The Computer Has No Voice

“Throw it into ChatGPT.”

I can’t go a day without hearing that phrase at work. It’s become the go-to assignment for every task of any scale. Need to write an email response and not sure how? ChatGPT. Putting together a project? ChatGPT. Need to define a word? If you thought the answer was “dictionary,” you’re old. 

Resistance is Futile

More and more, AI has shoved itself into daily applications like a needy boyfriend. Choose me! Pick me! Notice me! I’ll be here for you; you don’t need to think. I will think for you. 

When I use AI to generate content for work I notice a few things. First, the application favors the word “ensure.” We are going to ensure that we ensure the experience we ensured we would ensure. If I generate a list that doesn’t use the word at least once, I consider it a win. Second, it all sounds the same. It’s generic. It’s repetitive. It’s flat. It’s like going to Wendy’s, hungry for the juicy burger on the TV ad and getting the smashed bun, cheese melted on the wrapper, anemic lettuce version. 

I resent hearing “throw it into ChatGPT” because I can feel a shift that I’m afraid is going to cheapen and dilute our language, our experiences of living. AI is the millennial greige of design, colorless and uniform and bland. The absent reliance on a tool used to substitute our brain takes away the need to think critically, relaxing our guards to trust the tidy package of predetermined words scraped from every publication AI is trained on. As fast as AI can generate an answer, it often generates the wrong answer, leaving you to review it for correctness or to simply put blind faith into its authority on the matter. I work in IT, so if the system spits out a checklist for a technical process, it better be right, or you could spend hours undoing a giant mistake. 

The Pirates Have Us Surrounded

AI has already had enormous negative consequences for published authors. Recently, The Atlantic published an article detailing how Meta AI used pirated novels to train its AI models. The article provided a searchable database where authors could see if their books had been used as a training tool. I read heartbreaking posts from authors who’ve had dozens of their books uploaded, some their whole back catalogue, even publications in multiple languages. Without compensation, without permission, clinched by the powerful data vacuum. The pages of those books hold years of hard work and dedication, rejection after rejection, authors fighting for their lives in the query trenches, all for lizard-eyed Zuckerberg to design evil, lazy tools to upload a PDF. From this act, authors were victimized twice. 

For artists of any variety, AI is a thief, both of creativity and intellectual property. At every update of my word processing tools, I suddenly have an icon floating along the margin as I scroll the page, a joyful announcement: AI is here! We can summarize this for you! And if you want to keep that tiny creep from commandeering your stuff? You can! It’s nested in three layers of settings and purposely named something non-specific like “Connected Experiences,” so you won’t know what to switch off. When you do, it almost gives you one of these 😦

Produce or Perish

I’ve seen numerous posts by incurious, uncreative tech bros who extol the limitless possibilities of AI. Why take the time to write a book when the computer can write it for you? Added bonus, you can publish so quickly and make so much money! Who’s gonna tell them? 

I’m not alone when I say the time is worth it. Because writing is the fun part. Opening a blank document and letting my imagination run free with a character bio is an expansive, almost otherworldly experience. I’m in their head, their body, touching their world, holding their past, examining the character from every angle, who they are, what they do. 

Those who know, know that the creative process is magic, hardly explainable. Words that yearn to be written have jerked me awake at night, coaxed me out of a meeting. A dream I had, maybe minutes long, became 81,000 and counting words of a story I couldn’t ignore even if I wanted to. Turns of phrase have come to me in the car while I’m driving home from somewhere, like “They can throw their bombs all they want. Today is the day I become the bomb.” This could only come from a certain character, in that scene, in that moment, and it lands perfectly. I didn’t plan that. I invented it. That’s the creative immersion that AI siphons out. 

The Uncanny Valley of Literature

When I read a piece of generated fiction, there’s a crawly, icky sensation that makes my brain itch. The uncanny valley of literature. The peculiar sense that something is off. 

The computer has no voice.

Writing has a rhythm, mathematical and musical. It ebbs. It flows. It stops and starts and runs on in a long sentence that builds in intensity and doesn’t follow grammar conventions and injects chaos and heightens awareness and makes your eyes fly all over the page. Then it ends. You breathe. Whew. The computer can’t write like that. It doesn’t have the ear, the soul it requires.

The computer is not alive.

The computer can’t summon the rich library of experiences and observations of the author to build worlds and characters from concept to completion. The computer doesn’t have shower thoughts, the strays that float across your eyes when you lie down to sleep, the “hurry and write this down” moment of a plot line unspooling. There’s enormous value in the things that surprise the author, the thrill of the unintended. When your character steals a police car and you don’t know how to get them out of it. For a through-line to reveal itself from the foreshadowing seeded at the start of the story. To intend, from the beginning, for a character to catch a stray bullet, then realize the story will be stronger if it’s a different character, and to follow your gut on it. 

The computer doesn’t borrow – it steals.

I’m constantly inspired by multiple mediums. An online post will grab my attention with its quick wit or structure of words. I’ll study the atmosphere of a TV show or movie and try to replicate the feeling, the visual sensation. When a piece of art punches me emotionally, I strive to deliver the same in my writing. I have an eclectic palate for books, reading widely across genres to enhance my work, not to reproduce it. I tuck away a list of phrases and words in my Notes app to use when I’m reaching for a missing piece. Furthermore, I refine and improve my writing, drilling down on what I’m good at and shoring up what I’m not, accepting that I’m a burst writer who doesn’t set word count goals and operates on a loose outline and vibes.  

Save Time at the Expense of Joy

There’s just something about writing. I can’t explain it. It’s like falling in love. I’m not a fast writer, especially when the words require measured, detailed planning and thought. Persistence is what gets it done, what closes the chapter, edits the fluff, cuts the darlings. We live in a world that presents us with tools to be more productive, work less, think less, and some of us still sit in front of the same computer in the same seat for eight hours a day by mandate.

We expect insta-results, fast shipping, immediate delivery, no rest, hustling for hustle’s sake. It’s okay for things to be hard, to take time, when the result is a diverse garden of art. I reject the notion that production is the gold standard, that we should be producing instead of experiencing, that our worth is measured by output. The times when I’ve let my brain go offline are when the ideas come to me most vividly. Writing often happens when my fingers aren’t on a keyboard.

It’s been said, “Why should I bother to read something you didn’t bother to write?” 

And that’s it. That’s the whole thing. If we replace craftsmanship with speed, then we lose the most beautiful, unique parts of the human experience to the machine that wants to devour it.