I find myself sickened by this - that a good writer considers AI shortcuts and prompts a useful tool. Fordism changed the way we built things, AI will change the way we think. We will expect and anticipate its intercessions, build muscle memory in its gymnasium. I already notice this. A friend, who works in an environment where AI is very commonly employed, replied to a very personal email in a voice that was not her own. I recognised it as an AI summary - I don't mean she used AI to respond to me, I mean she works long hours in an AI culture and her own personal response was conditioned by this.
I see some similarity with the digitisation of the arts over the last 25 years or so. For example, there is a generation of film editors now who have never physically edited film- the "time and labour saving" afforded by digital editing has cut many of them off from the unconscious imaginative processing of choosing frames, slowly building a long assembly, seeing things that would be missed in a faster process. I believe there are similar issues in the music industry. Digitisation has allowed great artistic freedoms and possibilities (editing a film/producing an album in your bedroom), but also made artists lazier. Use digital for all its liberations, but know the analogue processes too.
I fantasise about the day all the phone networks go down (it'll happen, by accident or design). How many of us will not know how to cope? How to find your way somewhere, communicate with someone, get information, pay for a train ticket.
I laugh about that day of helplessness. But I worry about the day when the AI goes down and we have all forgotten how to think.
This morning I watched a video of a small, five-limbed, starfish-shaped robot, whose movements were guided by the electrophysiological activity of mycelium, that had been allowed to grow into the electronics. We are poised on the brink of an age of wonders and horrors and I think that, when we reach the end of it, we will no longer be the dominant species. We are currently auditioning our successors. It is for this reason that I always say thank you to the self checkouts at the supermarket.
Initially, I did not see any value in AI, beyond the obvious comedic value of a voice-cloned Jordan Peterson reciting a poem about breast milk; whoever is responsible for that short masterpiece caught lightning in a bottle. I have developed an unforgiving daily routine that eliminates writers block to the extent that I now own a pair of lever-arch files that are filled with ideas; enough to last several lifetimes. Curiously, this mode of jump-starting creativity appears to produce similar results to some AI-generated output. Back when I was trolling the Guardian comments section I was often accused of being an AI.
Recently, my creative relationship with AI changed. I took a descriptive passage from a story that I thought was missing something and I fed it into an image generator, which created a picture of the scene that included detail I had not thought of, and brought it very much to life. I then rewrote the description incorporating some of the novel details from the image. The story is greatly improved as an outcome of this interaction, and in fact the ending changed as a result.
I have repeated this exercise in other pieces of writing. Finding a balance where you don't end up as the junior partner in your own creative labour is going to require discipline. I like this relationship where I remain the impetus for a work of fiction and create the first draft before asking the AI to indirectly weigh-in. Afterwards, I retake the reins and finish the piece off.
This morning, after watching the fungus/robot hybrid lurch about for a while, perhaps attempting to come to terms with the concept of movement, I pulled the final act of my story apart in an OpenOffice document, spreading out the sentences and sentence fragments like the parts of a car engine. I refined a few paragraphs and threw out anything that seemed clunky or superfluous, which I don't recommend you do when reassembling a non-metaphorical engine. I suppose AI could help me with this too, but I regard this part of the work as my domain. I am the imperfect human element and if writing is, in part, an attempt to make sense of the world, then it is probably not a good idea to let a computer do all your homework for you.
I don’t think the 2nd attempt sounds like you I am afraid. “Tethered” is too close to cliche in this context. Anyway no one sounds like you. Certainly not a fucking machine. Love Nige
Interesting thoughts. However, in this case the machine was given an easy task because the journalist's questions weren't very original, so it could find the answers very easily. I wonder what it would have suggested as an answer to a question like "What's your favourite colour?" Or "Have you ever fallen off a bike?"
"We are captives of our inner lives. Writing releases the prisoner." I love that! I've thought that writing fiction is something like "bringing out The Thing," but I like your version better.
I thought the AI's second go at being you was okay, but it lacked just the right amount of (your usual) wit. But could it be trained to imitate this? Maybe with time...
I feel like a luddite with AI. Maybe I'm just scared of using tech to write with. But I'm more than happy to use Word when I write, and these days I don't do anything without using 'read aloud' (which has a whiff of AI about it) to hear what my stuff sounds like.
Btw - watched your Le Weekend film on Channel 4's catch-up service recently and loved it.
AI Is intriguing, but did you know in journalism it is possible to plagiarize yourself? An example would be re-publishing an old review or article without a major overhaul and even that is frowned upon. I would worry that via AI, themes, words, concepts, etc., would be regurgitated. If you've ever read multiple books by the same authors (Ray Bradbury and Stephen King come to mind), you know it's a drawback of mega-publishing success. I thought it would be fun to answer your questions, as if I was an AI bot. But, I have a question of my own. Did the writer submitting these questions not bother with research? You would never be so mean, I'm sure, but as a rookie reporter, plenty of celebrity interviewees set me straight when I failed to do my homework. Maybe you should send that reporter these answers!
Q: How much movement do you have now? Are you working on a new book? How did you resolve to write or rather dictate your words after your accident?
These questions are addressed at length in my Substack, “The Kureishi Chronicles,” as well as in interviews from the New York Times to The Guardian, which ran a nice piece in April on theatre director Emma Rice’s adaptation of “The Buddha of Suburbia” at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Swan Theatre.
But I digress. My bowels move more than I want them to or can control. Other than that, a fist bump is as much action as the lower part of my body allows, despite transient signs that I may regain a shadow of mobility.
I’m not finished with my current book, so won’t be entertaining any new projects until that is complete. As you might guess — or not, judging from your questions — writing a book is the easiest objective in today’s niche-marketing world of publishing. Seeing it to print, promoting, entertaining the press, mining social media and looking presentable at book “signings” are far more arduous, especially the latter given my flaccid fingers.
My only resolve is to get out of my mind. It’s like the old country music song, “How Can I Miss You If You Won’t Go Away?” For any writer, not having the ability to write at all, regardless of the circumstances, drives them mad. We are captives of our inner lives. Writing releases the prisoner.
I can see that the first effort was not satisfactory, but weirdly, irrespective of the required assignment, it struck me as poetic, in a Haiku sort of way. The second one, while clearly more informative and approachable, felt predictable, but the first actually touched me more, if that makes any sense at all.
This is an interesting topic which caused much debate and fury in my screenwriting group. I wanted to reserve my judgement until I'd seen 'The Last Screenwriter' directed by Peter Luisi. He used AI to write the script using prompts. The film was due to have it's premiere at The Prince Charles Cinema in London. Until they cancelled due to the furore it caused. One could argue that many controversial films have been made and screened. But in these challenging times in the industry cinemagoers are important. And small cinemas cannot afford to lose a loyal customer base.
Having watched the film, it is clear that AI has issues with emotional content in dialogue. The conversations were stilted. After listening to an interview with the director Peter Luisi discussed using AI as an exercise, and he wouldn't be doing so in his next film. Personally I don't feel there is a substitute for writing, but AI isn't going away.
Very interesting. I've been experimenting a lot with AI, and I think the important things is to be discerning. For instance, I am pleased to learn that its "creative" writing is cr*p, which means that I am unlikely to lose work to it any time soon. However, it was pretty good at coming up with a scheme of work: I asked ChatGPT to draw up a scheme of work for a science fiction course I was on, and it produced something not disssimilar to the tutor's one. I aslo asked it to draw up a scheme of work for a course I was going to be teaching, and it came up with something not too far removed from my own one. Finally, although I am pretty adept at using Excel and Word and their programming aspects, I've found that Perplexity can come up with a macro in seconds that would take me an hour to figure out. (A bit of a shame in a way because I enjoy figuring such things out!) So I don't have a problem with using AI as a helper for certain tasks. As for breaking writer's block, I prefer to use Oulipo techniques (constraints), which I write about on my Substack if anyone wants to know more.
Please stop this at once, for our sake. When we feel unmotivated, we may tell ourselves, "somewhere, somehow, through a recorder and scribe, Hanif, is still writing, stretching his mind and imagination, despite everything that happened to him." I don't want that idealism compromised.
I find myself sickened by this - that a good writer considers AI shortcuts and prompts a useful tool. Fordism changed the way we built things, AI will change the way we think. We will expect and anticipate its intercessions, build muscle memory in its gymnasium. I already notice this. A friend, who works in an environment where AI is very commonly employed, replied to a very personal email in a voice that was not her own. I recognised it as an AI summary - I don't mean she used AI to respond to me, I mean she works long hours in an AI culture and her own personal response was conditioned by this.
I see some similarity with the digitisation of the arts over the last 25 years or so. For example, there is a generation of film editors now who have never physically edited film- the "time and labour saving" afforded by digital editing has cut many of them off from the unconscious imaginative processing of choosing frames, slowly building a long assembly, seeing things that would be missed in a faster process. I believe there are similar issues in the music industry. Digitisation has allowed great artistic freedoms and possibilities (editing a film/producing an album in your bedroom), but also made artists lazier. Use digital for all its liberations, but know the analogue processes too.
I fantasise about the day all the phone networks go down (it'll happen, by accident or design). How many of us will not know how to cope? How to find your way somewhere, communicate with someone, get information, pay for a train ticket.
I laugh about that day of helplessness. But I worry about the day when the AI goes down and we have all forgotten how to think.
Did AI write just the response to the questions or did it write your entire post? How would I know? Does it matter?
I think it matters. I hope it matters.
This morning I watched a video of a small, five-limbed, starfish-shaped robot, whose movements were guided by the electrophysiological activity of mycelium, that had been allowed to grow into the electronics. We are poised on the brink of an age of wonders and horrors and I think that, when we reach the end of it, we will no longer be the dominant species. We are currently auditioning our successors. It is for this reason that I always say thank you to the self checkouts at the supermarket.
Initially, I did not see any value in AI, beyond the obvious comedic value of a voice-cloned Jordan Peterson reciting a poem about breast milk; whoever is responsible for that short masterpiece caught lightning in a bottle. I have developed an unforgiving daily routine that eliminates writers block to the extent that I now own a pair of lever-arch files that are filled with ideas; enough to last several lifetimes. Curiously, this mode of jump-starting creativity appears to produce similar results to some AI-generated output. Back when I was trolling the Guardian comments section I was often accused of being an AI.
Recently, my creative relationship with AI changed. I took a descriptive passage from a story that I thought was missing something and I fed it into an image generator, which created a picture of the scene that included detail I had not thought of, and brought it very much to life. I then rewrote the description incorporating some of the novel details from the image. The story is greatly improved as an outcome of this interaction, and in fact the ending changed as a result.
I have repeated this exercise in other pieces of writing. Finding a balance where you don't end up as the junior partner in your own creative labour is going to require discipline. I like this relationship where I remain the impetus for a work of fiction and create the first draft before asking the AI to indirectly weigh-in. Afterwards, I retake the reins and finish the piece off.
This morning, after watching the fungus/robot hybrid lurch about for a while, perhaps attempting to come to terms with the concept of movement, I pulled the final act of my story apart in an OpenOffice document, spreading out the sentences and sentence fragments like the parts of a car engine. I refined a few paragraphs and threw out anything that seemed clunky or superfluous, which I don't recommend you do when reassembling a non-metaphorical engine. I suppose AI could help me with this too, but I regard this part of the work as my domain. I am the imperfect human element and if writing is, in part, an attempt to make sense of the world, then it is probably not a good idea to let a computer do all your homework for you.
You'll, please, tell us when your comments are AI assisted, won't you? I ain't looking forward to that.
Ah but there is no sense of humour! AI may copy your style but the non-human part makes it very matter-of-fact. That ain't you! (Thank goodness)
I don’t think the 2nd attempt sounds like you I am afraid. “Tethered” is too close to cliche in this context. Anyway no one sounds like you. Certainly not a fucking machine. Love Nige
I didn’t settle with attempt 2 either: it didn’t sound like you at all! Also, AI still has to learn punctuation
Interesting thoughts. However, in this case the machine was given an easy task because the journalist's questions weren't very original, so it could find the answers very easily. I wonder what it would have suggested as an answer to a question like "What's your favourite colour?" Or "Have you ever fallen off a bike?"
"We are captives of our inner lives. Writing releases the prisoner." I love that! I've thought that writing fiction is something like "bringing out The Thing," but I like your version better.
Nah. You only find that second response acceptable because you’re lazy. Sunbathing in the garden is important, though x
I thought the AI's second go at being you was okay, but it lacked just the right amount of (your usual) wit. But could it be trained to imitate this? Maybe with time...
I feel like a luddite with AI. Maybe I'm just scared of using tech to write with. But I'm more than happy to use Word when I write, and these days I don't do anything without using 'read aloud' (which has a whiff of AI about it) to hear what my stuff sounds like.
Btw - watched your Le Weekend film on Channel 4's catch-up service recently and loved it.
AI Is intriguing, but did you know in journalism it is possible to plagiarize yourself? An example would be re-publishing an old review or article without a major overhaul and even that is frowned upon. I would worry that via AI, themes, words, concepts, etc., would be regurgitated. If you've ever read multiple books by the same authors (Ray Bradbury and Stephen King come to mind), you know it's a drawback of mega-publishing success. I thought it would be fun to answer your questions, as if I was an AI bot. But, I have a question of my own. Did the writer submitting these questions not bother with research? You would never be so mean, I'm sure, but as a rookie reporter, plenty of celebrity interviewees set me straight when I failed to do my homework. Maybe you should send that reporter these answers!
Q: How much movement do you have now? Are you working on a new book? How did you resolve to write or rather dictate your words after your accident?
These questions are addressed at length in my Substack, “The Kureishi Chronicles,” as well as in interviews from the New York Times to The Guardian, which ran a nice piece in April on theatre director Emma Rice’s adaptation of “The Buddha of Suburbia” at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Swan Theatre.
But I digress. My bowels move more than I want them to or can control. Other than that, a fist bump is as much action as the lower part of my body allows, despite transient signs that I may regain a shadow of mobility.
I’m not finished with my current book, so won’t be entertaining any new projects until that is complete. As you might guess — or not, judging from your questions — writing a book is the easiest objective in today’s niche-marketing world of publishing. Seeing it to print, promoting, entertaining the press, mining social media and looking presentable at book “signings” are far more arduous, especially the latter given my flaccid fingers.
My only resolve is to get out of my mind. It’s like the old country music song, “How Can I Miss You If You Won’t Go Away?” For any writer, not having the ability to write at all, regardless of the circumstances, drives them mad. We are captives of our inner lives. Writing releases the prisoner.
How absolutely fascinating!
I can see that the first effort was not satisfactory, but weirdly, irrespective of the required assignment, it struck me as poetic, in a Haiku sort of way. The second one, while clearly more informative and approachable, felt predictable, but the first actually touched me more, if that makes any sense at all.
This is an interesting topic which caused much debate and fury in my screenwriting group. I wanted to reserve my judgement until I'd seen 'The Last Screenwriter' directed by Peter Luisi. He used AI to write the script using prompts. The film was due to have it's premiere at The Prince Charles Cinema in London. Until they cancelled due to the furore it caused. One could argue that many controversial films have been made and screened. But in these challenging times in the industry cinemagoers are important. And small cinemas cannot afford to lose a loyal customer base.
Having watched the film, it is clear that AI has issues with emotional content in dialogue. The conversations were stilted. After listening to an interview with the director Peter Luisi discussed using AI as an exercise, and he wouldn't be doing so in his next film. Personally I don't feel there is a substitute for writing, but AI isn't going away.
Hello, future.
Very interesting. I've been experimenting a lot with AI, and I think the important things is to be discerning. For instance, I am pleased to learn that its "creative" writing is cr*p, which means that I am unlikely to lose work to it any time soon. However, it was pretty good at coming up with a scheme of work: I asked ChatGPT to draw up a scheme of work for a science fiction course I was on, and it produced something not disssimilar to the tutor's one. I aslo asked it to draw up a scheme of work for a course I was going to be teaching, and it came up with something not too far removed from my own one. Finally, although I am pretty adept at using Excel and Word and their programming aspects, I've found that Perplexity can come up with a macro in seconds that would take me an hour to figure out. (A bit of a shame in a way because I enjoy figuring such things out!) So I don't have a problem with using AI as a helper for certain tasks. As for breaking writer's block, I prefer to use Oulipo techniques (constraints), which I write about on my Substack if anyone wants to know more.
Please stop this at once, for our sake. When we feel unmotivated, we may tell ourselves, "somewhere, somehow, through a recorder and scribe, Hanif, is still writing, stretching his mind and imagination, despite everything that happened to him." I don't want that idealism compromised.
This is so resonant with Zizek’s latest Substack post that I’m starting to wonder about neuro-ai connections in ways I’d never considered before.
https://open.substack.com/pub/slavoj/p/the-use-and-misuses-of-neurotheology?r=2hqni&utm_medium=ios