Will artificial intelligence replace novelists?
...because I've noticed that nobody is talking about AI*
*I jest. Obviously. Everyone is talking about it. AI is an existential threat, apparently. (But so were the hole in the ozone and the killer bees. Just saying.)
My temptation is to shrug, raise my hands, accept the things I cannot change, etc. I’ve never been good at hand-wringing.
In my little corner of the world, writers are worried that AI will replace us. If I’m honest, those fears are justified. If publishing houses can use ChatGPT to generate novels, at little to no cost, in minutes instead of months or years, then why wouldn’t they? Publishing is a business, not, alas, an art. If the reading public embraces machine-produced content, then AI wins and writers lose. But does it have to be an either/or?
What if AI and human writers can coexist? Why wouldn’t we each want to play to our strengths?
AI’s strength, for now, is generating predictable and imitative output. So if you ask for a poem about a writer in the summer, in the style of a Shakespearean sonnet, the technology is not perfect, but certainly impressive.
Shakespeare it is not, but the poem is not terrible. I’m kind of fond of the third stanza, the sonneteer hanging out in the sweet-smelling meadow, finding the rhythm of his words there. I quibble with ChatGPT’s assumption that the writer is male—one of the problems of having been trained on a body of content that was male-dominated.
Though full of pretty words, the poem falls apart under inspection. I’ve never seen poppies intertwine. If the fields are golden, the sun is out, at which point there’s no longer any dew. Don’t get me started on “as zephyrs whisper secrets to the pearls” or “his muse ignites so bright.”
The technology doesn’t (yet) think on its own. It chooses rhyming words and puts them at the ends of lines. It chooses from a lexicon relevant to “writer” and “summer” and “Shakespeare.” It has been trained on how many syllables and lines form a sonnet. But the output is nonsensical, a bit messy. The arc isn’t there, let alone any emotional resonance.
Now imagine having this technology produce a novel. Yikes. I asked for a first page and provided certain parameters, and ChatGPT gave me… well, see for yourself.
I’ll spare you the rest. This “opening page” feels more like a character summary, one with weak, watery (and unintentionally comic) writing. Everything is painted in generalizations (“through her lens, she captured the raw emotions”) and cliches (“the bustling heart of the city,” “a world that often turned a blind eye”). Also: it doesn’t make sense. What does “a bond of sisterhood that grew unyielding in its strength” mean? How do you “grace” a courtroom “with fervor”? The “raw emotions that stirred within society”: are those different from, say, emotions felt in remote Patagonia?
The technology is improving daily, say the experts, and maybe one day, AI will generate novels that can compete with those of our finest living (and dead) authors. But my goodness. Call me overly optimistic, but I think writers are safe for now. As long as we play to our strengths; putting together words in non-cliched ways, creating such specific and differentiated characters and plots that no AI could have produced them. Leaving the intertwining poppies behind.
Part of my role as a writer is to spit out the unexpected, to invent new turns of phrase, to recombine the language in interesting, even novel, ways—but ways that still make sense. Generative AI can recombine language too, but the sense-making may be its limitation. Only time will tell. For now, the safest way to ensure our writerly preservation against AI’s threat is to create original works that reflect and channel (human) emotions, which is not such a horrible goal, really.
Recent Writing
I recently wrote an article called “The 7 Things I Wish I’d Known Before Writing My First Novel.” Ever wanted to write a novel? This article is for you. Or perhaps you know a friend, family member, or son’s soccer teammate’s mother who mentioned they’re starting their first novel. Share the article with them, or better still, forward this newsletter!
Fun Links
Watch: Pizza commercial generated by AI. Makes me laugh every time.
Watch: Julia Child remixed on PBS. I’m ready to put this song on a dinner-prep Spotify playlist. “This is what good cooking is all about.”
Explore: Open Syllabus. Interesting way to see which books and articles are being taught in different colleges and fields. If you develop a sudden interest in, say, linguistics, you could discover which are the most assigned books in that field, as well as what texts tend to be co-assigned with certain other texts. (h/t Jane Friedman)
Read: this article about Twitter’s rebranding as “X.” Kudos to this journalist for a breakdown of this letter’s possible significance to Musk.
Reading Nook
Two recommendations for you this time: a memoir and a historical novel.
Memoir: You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith. A stunningly gorgeous memoir by a poet on the heels of her divorce. I think this will resonate especially well with anyone who pursues an artistic life- writers, photographers, filmmakers- especially if they are parents. Also, I’m not divorced, but I feel like anyone who has ever been divorced will find this particularly poignant.
Historical fiction: In Memoriam by Alice Winn. A love story between two soldiers, set against the backdrop of World War I. I wasn’t sure at first… but once war broke out (in the book), I was swept up.
Novel Updates
Before heading to Ireland on a kids-free anniversary trip, I sent out a last batch of queries. Here’s the thing: by working so hard on this novel, by pushing myself to revise it OVER and OVER (by my count, I’ve reached the 21st draft), I’ve arrived at a place of acceptance. Whether this novel gets published in two years, or ten, or never, I can at least say that I gave her my all, and I’m proud of my effort.
Next up: revising the third novel, the one I fast-drafted last November/December. More to come on that front in the next newsletter.
What have you been up to this summer? Any books, shows, or links to recommend? Let me know in the comments.
happy anniversary! what a gorgeous picture. sending all the good luck, vibes etc for this novel and your others(!)