AI and the problem of Conflation

As a writer, I think a lot about AI.

I’m usually hung up on the philosophical aspect of the problem, and spend far too long wondering about whether we should continue to build the thing just because we can. That’s not really what I want to gripe about today. This week I’ve been dwelling on the question of categories and definitions.

I follow several subreddits for writing, and by-in-large they are cheerful and encouraging places. The largest exception to that trend arises any time that the topic of AI ‘writing’ is introduced. The reaction is visceral and instant. Folks will line up to scream without ever saying anything helpful, often talking so far past each other that it is reminiscent of pre-school sandbox talk. (Look it up if you’ve never heard of the concept, it’s really cool!)

Recently an honest question was posed on one of these subs, and I almost allowed myself to be drawn into the fray in spite of my no quarreling online guidelines. Almost. My restraint won the day, and I opted to bank the topic for exploration here. 

The question was simple: Where does all the hate come from in regard to AI ‘writers?’ 

This question was then followed up with some vague and unhelpful examples of calculators, CAD software, and spellcheck. Then came the example that I latched onto: If a person were to write 300k words on worldbuilding, designing everything in their fantasy world from the economics to magic to religion, then fed it to a generative AI tool to ‘write’ the story, then they built that world themselves. Further, they argued, if the individual then edited the AI produced document, that was as good as them writing it because the ideas originated in their head and were polished by their hand.

Did you catch the conflation of terms happening here? 

‘As good as.’ 

By this logic, I can go to the store and buy ingredients to make soup. Once acquired, I can bring them home to my wife and give her the recipe for said soup. Then, once she has done all of the labor, I can adjust the salt at the end, scoop the soup into a bowl, add a dab of sour cream and call the soup mine. I ‘as good as’ cooked it, because it was born in my head. 

Surely the difference in execution deserves a differentiation of terms, no?

In the above example, I provided and my wife produced. 

AI ‘writing’ is much the same. 

It is no small thing that we authors are angry to have to compete with machine-generated slop to get our art produced, fighting tooth and nail against those who view writing as a means to produce a good instead of a means to share meaning. 

It is no small thing to constantly have to try and prove a negative, logging and keeping every shred of work to ‘prove’ that it was made by you and not a machine.

But the most grievous offence, at least to me, is the conflation of the worldbuilder who exported his act of creation to the one who stuck it out. If you don’t write your own story, then the filter by which you view the world becomes meaningless.

The quote that your father used won’t make it into your work.

The way that you felt during your first kiss? Not in there.

The way your faith –or lack thereof– informs your worldview? Exported to the zeitgeist to define and verbalize through the LLM.

All of the weird little -ism’s that define you simply don’t materialize. 

Sure, some of these can be added post-hoc. But much of the magic happens as you struggle through chapter by chapter, discovering things about your characters and world. 

To say that an AI prompter is categorically the same thing as a traditional writer is a mangling of the normal use of the word. Write means write, not design then edit. Those are part of crafting a story, but they help the story grow, they don’t define the style and essence of it. 

Harry Overstreet said that action springs out of what we fundamentally desire. So what is it that we desire? More books for the sake of books, written by people who were not changed by the process? 

Or do we desire to write our own stories, even as they write us? 

I vote we write them ourselves, and embrace the messy humanity found within.