even plagiaristic. An abnegation of our mandate as thinking, creating humans to explore, investigate, do the work with our own minds to come up with answers and ideas.
I ponder where the brains of people immersed in AI will be after a few decades of relying on robots to generate answers to everything. Will they be atrophied with disuse? Will we see an uptick of early-onset dementia? An inability to answer even the most simple questions due to loss of brain muscle memory? An inability to conjure up even a greeting card message?
But even in this moment, what is it doing to actual original thought? Creativity? Imagination? I got into a back & forth with a fellow on social media (something I rarely, if ever, do) after someone posted the link below about a publishing contract being cancelled due to evidence the author largely used AI to “write it.” (She blames her editor. I say, “sure”🙄 … and the dog ate her homework.):
Horror Novel ‘Shy Girl’ Canceled Over Suspected A.I. Use
Its publisher, Hachette, will not release the novel in the United States and will discontinue its U.K. edition, citing its commitment to “original creative expression and storytelling.”
I like that commitment from a publisher, any publisher, and I said so on the post. A guy I don’t know commented:
“There are no original thoughts in our world anyway. It’s all generated by past generations, brick by brick.”
I had to respond: “I don’t agree with that at all. We learn and are inspired by past thinkers, creators, writers, yes, but every human being comes to this earth with their own imagination, thoughts, and creativity, and from that we get unique, individual, brilliantly expressed new ideas from those courageous enough to put them out into the world.”
He volleyed, fine-tuning his argument to something I could actually agree with: “OK, I’ll buy that, but I’d push it further — originality isn’t just unique thoughts. It is the courage to be vulnerable with them. AI can remix everything ever said, but it can’t risk anything. No skin in the game. What makes a novel powerful isn’t that ideas are ‘new’ — it’s that a real person exposed their inner world knowing they might be misunderstood. No algorithm replicates that.”
“YES. Exactly!” I shouted (in my head). “Though I continue to believe ideas can be ‘new’ because they’re generated and imagined by a new mind with a completely different set of experiences and perspectives. But your statement about AI’s remit–remixing the work & imagination of others–is correct. Courage and vulnerability are the purview of thinking, feeling humans; AI is a replicator, cold, calculating, and, utterly unoriginal.”
He wrapped up with a question to me: “Has this AI era changed how you think about what you share creatively?”
I answered: “No. AI is the morass which I avoid all together.”
We ended it there, but the conversation continues in myriad circles: authors fighting off AI media-predators trying to scam their marketing dollars, content creators seeing their work stolen by voracious AI companies looking to “train” their robots, and yes, publishers attempting to fend off the siege. Just the other day, the New York Times ran this piece:
A.I. Is Writing Fiction. Publishers Are Unprepared.
Book publishing has few safeguards in place to prevent the unwitting publication of a novel heavily generated by artificial intelligence…
It’s as though MAGA-think has seeped beyond politics and social issues to encroach on yet another thinking/feeling avenue of humanity: our creativity.
As a novelist, a writer, that reality exhausts and enrages me. It was hard enough when, in an earlier career of mine, the value of being a top-notch session vocalist who could cut a perfect track in one or two takes became irrelevant when digital manipulation replaced that human skill. Now, as a novelist, I and my fellow creators have to deal with AI not only stealing and co-opting our thoughts and words, but watching some amongst our ranks get seduced by the pull of lazy creation:
This post by another person I didn’t know struck me: “A guy just told me that if I use AI to write my first draft but then spend hours and weeks writing and revising subsequent drafts, I still can’t call myself a ‘writer,’ which I think is just bullshit. What do you guys think?”
What do I think? I think if you want to be called a writer, you write. YOU. Leave AI out of it. Challenge your own damn brain, curate your own creativity, demand more from yourself than the ease of sloughing it off to the machines. But if you do invite AI to feast at your table, make sure everyone knows your collaborator is a robot. They’ll decide, then, what to call you.
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