The difference, I could tell, in the two pieces that you linked to was a little more subtle. With the one that was AI generated everything was technically written well, grammatical, all of those things, but yet there wasn't any life behind it. It read more like a manual trying to be a story. It followed all the classic ways and forms of story telling, but didn't have what makes it a story.
The other one you could just tell it came from a person telling a story. There was life, something that made it feel like you were listening to a person talking. You were hearing about their day, their experiences instead of having text regurgitated back at you.
It passed in the House, but if you know which way your person voted, you can call them to yay or boo them. It's with the Senate right now, and truthfully I don't think that provision should even be in a *budget* bill, since it has nothing to do with the budget. But you can tell them you hate it. (And all the other horrible things about the House version.)
Between the 2 samples, I found it easy to tell which one was human vs AI. But like you said, if I hadn't known one of them was AI-written, I might never have suspected it. With the continuous technological advancements, it will only get harder and harder to tell them apart. As an aspiring author, I can't help but fear that AI will only take more and more opportunities away in an already-saturated market, simply because they can churn things out so much faster.
Great post, Jodi! I too can’t fathom why someone would give up the absolute joy and revelation of creating something all their own. But I think you and I and many authors are here for the love of the art, and these folks who can’t craft without AI are only here for the money. And some of them are rewarded for it. We just have to keep writing, like you said, because AI doesn’t have the depth and beauty of human experience we can instill in our work.
Great post, Jodi! My current way of coping with AI is just go around feeling superior that I think it's stupid, but yours sound much more actionable lol
AI is an unprecedented threat to creators. Your work can be fed in and stolen by unscrupulous players. I'm seeing publishers, as part of your initial query, demanding full novel manuscripts. Don't do it.
Re: "But also, I’m seeing a lot of pushback on the idea of AI-generated books. While there are people who don’t care (cannot relate!), there are many who do."
I had a long conversation about this topic with a friend of mine who makes hand-carved spoons for a living. In his ideal world, he said, no one would ever buy or use a spoon that wasn't hand-carved. He also wondered how many anti-AI writers only use hand-carved spoons and sleep in handcrafted beds and eat micro-greens that were hand-sown and hand-harvested and only wear hand-knitted underwear. He added that when the next season of Stranger Things comes out, he doesn't care if it was written by one person, a team of writers, or AI. He only cares that it's good.
In other words, as an artist, he's a purist (and obscenely dedicated, obviously, given how many spoons one has to carve to earn a living). As a consumer, he's not. In that regard, he's like most of us, right? Given that, I can understand the desire to be a purist when it comes to the creation of art, but perhaps we shouldn't be judgmental when it comes to consumers of "art" that others consider "entertainment."
Eh, this is past apples to oranges and more like apples to chairs. Generative AI is built on theft and is environmentally harmful. You can absolutely purchase mass-produced spoons that are built on original design and don't actively drain water resources. Of course there's no purity in late stage capitalism, but let's not pretend that GenAI is damaging the arts, the environment, and society's intellect in a way manufacturing utilitarian items is not.
That's an interesting comparison, but it doesn't hold.
Your friend is an artist. Absolutely. I'm a knitter; I get it. But as a knitter, I could not make enough stuff for everyone. Likewise, your friend can't make enough spoons for everyone. It makes sense for these things to also be produced in a factory. We're making things that are generally considered to be functional, but the way we make them, as individuals, is art.
But in a somewhere along the way, a human designs these items. A human makes intentional choices based on their years of knowledge and experience. A human touches the item they're making. (Factory conditions being what they are . . . this always hits me pretty hard.) And if a human looks at your friend's spoons and replicates a design to sell at volume, that is considered theft.
Generative AI, however, is not "creating" anything with intention. It can't. It's scrambling the data it was trained on (my books, books written by my friends and colleagues, and everything from the entire internet -- all without consent), and generating something based on statistical probability.
The difference, I could tell, in the two pieces that you linked to was a little more subtle. With the one that was AI generated everything was technically written well, grammatical, all of those things, but yet there wasn't any life behind it. It read more like a manual trying to be a story. It followed all the classic ways and forms of story telling, but didn't have what makes it a story.
The other one you could just tell it came from a person telling a story. There was life, something that made it feel like you were listening to a person talking. You were hearing about their day, their experiences instead of having text regurgitated back at you.
Yes, there was underlying tension and emotion that the other couldn't match.
Amazing thoughts here. I think so much is yet to be determined and we'll see what happens. I'm definitely motivated to call my reps.
It passed in the House, but if you know which way your person voted, you can call them to yay or boo them. It's with the Senate right now, and truthfully I don't think that provision should even be in a *budget* bill, since it has nothing to do with the budget. But you can tell them you hate it. (And all the other horrible things about the House version.)
This is a fantastic piece. Nodding my head along to basically everything in here. Thank you for saying it all so eloquently. 👏
Between the 2 samples, I found it easy to tell which one was human vs AI. But like you said, if I hadn't known one of them was AI-written, I might never have suspected it. With the continuous technological advancements, it will only get harder and harder to tell them apart. As an aspiring author, I can't help but fear that AI will only take more and more opportunities away in an already-saturated market, simply because they can churn things out so much faster.
Great post, Jodi! I too can’t fathom why someone would give up the absolute joy and revelation of creating something all their own. But I think you and I and many authors are here for the love of the art, and these folks who can’t craft without AI are only here for the money. And some of them are rewarded for it. We just have to keep writing, like you said, because AI doesn’t have the depth and beauty of human experience we can instill in our work.
The fact so many writers are thrilled by AI kinda tells us something : )
Great post, Jodi! My current way of coping with AI is just go around feeling superior that I think it's stupid, but yours sound much more actionable lol
AI is an unprecedented threat to creators. Your work can be fed in and stolen by unscrupulous players. I'm seeing publishers, as part of your initial query, demanding full novel manuscripts. Don't do it.
Very thought-provoking piece! Really enjoyed it!
Re: "But also, I’m seeing a lot of pushback on the idea of AI-generated books. While there are people who don’t care (cannot relate!), there are many who do."
I had a long conversation about this topic with a friend of mine who makes hand-carved spoons for a living. In his ideal world, he said, no one would ever buy or use a spoon that wasn't hand-carved. He also wondered how many anti-AI writers only use hand-carved spoons and sleep in handcrafted beds and eat micro-greens that were hand-sown and hand-harvested and only wear hand-knitted underwear. He added that when the next season of Stranger Things comes out, he doesn't care if it was written by one person, a team of writers, or AI. He only cares that it's good.
In other words, as an artist, he's a purist (and obscenely dedicated, obviously, given how many spoons one has to carve to earn a living). As a consumer, he's not. In that regard, he's like most of us, right? Given that, I can understand the desire to be a purist when it comes to the creation of art, but perhaps we shouldn't be judgmental when it comes to consumers of "art" that others consider "entertainment."
Eh, this is past apples to oranges and more like apples to chairs. Generative AI is built on theft and is environmentally harmful. You can absolutely purchase mass-produced spoons that are built on original design and don't actively drain water resources. Of course there's no purity in late stage capitalism, but let's not pretend that GenAI is damaging the arts, the environment, and society's intellect in a way manufacturing utilitarian items is not.
That's an interesting comparison, but it doesn't hold.
Your friend is an artist. Absolutely. I'm a knitter; I get it. But as a knitter, I could not make enough stuff for everyone. Likewise, your friend can't make enough spoons for everyone. It makes sense for these things to also be produced in a factory. We're making things that are generally considered to be functional, but the way we make them, as individuals, is art.
But in a somewhere along the way, a human designs these items. A human makes intentional choices based on their years of knowledge and experience. A human touches the item they're making. (Factory conditions being what they are . . . this always hits me pretty hard.) And if a human looks at your friend's spoons and replicates a design to sell at volume, that is considered theft.
Generative AI, however, is not "creating" anything with intention. It can't. It's scrambling the data it was trained on (my books, books written by my friends and colleagues, and everything from the entire internet -- all without consent), and generating something based on statistical probability.
They're just different conversations.