Essay: AI’s and the Future of Writing

[Video for context. Relevancy begins around 22:00]. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2OEQnZEC5U)

AI-based writing software is threatening to replace the art of writing. I am sure you’ve seen or heard stories about the new AI-based software that is capable of mimicking art to the point where it can create pieces that have won art contests.

Well, I am writing because it’s come to my attention there are programs in development and even in use at this very moment that allow people to generate entire sections of text based on prompts. You may have seen the sillier versions that come up with mostly nonsense in years past, but the newer programs apparently are beginning to mimic high-level literature.

In time, they have the potential to replace actual writers and generate entire novels and storylines without a user needing any practice or training of their own. Not just books, but television shows, movies, and songs would fall under this purview. The threat of this kind of AI-developed software that essentially trivializes the act of writing is why I’m writing this essay about the future of writing.

Because frankly, I think it’s alright. I imagine that the first three paragraphs will be repeated in news stories and opinion pieces in the years to come. Right now, artificial intelligence or the algorithms that can generate art and writing are just getting to the point where they’re actually useful. Hence me talking about it.

I didn’t think we’d get here this year, but I just watched a video by a Youtuber named Markiplier where, in his livestream, he talks about using a software called ‘Novel AI’. He claims that recent developments have allowed him to integrate the program into his own writing process and expedite writing. Not replace his work, but essentially help when he runs into a slow patch and direct his train of thought.

Think of it like a focus group, or someone spitting ideas and doing a lot of typing, perhaps for parts of a story you don’t want to write. I have not tested this software myself, but I can imagine how helpful it would be for some writers. If not now, then in five versions where it can essentially add in descriptions for, say, a mountain range by sampling excellent descriptive pieces.

A writer, like Markiplier, can use this as a significant boost to their writing process even if it doesn’t replace him. For instance, he claims that in 4 days, he wrote 50,000 words with the help of Novel AI.

I’d like to put that into context. Most writers have a daily writing goal like 2,000 words, or 5,000. Nanowrimo, the famous monthly contest to write a novel in a month, sets the goal at 50,000 words. Markiplier generated in 5 days what the contest asks writers to try for in a month.

Maybe it wasn’t all one cohesive beginning, middle, and end to a story but it is a wild number. I am a web serial writer who occupies the #3 rank on Patreon as of this essay, and I have what I think is the longest piece of published work in the English language at 10 million words by one person. That’s not to brag, that’s context. I write chapters from 20-30,000 words on average twice a week.

I could write 50,000 words in four days. I have done that. I can do it–at my best. I would be wiped out afterwards and I wouldn’t be certain if all of it is stuff I could keep and publish. There may be a difference between the 50k that Markiplier uses and the words I publish as a chapter, but the point should be that Novel AI, for this one writer, is a huge boost.

Perhaps, upon hearing that, you might not care. But I think that a lot of writers if they read this might be offended on behalf of the process of writing. Or perhaps its worry. I confess, I don’t like the idea of people being able to generate anything good with the help of AI, even if it just provides ideas or cues. Much less writing actual chapters that could be anywhere near the level of a human person.

However, I think that’s the conceit and the lies we’re telling ourselves. At the start of this essay I said that it’s alright. Yes, I’m competitive with a piece of software. Yes, I don’t like being challenged.

But I do believe this is a war we’re going to lose. People have said, ‘artificial intelligence may become super-smart, and smarter than us, but a computer will never learn to love or create’ or some variation on that statement.

I think that was our way of denying reality, and coping with the idea of something that would surpass us individually and as a species. Because–clearly–AI is now making pieces of beautiful art. If you don’t believe me, Google it. Yes, 99% might be crap, but so is what a lot of even the best artists make. Yes, it might be derivative and use inputs from established art and literature to create, but so do we.

The idea that AI will not replace artists or writers is silly. It already has. I have been told that film studios are using AI to help create ideas for TV scripts. This is not ‘the future’, it’s happening now.

And this is the first generation of this kind of software that works. In time, it will replace writer’s rooms, or perhaps supplement them. It will be a slow process. First, people will push back against anything made by an AI and there will be people sneaking in the program, being ‘found out’ or confessing to using it.

My prediction is that in the coming years, there will be famous authors who admit they used Novel AI or variations on the software. There will be scandals, and drama. But this is my bold claim:

If artificial intelligence and this kind of software development continues. If the world is still around and we haven’t burnt it all to the ground or been destroyed by something–if this very narrow section of writing and artistic creation via software continues as it has, we, writers, have 100 years.

100 years before we are obsolete. Not ‘computers are now taking our jobs’ obsolete, but ‘there is nothing we can write, period, that a computer cannot do better or just as well’. One hundred years.

I’m just making up the timespan, but the point is that this is going to be a war we’ll never win. We will slowly go from being far superior to what an AI can generate, to the AI producing or cloning good sections of prose, to it being able to mimic and surpass us.

This will not just be prose or novellas, but even extend to ideas. Yes, we like to think we’re ‘original’, but originality can be learnt. An algorithm can be developed to generate new concepts as original as anything a brain can come up with. We’ll have the edge for a while, I hope, but it is the height of arrogance to assume we’ll always be better than a computer.

It’s a very human trait and we have not, as a species, run into a superior opponent. Which is probably why we make such bold claims about computers and can’t imagine being replaced or turned into the many animals we treat poorly. But listen–a computer will someday be able to sample the entire world’s literature in every language.

All the greats. It will read Shakespeare, poets and writers in every language, not just English. It will sample the finest prose and build a style based on whatever input it needs. It will be able to write in damned iambic pentameter and generate a 1-million page book in ten seconds because it is a computer.

And it will be the best thing ever written because it will have all of our finest works to use as a guide. That day might be a hundred years in the future, or ten. But I’m here for it.

I would love to read a book better than any I can imagine. Being wiped out by a computer that sees me as superfluous to existence? Less fun. But I would love to read that book. Will I be upset if my talents are no longer useful and all I’ve worked for can be done by the push of a button?

Yes, of course. But I don’t want to lie and say it could never happen. I think the odds are, it could, and frankly, it’s closer than we think. I didn’t write this to talk about the ethics of using AI in art or writing. Some people will, some people will make rules–I just want to read good stories.

There will come that day when the greatest writer is an algorithm, a super-AI who will take humanity’s prose and elevate it beyond anything we can imagine. Some might think of that as the death of writing, but I believe that computer, in the micro-moments in which it downloads all the literary works in the world, will have to read everything people ever thought of as good.

And my intention is that it’ll have to download one gigabyte of data marked ‘pirateaba’. That would be a pretty funny legacy.

My message is that writing software is going to pop up more and more. Industries are going to experiment with them. We are going to see their flaws–and I suspect the current versions might be trope-heavy and less original for now, but like I said, I don’t doubt that better versions will appear so quickly it storms the literary world. If anything, essays will probably be AI-generatable at a high level first because essays are formulaic.

Even if it’s new data, a scientist might be able to generate an essay with perfect bibliography because there is a set way to do these things. Fantasy will last a bit longer, but they’re coming for us. Put up a good fight and teach the software something. But seriously, I would love a good story better than any I’ve ever read.

–pirateaba

Author’s Note: Some people are going to disagree with my takes and if I wasn’t lazy and on Twitter, I’d directly post there and Reddit and all the places. But I’ll try to link this out. My point…well, you heard me.

I think it’s funny whenever I see movies or hear discussion where people believe a little too hard about Human supremacy. It reminds me of, say, the Romans, or the British, or any other large group which probably thought they would never fade. I bet you Neanderthals thought that.So this is a counterpoint to a lot of the opinions as well as my take on what the potential of this software is.

Writing is a weird…art? Not sure it’s art, but it’s definitely no science. And yet, the writing software will make an impact and there are things it can probably do that will begin to compete with writers. Most of all, though, let’s watch the elitism. Literature is a space rife with it. I, personally, think copyright opens up anyone using AI writing software to issues and I don’t think I need to use it, but I still want to see what the best writing looks like.

We can advance, and this is an interesting thing that’ll change a lot. Like web serials. It just means we wait and see what happens–unless you’re one of the people who finds the wave and rides it for a while. Again, if you’re a traditionalist, you’ll probably only see the wave when it’s fifty feet tall.

Update: Here’s something I was sent that illustrates my point. Someone fed one of the writing programs two paragraphs of my story and let it run. It’s not great writing but it’s illustrative how it creates not only stakes, but characters and a plot.

She had to find a way back home.