Larry Correia on the A.I. Enthusiasm Deficit
In case you missed it, speculation about the effects of A.I. on the publishing industry are bubbling up again.For instance: Over on X yesterday, a bunch of authors struck up a conversation about A.I. that included this item:
That tweet caught the attention of best selling author Larry Correia, who replied:
I see a lot of newbie authors thinking that AI is going to be some super tool, but the part you guys are missing is that writing is the fun part. Editing is the hard part. So you're giving the fun part to the machine, and then going through and doing painstaking clean up to humanize it. At least if you want it to not suck ass.So let's say that I, as a very experienced author who we've established is pretty good at this shit, tells an AI give me a story about X, Y, and Z. And it spits it out for me in seconds. Yay.Except then I need to take that AI generated manuscript and make it not read like it was written by a soulless autocorrect with a severe personality disorder.
What lazy authors will do is just take that AI dreck, do a quick editing pass (if that) and throw it out on the internet to try and make a quick buck. Slap an AI cover on it. They'll spam Amazon, sell to some dupes, make a few bucks, maybe. And flood the market with shit.
Related: A.I. Writing
So back to me, an actual working pro with a name and a reputation for a certain level of quality and an existing fan base who pays my bills. I've got this AI generated manuscript, but I need to bring it up to snuff, otherwise my customers are going to read it and go what the fuck is this bullshit? And never buy one of my books again.So this is the part you newbs don't get, writing/creating is fun. Editing is WORK. So now I need to clean up every single fucking line of this AI generated manuscript because the machine doesn't know shit about emotions. It doesn't know shit about how things feel. It can only regurgitate what others have written before. It is a compulsive liar. It makes shit up, but it isn't creative. It's got no soul. It's got no enthusiasm, and that's the biggest one that I'll come back around to.
Not to be contrarian, but I'm one of those oddballs who enjoys editing as much as writing. But I understand that most writers dread editing their work. Don't stress if you're one of them though, because I'm glad to offer you my services.Back to Larry:
Because a collab should be a synergistic endeavor that results in something more than the sum of its parts. To do that requires putting in actual work. With this, you just teamed up to collaborate with a fucking robot that's got the humanity and sense of humor of an impaired Speak & Spell.By the time you get done painstakingly redoing every line of cloying bullshit, congrats, you could've just wrote the fucking book you wanted to begin with.The creation is the fun part. I've said this many many many times, the writer's greatest weapon is contagious enthusiasm. If I'm having fun writing it, I know you guys will have fun reading it. That's it. That's the big fucking secret.AI has no enthusiasm.
Related: How Big Tech’s Novelty Obsession Killed Software
If an author isn't having fun writing, you can tell when you read it. It's a vibe. It's a feeling. You just know. If the author was having a blast you know it. The scenes where a good author was grinning or crying or doing a triumphant fuck yeah fist pump, you fucking know. Because reader and author are both human, you fucking GET IT.
The AI doesn't. It can't. It can fake it. It can uncanny valley its way through a book, and it will probably get better and better at faking it, but it isn't human, and good storytelling is a profoundly human endeavor.
Can confirm. As sci fi grandmaster John C. Wright has said, fiction writing is the closest we have to telepathy.
This is the same reason the big media corporate entertainment of the day sucks so bad. It's made by a committee, and committees don't have have enthusiasm. And fake enthusiasm will never replace real contagious enthusiasm. If the creator doesn't give a shit, why should the audience?AI can produce a TON of vapid soulless shit, but hey, so can modern Disney! In fact, when the creator doesn't give a shit about his art, not only does the audience feel it, the audience gets pissed off.So if you want to produce tons of unenthusiastic shit product and roll the dice hoping it somehow sticks and makes a buck, great. But if you actually give a shit about what you're saying, then just fucking SAY IT.
My comment:Larry is correct that visibility is the biggest challenge facing new authors.And the prediction that A.I.-generated books will exponentially muddy the already murky ocean of Amazon seems to be the industry consensus.Authors currently publishing through KDP know that Amazon has had A.I. guidelines for a while now. Here's their policy:
According to Amazon's guidelines, users who upload A.I.-generated manuscripts have to disclose it, even if they did extensive editing.That doesn't mean people won't just lie, though.The elephant in the room is why. One attribute the A.I. writing advocates I've seen have in common is having no idea how the publishing business works.That guy in the first screencap above said that A.I. will let non-authors compete with authors. What he's missing is that A.I.-generated novels will take extensive editing to be salable, and professional-level writing skill is a prerequisite for pro-tier editing chops.So this is how the whole prospect comes off:
And even if generating novels with A.I. did save time, it was only advantageous back in the rapid release era, which never really lived up to the hype, and which A.I. writing helped kill.That's just one reason why I've been pivoting away from Amazon and concentrating more on crowdfunding.Kickstarter's A.I. guidelines are even stricter than Amazon's, with failure to disclose which project elements are A.I. and which are manmade punishable by suspension. And attempts to dodge KS's policy can get you banned.What the inundation off KDP with A.I. writing looks like is an even better argument for neopatronage.
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