Notes on I Didn’t Read This Book Before Publishing It

I Didn’t Read This Book Before Publishing It is the 102nd book in the AI Lore books series, as seen in Publishers Weekly.

It is inspired by the many tweets I saw like this one, of people reciting the same handful of “jokes” and finding themselves quite clever:

In honor of this genre of complaint, I decided for the content of this one to see if I could get an AI to churn out generic pompous writerly drivel, and you know what? It didn’t do half bad! Here’s a sample:

If writing were easy, anyone could do it. The true writer understands that our craft demands suffering for one’s art. Few understand the depth of anguish I endure each day confronting that blank page, as I wage war against distraction, doubt, and the trivial demands of the physical world that knows not the life of the mind.

All the funnier to me that lines like these are written by an AI:

In this new age of digital media, it seems there is little room left for the serious creative artist. Where once discerning readers sought insight and inspiration from flesh-and-blood philosophers, poets and essayists, today they increasingly turn to AI simulacrums that produce superficial pablum on demand. These artificial usurpers now threaten the precarious livelihoods of we who trade not in clicks and virality but in hard-won human experience.

It just goes to show, that even the most cherished stock in trade of all writers – complaining about other writers – is a feat now easily duplicated by a mere button press.