If you want to write something genuinely original, I can see your point—but you declare this to be true of ALL creative writing, and I don’t think you support that point at all.
I’ve got a stack of AI-written short stories. I’ve enjoyed reading them, and it’s fun practice reading through them and editing them. I cannot imagine how I am possibly worse off, as an editor, for doing some practice rather than doing zero practice?
And, surely, being an editor is part of being a good writer—if you can’t detect the flaws in a work, are you actually writing anything worth reading to begin with?
Your whole hypothesis seems to be that it’s impossible to be an editor, that you cannot possibly detect flaws. But you also seem to insist that anything “AI flavored” is a flaw, regardless of how good it is. And quite frankly, I’ve seen AI write some really great lines. I cannot imagine how that line is less great, simply because of it’s authorship—the whole point of fiction is that it’s enjoyable to read, and I’m enjoying it!
You also seem to assume I have some existing goal, some existing thought that I’m trying to express. But sometimes I just want a fun encounter for tonight’s D&D game, or to brainstorm for a much more open-ended creative writing project. Why are pirates a fine concept if I come up with them, but somehow worse if ChatGPT is the one who suggested the idea?
Again, there is a human in this loop, editing and evaluating the ideas
But even if you still intend to splice and curate AI’s outputs, you need good taste and judgment. That only gets developed through writing
In short, this seems ridiculous to me. Are the best editors really all famous authors as well? Does a sports couch need to have been a star athlete?
And even if we accept it, I can (and indeed do) write plenty of material without any AI assistance. Why is my occasional use of AI in one context magically poisoning me in other domains?
Sometimes, there’s a nuanced path you need to follow, and AI will simply never thread that path.
Again, when there’s a nuanced path to a specific goal, I might agree, but you dismiss a vast sea of other uses.
Believe me, I agree that hating on AI writing because it’s AI is a mistake (the genetic fallacy) -- that is the thesis of my essay before this one, A Thoughtful Defense of AI Writing (and that perspective was controversial here on LessWrong).
That is mainly from a reader’s perspective—don’t judge pirates by if it was AI’s idea, judge pirates by if that was a good or bad inclusion in that part of your campaign.
Note, I think there’s a difference between “I am setting out to write a story with AI” (as you describe, which I think is almost entirely harmless), vs. “I am trying to express my idea, but can’t figure it out, so I will amputate part of myself to install whatever spills out of the robot” (which I see as atrophying your creative and critical thinking).
This essay argues from the writer’s perspective (as Orwell argued about trite platitudes in his time) that you risk picking up bad habits which themselves disable your critical faculties to notice and get rid them (by encouraging habitual lapses into laziness, and adding to the ‘switching cost’ of going back to free thinking).
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Are the best editors really all famous authors as well?
The best editors are likely not famous authors, but are almost certainly good writers. On a tactical level, the alternatives/suggestions they offer would be of great writing quality. And on a strategic level, they need to know how to write the edits and feedback in a way which is clear and convincing to the author. If an editor can’t write good edits, evidently they aren’t one of the best editors. There is a reflexivity where the best knowledge work always requires good writing, because writing is just the primary medium to convey ideas.
If you want to write something genuinely original, I can see your point—but you declare this to be true of ALL creative writing, and I don’t think you support that point at all.
I’ve got a stack of AI-written short stories. I’ve enjoyed reading them, and it’s fun practice reading through them and editing them. I cannot imagine how I am possibly worse off, as an editor, for doing some practice rather than doing zero practice?
And, surely, being an editor is part of being a good writer—if you can’t detect the flaws in a work, are you actually writing anything worth reading to begin with?
Your whole hypothesis seems to be that it’s impossible to be an editor, that you cannot possibly detect flaws. But you also seem to insist that anything “AI flavored” is a flaw, regardless of how good it is. And quite frankly, I’ve seen AI write some really great lines. I cannot imagine how that line is less great, simply because of it’s authorship—the whole point of fiction is that it’s enjoyable to read, and I’m enjoying it!
You also seem to assume I have some existing goal, some existing thought that I’m trying to express. But sometimes I just want a fun encounter for tonight’s D&D game, or to brainstorm for a much more open-ended creative writing project. Why are pirates a fine concept if I come up with them, but somehow worse if ChatGPT is the one who suggested the idea?
Again, there is a human in this loop, editing and evaluating the ideas
In short, this seems ridiculous to me. Are the best editors really all famous authors as well? Does a sports couch need to have been a star athlete?
And even if we accept it, I can (and indeed do) write plenty of material without any AI assistance. Why is my occasional use of AI in one context magically poisoning me in other domains?
Again, when there’s a nuanced path to a specific goal, I might agree, but you dismiss a vast sea of other uses.
Believe me, I agree that hating on AI writing because it’s AI is a mistake (the genetic fallacy) -- that is the thesis of my essay before this one, A Thoughtful Defense of AI Writing (and that perspective was controversial here on LessWrong).
That is mainly from a reader’s perspective—don’t judge pirates by if it was AI’s idea, judge pirates by if that was a good or bad inclusion in that part of your campaign.
Note, I think there’s a difference between “I am setting out to write a story with AI” (as you describe, which I think is almost entirely harmless), vs. “I am trying to express my idea, but can’t figure it out, so I will amputate part of myself to install whatever spills out of the robot” (which I see as atrophying your creative and critical thinking).
This essay argues from the writer’s perspective (as Orwell argued about trite platitudes in his time) that you risk picking up bad habits which themselves disable your critical faculties to notice and get rid them (by encouraging habitual lapses into laziness, and adding to the ‘switching cost’ of going back to free thinking).
---
The best editors are likely not famous authors, but are almost certainly good writers. On a tactical level, the alternatives/suggestions they offer would be of great writing quality. And on a strategic level, they need to know how to write the edits and feedback in a way which is clear and convincing to the author. If an editor can’t write good edits, evidently they aren’t one of the best editors. There is a reflexivity where the best knowledge work always requires good writing, because writing is just the primary medium to convey ideas.