Everyone in Writerworld has been freaking the fuck out at an AI service called Sudowrite, which recently released a tool that it claimed could write your whole book for you. Huge if true, and potentially quite dire.
So rather than bitching on Twitter, because I don’t do that anymore, I thought I’d check out my new robot nemesis.
It is a pretty comprehensive suite of tools. You start by feeding in as much information as you have about your proposed book. Then you generate a synopsis, character bios, and chapter outlines, and story beats, and finally, you hit the big red button, and the finished copy spews out.
I have no doubt that Amazon is already filling up with titles written by no-talent grifters using this or similar tools.
For now, though, I’m comfortable and relaxed about the competition.
This is the first page of the ‘next’ Smith and Cady book, as imagined by Sudowrite, which I gave all of my notes on The Clockwork Heart, and thousands of words of background information from A Girl in Time and The Golden Minute.
It ain’t gonna be tickling the best seller algorithm any time soon.
The cobblestone streets of 17th century Paris stretched before Cady as she hurried along, clutching her worn cloak tight against the chill. Somewhere in this sea of strangers, John was searching for her too.
Cady's heart raced at the thought of seeing him again. It had been over a month since they were torn apart, flung into different corners of time by the Time Keepers. She quickened her pace, scanning the crowds for any sign of John's familiar face.
Each alleyway and corner hid unknown dangers. The Time Keepers could be lurking anywhere, waiting to snatch her back to the present. Cady shook off a shiver, peering over her shoulder at every sound. She had to find John before it was too late.
As Cady walked, she traced the outline of the locket John had given her, its metal warm against her palm. The locket was her only clue to finding him, containing a scrap of parchment with two words scrawled on it: Pont Neuf. She had combed the entire city, finally discovering the Pont Neuf bridge and praying John would be there.
Her heart nearly burst from her chest when she spotted a man in a tricorne hat gazing out at the river, his jawline and stature unmistakably John's. Cady broke into a run as John turned, his eyes lighting up as they met hers.
They collided in a fierce embrace, Cady burying her face in the crook of John's neck as tears of joy and relief streamed down her cheeks. "I found you," she whispered. "I finally found you."
John cupped her face in his hands, wiping away her tears with his thumbs. "And I, you. No force in time or space could ever keep us apart."
Cady kissed him then, surrendering to the warmth and comfort of his arms. The Time Keepers and all their threats seemed a world away. As long as they were together, no power in any century could touch them.
Clearly it's not going to threaten high end literary quality work like yours, but what about those that do the equivalent of piece work. Similar to what you described a while ago eg 500 words on new laundry powder, or an introductory piece to the new workplace culture strategy (shudder) ... so many of these things generated in corporate speak even now barely make it to literate, let alone readable. In fact I'm starting to wonder about some stuff that HR have been putting out lately......mmmm
I, for one, will welcome AI to writing in corporate land. Anything has to be better than the tortured and meaningless slabs of text churned out by grifters intent on the next opportunity to be acting-EL2.
Well, that was as boring as bat shit. I guess the bodice rippers would fall for it.
I write articles for our website, and my latest got snaffled by one of the law bulletins. They "improved" it by adding some blurb thing at the top, "from the internet. I hope it's right". It must have been ChatGPT because it was just about all wrong. These fuckers are fucking lawyers, well, patent attorneys, but just didn't care. Luckily it was prepub so it could be fixed, but how much gets through with equally inattentive authors.
Our overseas overlords had everyone do the usual.suite of online training. Stuff like information security, fraud, being nice to each other. Thing is it was barely intelligible. Brainstormed it with a couple of thinky types. We joked about how this is what robots would produce. The problem really was they'd just put the original training texts through something like Google translate. We probably received the 2nd iteration. By cripes we sent some feedback on that shit.
Eirghhhh. AI is so samey, much like when you look for a topic on YouTube, one good video and 4000 cheap copies. You don't need AI , just 1000s of unimaginative proles from America's suburbs. AI is also horribly American, much like most of the contemporary internet, shoved through a northern Californian fudge tunnel , ignoring other cultures, and even other states of the USA. No wonder everyone is angry and confused.
Which is why I find Meta's claim that their AI has "saved" 4000 marginal languages for posterity so hilarious. All based on pieced-together translations of "The Bible", as though that was representative of anything.
Good writing is an art form . I’ve seen some AI generated artwork too. It’s just not the same . Cool tech stuff but no soul. You’ll be fine. Unfortunately there are a lot that won’t be. I ain’t buying no crummy AI drivel
Saw this coming quite a while back as I remember. This version of Chat is fairly easy to recognize . But the new version will be out soon and getting better and better . Then the next ....The hard truth is that AI is moving much to fast for anyone to keep up. Congress can’t. They don’t what Substack is or even what AI is. Biden is proposing something. That will be good for a laugh
Five years from now, maybe ten, it could be good enough to be really problematic for people like me. But honestly, if the bots were good enough to write decent fiction, we'd have bigger problems as a species than my bank balance.
I'm not sure about that. Both short and long: Microsoft is integrating ChatGPT directly into Windows, so they say, as "Copilot". Clippy on steroids, more like. In six months to a year. So some versions may be hard to avoid.
On the long end, though, the version that is out there now has been trained on essentially everything that was ever written, some 200 billion words, producing a machine with 175-billion "parameters". Sure, we're generating more at a prodigeous rate, but to a first approximation, that's all there is. Any future improvements will have to rely on some pretty inventive extrapolations or experiments by the AI geeks. (Here's a long but useful description of what's going on:https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/02/what-is-chatgpt-doing-and-why-does-it-work/ Yes, sorry: there's some pretty high-level maths in that, but the outline seems sound.)
Clearly it's not going to threaten high end literary quality work like yours, but what about those that do the equivalent of piece work. Similar to what you described a while ago eg 500 words on new laundry powder, or an introductory piece to the new workplace culture strategy (shudder) ... so many of these things generated in corporate speak even now barely make it to literate, let alone readable. In fact I'm starting to wonder about some stuff that HR have been putting out lately......mmmm
Oh yeah they’re totally fucked.
I, for one, will welcome AI to writing in corporate land. Anything has to be better than the tortured and meaningless slabs of text churned out by grifters intent on the next opportunity to be acting-EL2.
Dave, i think we work in the same level of hell .
look, if the corporate/HR diatribe comes out sounding like it could be a bodice ripper in two pages i'm all for adopting our new robot overlords.
Bodice Ripper and HR in the same sentence? As in most instances (cases?), context is key!
Well, that was as boring as bat shit. I guess the bodice rippers would fall for it.
I write articles for our website, and my latest got snaffled by one of the law bulletins. They "improved" it by adding some blurb thing at the top, "from the internet. I hope it's right". It must have been ChatGPT because it was just about all wrong. These fuckers are fucking lawyers, well, patent attorneys, but just didn't care. Luckily it was prepub so it could be fixed, but how much gets through with equally inattentive authors.
Our overseas overlords had everyone do the usual.suite of online training. Stuff like information security, fraud, being nice to each other. Thing is it was barely intelligible. Brainstormed it with a couple of thinky types. We joked about how this is what robots would produce. The problem really was they'd just put the original training texts through something like Google translate. We probably received the 2nd iteration. By cripes we sent some feedback on that shit.
Eirghhhh. AI is so samey, much like when you look for a topic on YouTube, one good video and 4000 cheap copies. You don't need AI , just 1000s of unimaginative proles from America's suburbs. AI is also horribly American, much like most of the contemporary internet, shoved through a northern Californian fudge tunnel , ignoring other cultures, and even other states of the USA. No wonder everyone is angry and confused.
Which is why I find Meta's claim that their AI has "saved" 4000 marginal languages for posterity so hilarious. All based on pieced-together translations of "The Bible", as though that was representative of anything.
Compare that effort with the just released Warlpiri tome. Done as right as humans can, in only 60 years: https://theconversation.com/six-decades-210-warlpiri-speakers-and-11-000-words-how-a-groundbreaking-first-nations-dictionary-was-made-205019
"Californian fudge tunnel" LOL snorts!!
Good writing is an art form . I’ve seen some AI generated artwork too. It’s just not the same . Cool tech stuff but no soul. You’ll be fine. Unfortunately there are a lot that won’t be. I ain’t buying no crummy AI drivel
Saw this coming quite a while back as I remember. This version of Chat is fairly easy to recognize . But the new version will be out soon and getting better and better . Then the next ....The hard truth is that AI is moving much to fast for anyone to keep up. Congress can’t. They don’t what Substack is or even what AI is. Biden is proposing something. That will be good for a laugh
Five years from now, maybe ten, it could be good enough to be really problematic for people like me. But honestly, if the bots were good enough to write decent fiction, we'd have bigger problems as a species than my bank balance.
I'm not sure about that. Both short and long: Microsoft is integrating ChatGPT directly into Windows, so they say, as "Copilot". Clippy on steroids, more like. In six months to a year. So some versions may be hard to avoid.
On the long end, though, the version that is out there now has been trained on essentially everything that was ever written, some 200 billion words, producing a machine with 175-billion "parameters". Sure, we're generating more at a prodigeous rate, but to a first approximation, that's all there is. Any future improvements will have to rely on some pretty inventive extrapolations or experiments by the AI geeks. (Here's a long but useful description of what's going on:https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/02/what-is-chatgpt-doing-and-why-does-it-work/ Yes, sorry: there's some pretty high-level maths in that, but the outline seems sound.)
It's still just ELIZA with a much larger database of stock phrases.
I think it will _always_ sound turgid, wooden, and derivative.