On AI

AMA #5

So, as keruru asked…

Ah, everyone’s favorite subject. Artificial Intelligence. Otherwise known as Genuine Stupidity.

Yes. AI is a tool. I have used it a little. Very little. But the limits are hard and fast and oh boy are you going to need to work it over with a crowbar by the time you’re done.

A while back, maybe a year ago, I tried AI to see just how much of a threat it was. I posted about my art results.

It was bad.

When it came to writing, I gave AI a better than average chance. I gave Grok a few pages of a book that I wrote. I told Grok to rewrite it.

The results were gibberish. Literally. It turned a chapter into a page. Who does Grok think I am? James Patterson?

I told Grok to rewrite it some more. It turned the page into a paragraph.

Now it definitely thought I was James Patterson.

Okay. Fine. Let’s give Grok more data. Call it my world bible. After that, I told Grok to write the next scene, after describing what I wanted to happen.

The result was not … entirely… gibberish. But let’s just say that out of 3,000 words, maybe 1,000 was useful.

After that, it was diminishing returns, and they diminished really fast. Do you like endlessly repeated phrases? Enjoy, because after the first entry, that is ALL YOU’RE GOING TO GET. Then I thanked God that I wasn’t trying to use it for real. That would suck, because I’d have to fix it all by hand.

And may the good Lord help you if you’re going to have several characters in several places. AI will just lump them all together in whatever scene you’re writing. You can either edit it so that it makes sense, or you can keep cracking the whip so that AI knows who’s boss, and it keeps rewriting your scene over and over until it gets it right. Or until it’s “good enough” and you are just going to edit the rest yourself.

Either way, you are going to edit it yourself. AI may be good at line editing (more below), but dear Lord, it is bad at line writing.

Frankly, if you use AI to write something, you’re probably better off getting a draft or two, and then rewriting the whole thing yourself. It’ll be faster.

Now, I have given Grok a paragraph and gone “Expand this. No word cap.” Why no word cap? Because again, if it gives you ten pages and you get one out of it, you’re probably ahead of the game.

It gave me some okay results.

If I had used it in an actual novel, I still would have had to edit it down into something that made sense.

Does AI like the em dash? Yes. A little too much. So much so that it will use em dashes when it should be using hole sentences. But I’ve seen worse. It also likes short, sharp, William Shatner sentences, which I found way more distracting.

The most useful thing that I have seen AI used for has been research. You can either ask AI how to blow up a bridge (in your narrowly confined, very specific scenario, which better involve orcs or aliens or something), or you can spend hours trying to figure out hot to become a structural engineer in order to describe it, and a military engineer in order to blow it up.

Granted, you will still, 100%, end up rewriting most if not all of it. Then you should probably find yourself a guy who knows about blowing things up, just so they can make certain that AI didn’t hallucinate something that isn’t there.

Also, DO NOT have AI write the scene. Let it research the scene. Then you can doublecheck it, then you can write the scene yourself. Because yikes. All the problems I listed above? That’s going to come back and bite you.

I’m told that AI can be used to edit things. I tried it. If you use it as an editor, it can catch repeated phrases, words you rely on a little too much. I always knew I leaned on “that” too often. I didn’t know I leaned on “just.” I’m not the most emotive person, so my written character reactions can be repetitive.

But do not try to write with AI, and then edit with AI. Because AI thinks that it is perfect, and everything it has written is perfect. And boy, is that an issue.

Can you use AI for writing? I guess. If you edit faster than you can write, sure, it can be useful as you CHANGE EVERY SINGLE WORD.

Can you use AI for research? Sure. If you are already good at research and know how to refine your search so that AI doesn’t hallucinate results… and that you make certain to ask for footnotes so you’re not getting someone’s fan fiction, or Wikipedia results.

In short, is AI a tool for good authors? Yes. If you’re already a good author, and you have the means and wherewithal to hold AI’s hand every step of the way so that it turns out all right.

After going through all that, I’m not entirely certain if I answered the question asked. So, just for my own clarity…

TLDR: AI is a tool. Mostly a research tool, or prompt mechanism. Will it maintain the quality of an author’s work by itself? Hell no! Will it maintain your quirks? No, but it will give you all new quirks. But frankly, if you use AI to write, you’re going to spend so much time rewriting, I suspect there will be little different by the end of the day.

Unless you just tell the AI to write a book and just post it as-is. Then you’re in trouble.

You know why modern Hollywood writers are scared of AI? Because AI is as soulless as they are. If you know what you’re doing, you can use your best judgement to fix whatever garbage AI gives you. If you don’t know what you’re doing … I don’t know what to tell you.

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EDIT TO ADD

Growing up, I accompanied my parents to medical conferences. To be specific, the American Society for Clinical Laboratory Scientists (ASCLS).

One constant exhibit was a device the size of a dinner table. It was going to do the work of ten MedTechs—it would run all of the lab tests on specimens taken by doctors and nurses.

Every time he saw it, my father asked one question: “And when it breaks down, where are you going to get the ten MedTechs to do the job while the machine is being fixed?”

Apply that to writing.

Meanwhile, AI is supposed to do the work of a dozen programmers. But it makes mistakes … so it’ll make the mistakes of a dozen programmers? And where are you going to get the programmers to review the resulting code and fix it?

And no, the answer isn’t India. I know one of the guys they call in to fix the code from the Indian programmers. In the long run, would be cheaper to just hire real coders, locally, than AI, or importing from abroad.

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I think that’s about all I have for right now.

Again, feel free to ask me anything in the comments. If you get an email, you can ping me through the comment button at the top.

And please, feel free to buy a book, or leave a book review. Either would be greatly appreciated.