A reader wrote in recently with the following question, which they gave me permission to post a reply to here, as I thought other readers might have similar questions. I also think it could be funny to have an “Ask An AI Guy” advice column. If anyone else has AI-related questions they want to ask and have me answer publicly, drop me an email at the contact form here.

The question:

I came across your article in Newsweek about using AI to write books. I found it incredibly interesting how open you were about using it as your creative partner in a sense. I’m currently enjoying using chatgpt to help form my ideas into slightly more coherent plot points. And it gives amazing feedback on my writing, possibly better than what a technical editor could give. But I can’t help feeling like a fraud. There’s a nagging feeling like, shouldn’t I be able to do this on my own? Before AI, didn’t writers have nothing but themselves to brainstorm, write, and rewrite? Have you faced this issue? Do you have any thoughts on this? Thanks so much for any insights!

I answered part of this question I think in the Register interview here, but will recap that part briefly: working with AI has made me a better writer. Simple as that. It’s made me more objective about what’s a decent piece of writing, and does a given piece answer the particular need its intended to fill, and does my argumentation take the reader logically from A to B to satisfy that need?

“Before AI, didn’t writers have nothing but themselves…”

First, I would say that’s not true on its own: writers have always had other writers, editors, and other readers. I think the idea that writing is this heroic totally solitary activity is a bit incomplete, as it has always had a very social side.

Second, whatever happened ‘before AI’, we’re no longer living in that mythical before-time, just like we don’t live in a time before computers, etc. While doing things without it is entirely valuable and worth mastering for mastery’s sake, we now live *with* AI. One way to live in a time with AI is certainly to totally reject it. Another is to partially reject it for certain things, and use it for others. I think it’s just about finding what that fit is for you, the writer, and for your audience. For example, I wouldn’t want AI to take over the “fun” parts of writing – but your mileage may vary as to what is actually fun for you, and what can benefit from outside eyes – even if those are digital eyes.

Despite hundreds (thousands, really) of people calling me a fraud for using AI to tell new kinds of stories, it’s a feeling that I have never once myself actually shared. Sorry, I just don’t feel like a fraud. I don’t feel sorry, or cowed or threatened even when thousands of people tell me I’m wrong and bad. Maybe that makes me an asshole, but I don’t think so. It means really I’m able to listen to the intuitive voice and the creative light that guides invisibly my work, and much of my life, and unswervingly devote myself to that, even if others can’t see it or don’t quite get it. That light might tell some people to restrict how they use certain technologies, but mine tells me to find out by doing, to dive in and see, and talk about it with others. Following that light has not served me wrong so far – and if anything, it has made my life better and my work richer. If I stopped following that, that’s where I think I would get into trouble and start feeling like a fraud, because I will have given up on what’s actually actively true for me.

I guess my point is: if the journey is authentic, then so will be the end-product.

Hope that helps a little!

Cheers.

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