– HAL 9000, the AI from Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey."
If only generative AI were that simple to dismiss. But resist? That you can do.
In my work as a developmental editor and book coach, authors sometimes ask me about using generative AI for their work. My advice is this:
"Don't."
Don't risk your one shot with the gatekeepers by sending out queries and first pages that may have recognizable stylistic or content patterns that send up red flags.
Don't rob yourself of the opportunity to develop the storytelling and polishing skills that can only come by doing the work. Don't cheat yourself out of the practice, deep thinking, visualization, and immersion into the world of your story that opens up new neural pathways in your brain.
Don't fall for the hype of what appears to be an easy shortcut but which actually robs you of the chance to reach your full potential.
And that's not the only thing it robs you of: This tech will train off your creative work, with or without your permission. It believes it is entitled to use that work to generate derivative works. Read this true story about an AI-generated book that was a whole new kind of identity theft.
And more from the author whose identity was stolen.
Don't be tempted to brainstorm with AI. What you're actually doing is brainstorming with its coders. A coder may be brilliant at coding, but are they also a reader? Maybe they are, but maybe they're not. All you can know is that brainstorming with AI is brainstorming with the books they've taken, with or without permission, and loaded into its memory. Consider instead reading Writing the Natural Way, a classic that provides (among other things) brainstorming exercises.
Most of all: Don't worry. Authors, filmmakers, musicians, visual artists, and other creatives are panicking about the appropriation of their work and the possibility of being replaced, rendered obsolete. But you don't have to. Adding to or substituting a human being's creative works with machine-based "intelligence" can never generate anything but a cheap imitation of what a human can do. Here is a brief, bruising opinion on this subject from Nick Cave's Red Hand Files.
And this one on Lit Hub gives me hope.
There are no shortcuts. Not in life. Not in writing.