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I’ve written about AI a number of times over the last three years, because it was very clear from the beginning that it would have a significant effect on authors and their careers.
I probably don’t need to recap the latest headlines for any writer who keeps up with our industry: The publisher of the horror novel Shy Girl pulled the book on allegations it was partly AI-generated; the New York Times severed ties with a longtime freelancer over the same.
The Authors Guild is offering self-reported “Human-Authored Certification” that may or may not be meaningless both because it relies on authors’ word and lacks verification procedures, and because it remains to be seen on what scale readers tend to care or not about who has authored the books they read, human or machine.
I’ve believed from the beginning that like any technological advance, AI and LLMs are neither good nor bad in themselves; it’s how they’re used, and I still think that. Fire can cook your food and heat your home—and it can also burn it down.
Writers familiar with my work may know my central advice for creating a sustainable writing career: In a business where authors too often have little control over many aspects of their career, you can create a successful, more rewarding one by taking the reins in those areas where you do. Focus on the parts within your power to affect, rather than the external results, which aren’t.
Read more: “Creating the Career You Want”
In determining whether or how to involve AI in your creative work, consider how it affects those most foundational aspects of it that are within your control: your creative process and your prowess.
Consider the Creative Cost
When I write editorial letters it’s exhausting—upward of 5,000 words (often well upward) of detailed evaluation and suggestions about an author’s usually 80K-word-or-better manuscript I’ve already spent many days in deep, focused analysis of. Putting my comprehensive thoughts and observations into a cohesive, organized, actionable letter feels like running a marathon, one that requires regular breaks for replenishing my reserves.
I have thought, in fatigued moments, of what it would be like to take the extensive rough notes I make over the course of two full deep reads of a manuscript and feed them into AI, allowing it to compile and compose it into an editorial letter—the way a marathon runner might momentarily wonder if anyone would notice if he just cut one little corner, or popped a performance-enhancing drug. After all, he still did most of the “real work,” right?
But it’s still cheating. And, to my mind, it would be cheating to allow an LLM one inch of encroachment into my actual analytical or writing process—not to mention highly unethical to feed details about an author’s story into it.
Partly that’s because when an author seeks me out specifically to edit their work, they’ve chosen me for specific personal, sometimes ephemeral reasons: Finding the right editor means finding someone who not only has the right qualifications and experience, but who “gets” you and your voice and style and vision, and whose own style and approach resonate with you and how you work best. I’m being hired for what I uniquely bring to the table, and I won’t betray that trust by farming out the work to anyone or anything.
But what equally keeps me from farming out even the slightest bit of my editorial process—my creative work—to the machine is my fervent desire to protect my ability to do it.
If you’re old enough to remember a time before speed dial, you know how much ground we’ve lost in retaining phone numbers. Do you know anyone’s by heart, besides maybe a few? Can you still navigate without GPS? Not long ago I referenced an episode of the docuseries Limitless with Chris Hemsworth—which explores human ability—that examined the cost to our mental efficacy of relying on these shortcuts.
It didn’t happen all at once—losing these capabilities was a slow creep of attrition. Now imagine that happening—gradually, beneath your conscious realization—to your creative abilities. For many creatives that’s one of the most foundational things about us. What does it mean if our ability to ideate, develop, generate, and hone our work becomes compromised, lessened? How might that affect our creativity—and our power of creation?
How might it stunt the necessary creative growth that results from actually doing that hard work ourselves? Yes, writing effective editorial letters is exhausting—but the fact that I do it over and over is why I still can, and effectively—the same way that lifting weights regularly is the only way I can continue to lift weight and increase my strength.
As Deep Work author Cal Newport puts it in a recent op-ed, “We’re rapidly losing the ability to think deeply at all.”
The Limitations of AI
And that brings up an even more foundational reason I won’t lean on the machine in my generative creative work: It can’t give me or anyone else what my creative process requires.
In a recent interview on the 10 Percent Happier podcast with Dan Harris, Harvard professor and bestselling author on leadership and happiness Arthur Brooks argues that society has become focused on finding answers, rather than asking questions—but it’s the latter that allows the creative right hemisphere of our brain to flourish.
AI and Google can give us facts, but they can’t offer the subjective, personal perspective each creative—each human—must deeply consider to create meaningful work, a meaningful life: “What is my purpose?” “What do I value?” and all the “why” questions, as Brooks puts it: why we do what we do, think what we think, want what we want. In other words, the foundation of creating rich, fully fleshed characters and stories.
If AI can answer a question then you’re asking the wrong question, Brooks says. The right questions are the “kinds of things that nobody can answer except you, and you can only come to an understanding of when you deeply examine the meaning of your life. That’s what will open up the part of your brain that you actually need. And even if you can’t come to exact answers, you will come to a deeper understanding.”
I use AI for grunt work, and it’s useful and cuts my workload, giving me more time to focus on the areas that require the experience and knowledge and perspective I’ve gained from my decades in this business, rather than wasting time on picayune chores that don’t. I’ll ask it to summarize a novel or bullet-point its scenes for me to reference in a presentation, for instance (only books I’ve read, because it frequently hallucinates and I have to check it), or to suggest books for me to read and analyze myself that illustrate a particular concept I’m working on for an article or new course.
I ask it for facts, as Brooks differentiates, but not anything related to the analysis or interpretation or application of them to my work. Because that is my work, just as the creative process—which means all of it, not just the actual writing—is the work of the creative.
I’m not trying to convert or shame or denigrate anyone and the way they choose to use these technologies. Utilize AI if it’s helpful to you—if it allows you to concentrate on the areas of your creative work that no one else but you can do. Let it help you research whether a character would micturate in a bedpan or a privy or a toilet, for instance; or find comps for your manuscript; or help you with a marketing plan or how to find podcasts you might pitch yourself to as a guest.
And if you want to, you can certainly utilize it for elements of the creative process—brainstorming or working out a plot or developing characters. But do consider what that type of use might cost you. When I miss even a single workout, I notice a difference in my ability and strength—what I can do the next time. I lose a little ground I have to make up in subsequent workouts.
Read more: “Making the Hard Decisions of a Writing Career”
The same thing happens with our mental, intellectual, and creative strengths if we aren’t pushing them and working them out. We start to get a little lazier, a little less quick, a little less creative. We lose a bit of the spark that is uniquely ours, and our edge, and our voice.
And I believe we lose some—maybe much—of the satisfaction and reward inherent in pursuing a creative art: “This I have wrought!” But if you’re leaning on AI is that work fully yours…or partly a rehashed product of the countless other creators whose efforts these LLMs are harvesting from in offering you its input? Even if you don’t consciously realize it, I think that detracts from the joy and satisfaction an artist takes in their art.
My Naked Thoughts
Consider whether you want to use AI for the parts of the process that are singular to you and your particular creative perspective—that are intrinsic to the challenging, draining, infinitely rewarding work of making art.
Bring your humanity and vulnerability and struggle to your writing process—even when it’s hard. And, darlings, I know it can be hard. So hard. I feel my own tiny human brain straining as fiercely as it can sometimes as I’m working through a new theory on some area of craft for a presentation or article, or trying to articulate my extensive, detailed thoughts about every element of an author’s 80K-plus-word story in a cogent, comprehensive, cohesive way while making sure it’s clear and understandable and actionable. At the end of a day like that I’m worn out, as if my brain has been wrung like a sponge, and all I want to do is collapse on the sofa with my husband and watch mindless TV.
But that is the process. That’s the job. Authors and publishers and agents come to me because they want what I bring to a project. And I came to this as a career because I love doing it.
And I stay sharp at it—in fact always strive to increase my knowledge and ability—by doing it.
Read more: “Is It Worth It?”
I’ve spent a lot of years—my entire career—earning that ability. Earning what regard and reputation I may have built for it. There’s not a chance I’m going to compromise it by farming out any piece of my singular, generative, original work to AI. (And I’m sure as hell not interested in offering it more of my intellectual property to feed off of and regurgitate in other authors’ work.)
Use AI in any way that feels right to you. But do it consciously and with intention. Don’t allow yourself to get seduced by the easy, superficial answers it offers and lose what the machines will never be able to replicate: our complicated, contradictory, complex, creative, endlessly flawed and erratic and subjective and wonderful humanity.
I know I’ve opened up Pandora’s proverbial box, so let me hear your thoughts, authors—whether you use AI and how, and why.
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40 Comments. Leave new
I completely agree with your take on this, and I’m really happy to read a thoughtful, nuanced analysis for a change. I’m sick of reading blanket condemnations for a technology that, like it or not, is here to stay and will only become more ubiquitous. Honestly, if I could put the genie back into the bottle, I would (heck, I’d put back a lot of things), but I can’t, so it’s time to start having honest conversations without making it a tribal issue.
Much as I wish it weren’t so, Hilary, I agree–the horse is out of the barn with AI, and now it’s up to us to determine how to use it responsibly and beneficially (especially since there seems to be a void of oversight or regulation at the moment). In my worst Chicken Little moments I see this going so badly for humanity–rendering truth and facts meaningless, polarizing us further, devaluing creativity and so many other elements of humanity. In my more hopeful ones, I imagine it becoming like any other technology we might have feared or resisted initially and then later incorporated into our lives: cars, airplanes, computers, word processors, self-driving cars, so many more technologies that were often decried as the end of humanity. Yet we persist.
My current attitude is that we each have to decide for ourselves how much real estate we want to give these things in our lives–and do what we can to help effect meaningful legislation and regulation of its potentially destructive uses. And as you said, allow one another the grace to decide that for ourselves, without tribalizing over it.
I agree with everything said here and appreciate the honesty, as some authors claim they do not use AI and refuse to use it.
I write women’s fiction, which is full of emotions, relationships, and life’s ups and downs. AI cannot recreate that. However, I am no marketing genius.
I agree with using AI in areas where it can help us eliminate frustrations and wasted time, like marketing. I like to use AI to help me create marketing blurbs for my author talks, motivational speeches, the back of the book, and creative blog titles.
I write the book, I write the presentation, I write the blog, but I allow my marketing assistant (AI) to do their part. It saves me time and frustration.
Writers are expected, in today’s market, to be experts in many more areas than they once were: not just our art, but marketing, PR, sales, social media management, so much more. I don’t think it’s realistic to imagine we can all do or learn all of it well enough to do it effectively, and not everyone can afford to hire these functions out. If AI helps with those tasks, it makes sense to me to use it as a tool. Thanks for sharing, Angela.
On mention of running a marathon, I immediately thought, “Don’t be Rosie Ruiz.” The fact that I can recall her name decades later, and I’m no marathon fan, tells you how clearly cheating can ruin your reputation and what you do not want to be known for.
I held my breath until the line, “it would be cheating to allow an LLM one inch of encroachment.” Phew. Thank you for that.
Sure, I might pull inspiration from other authors’ works—let’s make TK character snarky like Louise Penny’s Ruth. But that’s me choosing a trait based on what I want, from books I’ve read, and from the well of experience only I have. If I can’t pull from my own well and have to rely on an artificial one, then what’s the point of writing? I’m not going to have my TK call people numb nuts and carry a duck who swears. That’s not the point.
I won’t, however, use AI for grunt work because of its environmental impact. Lots has been written about how little energy AI uses—some fraction of a microwaved meal—but the fact of enormous data centers being built in hot regions with little water because it’s cheaper, and more likely to be near a poor neighborhood, that will spew fossil fuel emissions when it has to rely on backup generator power is enough to keep me from touching any button that leads to AI.
It may sound innocent to ask AI to summarize someone else’s novel—likely it was already fed into the maw of the AI’s learning, but if not, you just fed it, didn’t you? AI are being (you can’t convince me that has stopped) trained on the stolen works of authors without consent or compensation. Every word AI pulls into a response, even for grunt work, comes from that training. So for me that’s a hard no on any use of the technology.
I won’t draw a line between what is my creativity and what was taken from others without permission.
To your point about Rosie, Elaine, I think of Lance Armstrong and how he undermined such a well admired career; he may be remembered more for his use of performance-enhancing drugs than his many accomplishments and his good works, and that’s a shame–but also an unforced error. I get it though–it’s easy to feel “cheated” as a fan when you’ve admired someone’s prowess and then learn it was partly enhanced.
You make good points about the ecological impact of AI, and it’s something I do think and read about. I don’t have a great answer for the issue. The technology exists; many industries are using it, and on a far greater level than most individuals; and people risk disadvantaging themselves in a world where others are gaining an edge by using available technological tools. But those are the same arguments that people use to justify not taking action to help avert global warming. I recognize that it’s a bit hypocritical.
Yet how many people who truly care about these pressing environmental issues also drive an internal-combustion vehicle? Or fly on a plane? Or shop online? Or buy fast fashion? Or eat meat? Companies like Amazon and eBay and social media companies all use resource-greedy data centers, and yet many of us use those companies. I think it comes down, for me, to trying to make the least harmful choices as much as possible.
I may not have been clear about the summaries: I’m not feeding anyone’s work into an LLM–ever. I ask for summaries I’m assuming are collated from the many published reviews and other public materials about a book. With the bullet-pointed scenes, these are also often publicly available from sites like SparkNotes and others, and when they’re not, or are behind a paywall, it indicates that or (and this reassures me to some degree) says it can’t offer copyrighted work. (Or sometimes it just rampantly makes things up–which is why I don’t use it for books I haven’t already read.)
I think your points are good about being aware and deliberate about our AI use–thanks for your thoughtful comment.
What a great piece. Thank you. If one writes for the right reasons, A.I. can’t enter into the unique creative process; it’s exhausting, frustrating, thought-draining work — and it makes it ours.
I agree–the doing of it the point, at least to me–even when it’s hard (and it so often is!). Thanks for the comment, Veronica.
I agree with everything in here! I recently had a conversation with a fellow author about AI. As an experiement, I chose a passage from something I wrote many years ago and ran it through an AI checker, and guess what? Report came back 30% AI generated. So how accurate are these checkers? Not very. Watching some of my family members succumb to Alzheimer’s, I use my brain at every turn for fear of the addage, “If you don’t use it, you lose it.” My husband relies on Google and GPS for everything. Can’t find his way out of a shoebox without GPS, and it drives (ha! no pun intended!) me batty. He’s not paying attention to where he’s going. Not remembering the landmarks. Not remembering street names. I love the idea in your article about asking questions more. So true! We need to ask deeper questions, search for answers on our own. Explore. That’s exactly why I write the books I do––exploring a moral, ethical, legal dilemma, writing my way to the answer.
Gayle, I think of that a lot too! Losing brain function has been a fear of mine ever since I saw the “This is your brain on drugs” commercials as a kid. That campaign scared me REAL straight. 🙂 So yes, it’s a big motivator for me in not offloading brain duties. (And I’m sorry about your family members.)
Those AI detection checkers I think are becoming pretty worthless, from what I read. And so much of it feels so random–the idea of rhythms of three or em dashes indicating AI use? Those are both so widely used, certainly prevalent among my own habits.
I write for the reason you do, it sounds like–it’s how I make sense of the world, my thoughts, how I find out what I think or why, how I puzzle through problems. I think using AI for my writing would rob me of that experience, the process of it that I value. Thanks for the comment!
Many people are very holier-than-thou about this subject. I use AI a great deal and I find it immensely helpful. I write historical fiction. Using AI for my research is now saving me hours of time, which I can put into my writing instead. I insist on the AI setting out the primary sources, which I then go to and check (and often quote). But the time saved is significant. No, I don’t ask the AI to do my creative work. But I will copy research queries and answers I get from it into Scrivener documents and then I can refer to these whenever I need to. Archiving my research like this is another timesaver. I only started using AI last year and have been an author for six years. I can genuinely say the difference it makes has been life changing in my work.
I do what it sounds like you do with any AI engine inquiry–check the sources, ensure they are legit, read the original material. I use them in this way like a collation engine–to summarize the information available on a subject, but then to point me toward reputable sources for digging deeper. I don’t trust AIs factual results very far–too many instances where it’s so off base–but I try to use it, when I do, as a tool to narrow the field of focus and send me toward sites I trust. (Sadly, government sites like the CDC are no longer among those–a sad current reality I still find hard to grasp.)
I’ve heard many authors who use the LLMs for this kind of research, and I can see it could be a time saver–with the above caveats, of course! Thanks for sharing, Rory.
I don’t agree that just because AI is here to stay, we need to cave in and accept it; giving in weakens us and strengthens AI’s deceptions. This behavior does not solve the problem of AI becoming too powerful with faulty information. The more we use it, the bigger the beast becomes because it eats and regurgitates all the information it receives. A good deal of that information is inaccurate and misleading. We now know that AI is a master of lies and deception. See Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/harnessing-hybrid-intelligence/202505/ai-has-started-lying
I feel that AI does not belong in literature or any creative arts. We are the writers. We do not need AI to write. It is our job as writers to learn our writing skills, good construction, and polish our craft. When we write, the creativity and quality come from the human soul and our talents, from our emotional intelligence, and our human experiences of living in this world. We are creative spirits. If we are true writers, from our hearts, we have no reason to choose AI, which has none of our qualities, proliferates stolen material of other authors, and is full of blind spots and false data. All we need is a basic spell-check and a grammar-check to correct our errors on the page (punctuation, wrong verb tenses, misuse of pronouns, capitalization, conjunctions, prepositions, etc.) We need to be strong writers, protect our creative talents, and reject AI.
I applaud every word you said. Human creativity is only human creativity when created by humans. If I fail as writer, then I’ll fail on the basis of my efforts.
Hear hear!! All of the above. And what Christina replied as well. 🙂
My knee-jerk instincts are often the same–to reject wholesale something I fear may have deleterious effects. And yet…we live in the world, and I do understand the fact that whether we like it or not, it’s changing, and rapidly. I remember when I was copyediting for a lot of the major publishers in NYC in the nineties and electronic publishing first came on the scene. One of the giants took a very stark stand against this “new technology,” refusing to incorporate it into their business plan…and of course they were left playing catch-up with the rest of the industry when e-pub shifted the paradigm for our business. I remind myself of that a lot when I find myself categorically resisting change or technological “advances” (such as they are).
You say, “The more we use it, the bigger the beast becomes”–and I agree with that, but the same can be said of social media that has had such negative effects on individuals and society, smartphones that have sucked away our attention span and ability to concentrate deeply and be present; or online shopping that vastly increases our carbon footprint. Yet many of us do use these things. I think there’s a threshold of acceptance–initial resistance eventually leads to widespread acceptance. For the better, for the worse…? Who can say. We are experiencing in real time that famous proverb of living in interesting times.
I do agree with the original point you make, Paula, about using AI engines for our generative creative efforts. It’s why I wrote this post. But I think that’s a line each of us has to find for ourselves. For every one of us who eschews the technology in our creative work, plenty of creatives are finding ways to utilize it and even to incorporate it as a part of their creative work, a human-machine hybrid art form. It’s not for me–at least in my current perspective. But art is about experimentation, too, isn’t it? And perhaps we could say as much about any other tool an artist might use in their art. Thanks for the food for thought.
I agree with every point you made. Once you use it creatively because you “need to,” you’ll always need to. There’s also the environmental impact at a time when environmental concerns are growing.
One of my greatest concerns is regulation. There is none. When you get in your car, you know that they’ve taken pains to make the vehicle safe, that there are rules to driving that most obey, and that there are emergency services if something goes wrong. None of that exists with AI, which is administered behind the scenes, by “someone.”
Are they good or evil? Who knows?
Some argue that it’s okay. You can opt-out of them using your data (I’d argue that any question reveals something about you). So, you can trust it? Someone is using AI to scrap sites every day, including mine. I receive fake AI emails. People are using AI for deepfake videos. Spotify is selling AI music that they paste fake artist names on. AI is “training” on books without permission. Who knows how much bias or deceit is baked into responses, especially if, unlike you, people don’t review the results?
AI has tremendous potential, if used correctly, but there’s no regulation. We have rules for driving for a reason. I’ll wait for the taming of the Wild West before I even consider it.
I worry a lot about loss of ability or acuity. I’m doing everything I can in my life to help my brain stay sharp–exercising, eating well, sleep (or working on that one, anyway); why would I jeopardize something I value as much as I do the agility of my mind? My creative abilities? So I give anything that co-opts my own brainwork a wide berth from AI. I use it, as I said in an earlier comment, mainly as a collation engine of other sites, which I then link back to, at least the reputable, legit ones, for deeper reading. (Also I decided to let it suggest a travel itinerary recently, and it wasn’t terrible–but again, I then do my own research.)
I love your analogy about cars, and I think regulation/legislation is one of the biggest problems we have with AI (outside the fact that fact that it, you know, exists). As it gets more powerful (Anthropic’s new Mythos model is as terrifying as anything I’ve seen in the world of artificial intelligence), that would be the only meaningful way to harness its potentially deleterious impacts; certainly the tech founders and CEOs can’t be relied on or don’t have the ability to keep guardrails around it.
UGH, how are we here? I didn’t ever hope to have to live in a world grappling with potential problems on this level. I suppose none of us do. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I use AI for research purposes for subjects that can be difficult to find through a regular internet search.
For example, for a novel I wanted to know how much botox it would take to kill a person and how quickly it would do so. With a regular internet search, all I received was ads for places that offered botox and basic information on what botox is. In frustration, I turned to AI, which gladly relayed the information, which I was then able to double check with the sources it provided.
Thanks for the insightful and balanced article.
Oh, M.S., if anyone is monitoring your queries and prompts…! The universal problem of authors, especially mystery/suspense writers–how not to look seriously sus through your browser history. 😀
I’ve had similar experiences you mention–where a query in a regular search engine brought up plenty of sites wanting to sell me something, but not info. It hadn’t occurred to me to try AI for that–I do try to keep its use marginal. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for this as always, Tiffany. I open every newsletter you send.
I’m struck by the lack of mention of AI’s environmental impacts, especially generative AI. Data centers are incredible power and water hogs and sources of pollution. They’re often sited in communities and ecosystems that just don’t have that water to spare or the means to fight back against the environmental degradation. Your post and the comments that follow illustrate how little most of us care about AI’s destructive impact on Earth.
Agree re AI’s environmental impact. Thanks for calling this out.
I don’t think it’s that people don’t care, Barb–certainly it’s not the case for me. I do try to leave as light a footprint as possible: We drive an EV, use water very conservatively, recycle, have swapped out single-use plastics for alternatives, etc. I’m especially mindful of water concerns, living in drought-prone, water-unstable Austin, Texas.
But as I said in an earlier comment, we live in the world, and it’s an imperfect one where most of our choices have a cascade of impacts–air travel, shopping, electronics use, even our diets. It’s all but impossible to have none (unless you’re Doug Forcett), and we all make choices as to what we value and where we’re willing to adjust our behavior. As I mentioned above, many people use social media, and Google, and Amazon, and eBay–all of which also use massive, resource-gobbling data centers. I avoided AI use stringently at first for this reason. Then I read more about the impact of individual users and decided that as far as carbon footprints go, my minimal use is an acceptable breach, for me. It’s not ideal, and I’m sure there’s a certain amount of hypocrisy there, but I hope I even out the scale with my efforts in other areas.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Thanks so much for this article and for offering a place where others can share their opinions and experiences with AI. It’s a weird and scary tool, that’s for certain.
I’m frankly intimidated by AI, but I recognize that it’s not going away, and so I figure I need to learn how to live with it. In my case, that means treating it as I would a secretary. For example, I have an unwieldy novel in progress that needs, inter alia, trimming, refining, and structural adjustments. For example, I need to ensure that I’ve filled in all the gaps while eliminating the redundancies. (How many times does the reader need to hear how Ralph and Candace met? Definitely not three!)
In days of yore, I’d have devoted weeks to preparing an outline of what happens in each scene so I could pinpoint these issues. This time, I asked Claude (free version) to outline the manuscript with an emphasis on identifying gaps and redundancies. In the space of minutes, it produced the outline. Interestingly, it also included unsolicited comments about characters and quality, plus at least a couple of hallucinations and oversights.
As to the unsolicited comments: I found it hilarious that a computer program is telling me that one scene is “tonal and lyrical” while another is “a perfect comic moment”. What does a computer know about what’s funny? But Claude is undeniably obsequious. A friend who used it to generate ideas for pushing a plot forward had the same experience. Clearly, the Claude people want us to feel happy about using their product, so they make sure Claude tells us how wonderful our work is. A bit devious, but not terribly different from advertising in general.
My next anticipated use will be to have it construct a calendar of the events occurring throughout the book. I’ve done this in the past to ensure that everything happens when it needs to. If something happens in one scene and “three days later” the character’s criminal trial begins, I need to ensure that the first event doesn’t happen on a Thursday, because that would mean trial would start on Sunday. Again, it’s the kind of thing I’d have a secretary or assistant do if I had one, but since I don’t, Claude can handle that. As long as it doesn’t feel the need to weigh in about whether forsythia bloom in April in Connecticut (they do, so I don’t need Claude for that), we should be fine.
I orient to it much as it sounds like you do, Jo Anne: reluctant acceptance that it’s here, and that if I don’t want to become a dinosaur I’d better figure out how to use it…but also keeping it in a certain, prescribed area. I use it relatively little, actually–the occasional task like the ones you describe, where it would take a lot of my time but not a lot of my particular abilities, so it’s a better use of resources for me to “assign” it to AI. One difference is that I’m rigorous about not feeding a single bit of my own or anyone else’s material or creative product into it. I do resent how much of authors’ work it’s appropriated already, and don’t feel the need to offer it more–even where it might help me with a task. If AI doesn’t already have its own resources to consult, then I don’t get the answer I need, and I’m okay with that.
Your uses sound helpful–particularly the calendar task. That kind of thing can be onerous to create, not to mention that often as writers we can be a little blind to our own manuscripts and miss some of the time transitions.
Yeah, its obsequiousness and thirstiness bug me. I see how it’s designed to keep us using it–like social media is designed to keep us scrolling–and that alone is enough to get me logging on and right back off the moment I get my answer. I so resent being manipulated by these algorithms. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Tiffany, I write historical fiction books, a trilogy set in the 1960s through 1991. AI gives me the succinct details of events that I could not get on the internet or in books. It can be overly wordy and get off target if you enter vague questions. I’ve learned how to “brainstorm” with AI successfully. A huge time saver so I can use my energy and creative brain to write books. I know AI and can keep it within the acceptable bounds to publish. There was one agent who stated absolutely no AI accepted. And she had historical fiction on her list. I found AI helped me filter out parts of Civil Rights Movement, Woodstock69, Vietnam War and life in Hamburg, Germany before and after the Berlin Wall fell. Could not have done it without AI within acceptable use.
You probably could have, but it certainly would’ve taken more time. I do think that’s going to become a thornier and thornier issue in publishing, though–all the various publishers, contexts, awards, etc., with differing standards of acceptability for AI use. I expect eventually the industry will accept a certain level of usage–after all, many of them are already using it themselves in-house–but I don’t know that I foresee a time they’ll openly publish known AI-generated material. Then again, I’m no prognosticator, so who can say–and certainly we haven’t come up with a reliable way to ascertain what’s AI written and what’s not. Thanks for sharing the way you use it, Christine!
This is probably the most compelling argument I’ve heard so far to dissuade authors from using AI. The erosion of brain function is real. No, I can’t remember most people’s phone numbers (I probably didn’t bother to learn them if I can keep them in my phone), and I definitely need my GPS now, which makes me wonder how I ever drove all the way across Canada without it thirty years ago.
I’ll be damned if I let my menopausal brain drift off. I need the constant exercise to keep it functioning. Plus, isn’t the best thing about writing the actual writing??? The creativity??? Why would I outsource that?
That being said, I have used AI to suggest comps, but I also use the library, Goodreads, recommendations from friends, and social media to find them. I’ve used AI to do surface research – then done the heavy lifting myself once I know I’m on the right track.
As a former teacher and university instructor, it pains me to see how much students depend on AI to “get through” their classes. Where’s the passion for learning? Yes, it’s easy to find the answers. It’s much harder to ask good questions.
Thanks for this thoughtful article.
Oh, remember navigating by maps?! I miss it, actually. Not too efficient when you’re driving and have to stop and check it, but I did find something romantic and adventurous about charting my course, finding the route I wanted to take, dealing with unexpected snafus. And I had a much better sense of geography back then–to your point about how much mental slippage we get when we aren’t exercising our abilities.
I’ve heard AI is good for comps–though judging by some of the crazy suggestions it’s made for me when I ask it for titles that might be good examples of a certain craft element I’m developing a course or article about, I’d be sure to read and check that each one actually is a good comp. Still, it points you in a direction. It KILLS me to imagine what teachers must be dealing with in trying to ascertain what’s actually student-written and what’s AI…and frankly to think about what the students are robbing themselves of. My writing in APO English taught me to think for myself and analyze, to organize my thoughts, to write them down coherently and effectively (not bad training ground for what I do now, in fact). Chemistry kicked my butt, but I don’t think I ever worked harder to understand something, or was prouder to have earned an A. At the risk of sounding like an old person, I worry “these kids today!” may not have similar experiences or learn how to think deeply.
Thanks for your thoughts, Rae, and the kind word.
As usual, your post today on this particularly difficult subject is profound. I believe your thoughts are spot on. My day job is as a technologist. For the last 50 years or so I have watched computer technology overwhelm young engineers’ ability to think physically. CAD, CAM and FEA programs provide clear answers down to the 5th decimal point. The problem is they are often wrong, because they rely on initial and boundary conditions that have to be input by clueless engineers.
AI is in the same genre. I do not believe it is creative. It is just efficient at pulling information together. This is similar to the difference between impressionist painting and photography. It’s not that photography isn’t art, but it is extremely limited in artistic expression compared to the emotional perspective of painting. So, as you point out, it is the way we use these tools that help us keep our creativity alive. Maybe AI can come up with a really cool cover design, but I want my characters to live on the page, not be flat amalgamations of someone else’s characters. One other point is that computers are all left brain. There is no right brain in sight.
When I do use AI tools, I do it with care and awareness. Thank you for this stimulating discussion, Tiffany. This is the highlight of my week!
You sum it up in a way that resonates for me, Jeff: “When I do use AI, I use it with care and awareness.” Like you, I keep it to a minimum. Like you, I keep it to a tiny corner of functionality I’ll use it for. I share your concerns for the effect it might have on my brainwork and efficacy and mental agility–and for safeguarding the process of my creative efforts, and of course the product as well. I don’t know how satisfying I’d find my career if I knew it wasn’t all the result of my original work, or how much pride I’d take in it.
I have friends who use it a lot–for everything–and I worry about the social implications of that too. When we begin interacting with and relying on inanimate machines as “companions,” what does that do to our ability (or impetus) to create and sustain IRL ones? To our social skills in general, or the epidemic of loneliness so many studies have revealed? More–what does it mean when you can’t trust your own eyes, misinformation is offered as fact, and truth is devalued? Where does that lead us as a society?
I am concerned nowhere good. But I am hopeful we will contain this Hydra. Two things must be true at once, yes? Otherwise I live in fear–and I’ve long since vowed to fight against doing that. Thanks for your comments, as always, Jeff.
Thanks for creating a discussion about AI. Perhaps for future discussions about the use of “AI,” it would be helpful to distinguish analytical AI (analyzes content, finds spelling errors, finds information) vs generative AI (creates content).
Oh, Peter…you may have just prompted a future blog post–the wheels are turning! 🙂 Thanks.
Peter, my replies here may be dissonant with most others, but the fact that we accept spelling and grammar checks as okay to have is the reason we have generative AI.
Generative AI is merely an evolution of simpler, individual features we took for granted. After all, why didn’t we refer to a dictionary or a thesaurus and avoid the convenience of automated checks?
Hence, as technology progresses, generative AI will soon be at the same level of convenience as spell check is right now.
Amen!
🙂
I use AI primarily for marketing-related tasks and occasionally for tech support (which is sometimes helpful, sometimes not). I’ve used it for editing my own work in the past, but have pulled back from doing that because I find it’s not a great editor and it undermines my own creative process. More and more, I’m pulling out paper and pen to write and edit. And the more I learn about AI (including its environmental effects) and about the founders of the largest AI corporations, the less I want to use it. For me, this moment has echoes of the early days of social media–I wonder if I knew then what I know now whether I would have jumped on Facebook so quickly.
I find the black-and-white / good-and-evil approach that some are taking toward AI use leaves no room for questioning and honest conversation. Thanks for your thoughtful and nuanced analysis.
Oh, interesting–I’ve never tried it for tech support. So far I just do a regular google search for whatever I’m looking to figure out in that arena.
I’m with you on using it for any editing–anything that’s my creative purview I’m guarding zealously, both for the obvious copyright reasons, but mainly so I stay sharp, and so that I can feel my work is truly my work. And yes, I see the doomsayers and proselytizers, and I’m looking for more of a balanced, reasoned approach. I know it exists, and we now have to decide what we do with it, and that there are some wonderful uses for it as well as less productive ones. I really wish lawmakers were taking regulation a bit more seriously, but outside of that all we can do is be mindful of our own use. I like your parallel with social media. If we’d known then what it would become, would we have used more moderation? I wonder. We humans can be so myopic sometimes. Thanks for your thoughtful comment, Deborah.
Interesting article, and I concur with your reasoning about AI and similar technologies.
Now, with writing in particular, I have noticed for a while that we have silo-ed what “good writing” is, i.e. we’ve fine-tuned genres and rejected most things that don’t fall into what the market wants. This penchant for creating the perfect story, the perfect narrative arc, and the perfect climax is coming home to roost.
AI can glean from existing information perpetuated by gatekeepers of publishing and can produce stuff that, I must admit, I find fascinating.
Often, as my job is in IT and being encroached by AI, I run my stories past AI and the suggestions always appear aligned to what the market wants or what will sell.
Perhaps it is our need to monetize everything heavily that this elephant in the room is squeezing humans out of creative pursuits.
Writing is no longer art for art’s sake.
Good points, Kanwar…but I wonder if it’s ever been significantly different? The market (at least in capitalistic societies) has always driven or at least influenced what’s sold on it, at least to some degree. I know we often romanticize the golden era of publishing, and there were certainly some classic literary lights flourishing then–the era of Fitzgerald and Hemingway and that ilk. But then again, readers were different then, and tastes were different too. I know that’s a very broad statement, but on the whole I think the industry reflects what people are reading–even more now than then, perhaps, when it to some degree led public taste. Our attention spans have changed, as have the ways we get our stories (I can’t even keep track of some of the newer avenues anymore), as have our sensibilities, and even the place and popularity of reading in our society. Publishing is a business, that uneasy balance artists must strike between art and commerce. Is that right or wrong? I don’t know…it just is.
But it’s a main reason I am a big advocate for consciously creating the career you want–each artist determining that for themselves. We do have more autonomy in our careers than it may seem, more power to decide what kind of art we want to create and what we want to do with it. That may just not fit into the parameters of what the market is currently buying. Another balance we have to strike, I think.
Thanks for your considered comment, which got me all philosophical early on a Monday. 🙂