A reader sent me the following question, and gave me permission to post it and reply publicly here.

I found your Newsweek article from 2023, and it eventually led me here. I recently finished a 131,000-word manuscript using ChatGPT as a collaborator. While it’s not at a releasable quality yet, I’ve seen how AI can enhance creativity when paired with significant input.

I’m now breaking that manuscript into an into triloigy of 80,000-85,000 words for each book My process involves using AI to fill in smaller details while I focus on the larger creative elements. The result feels unique even compared to over 300 sci-fi books I’ve read.

I see a fair amount of backlash AI-generated work has.

Given your experience, I’d love your perspective:
• How do you handle criticism or backlash toward AI-assisted writing?
• Do you recommend addressing it directly, or letting the work speak for itself?
• Is using a pen name a good strategy, or does transparency have more value in this space?

AI is allowing me to channel creativity I wouldn’t have been able to do so otherwise. I have no idea where this will take me. Your thought would mean a lot as I continue this journey.

So I should preface this by saying I’m probably a very hard-headed person, or else the torrents of shame and hatred people have tried to rain down on me for doing what I am artistically would be maybe a bit too much to handle. Second, I also spent many years working in content moderation, and handling complaints for a platform. This habituated me to dealing with “anger at scale” and seeing philosophically but also very concretely how, no matter what happens in the world, and where you’re sitting in relation to it, there is no shortage of unhappy people who will come in and shit all over it. This is just what people do, and the world we live in. Everybody’s mad because everything sucks, and I’m obviously no different.

So I guess you could say I’ve had a lot of training and conditioning in dealing with this sort of vitriol. To the point where I pretty much don’t take any of it seriously anymore, and years ago gave up being the guy whose job is to try to somehow sort out and make sense of everyone else’s anger and frustrations. It’s just not my responsibility anymore – and it once was, so I know concretely and cleanly the difference, which might be harder to sort out if you’re new to this kind of extremely strong reaction what you’re describing is likely to engender.

So, more specifically, one concrete way I handle criticism is by not posting on social media accounts. If something of mine comes up on one of those networks, I might pop in as a guest and see what I can of the comments to understand what people are saying, and what their perspectives are, but I never try to engage people on those platforms, because it’s just not worth it. Angry people always feel they are right and justified in their anger. And they are emboldened when others do the same, so you can’t win in the places they congregate, imo. That’s why instead, I just write what I write here on my blog. Sometimes I respond to things I find elsewhere, but there are no comments here, so people can’t come here and dogpile me, and I am able to think in peace. People can, of course, follow links to email me directly. But I’ve never had a single person sit down to write me a thoughtful email that was angry or even a critique. Everyone who emails is curious and interested, so I take those kinds of communications to be much more important and valuable because they are person to person, and they are not social performance designed to enrage and attract likes.

I tend to address the criticisms directly when they seem interesting or spark a new way of thinking about these issues. And I agree there are issues with these technologies, a great many of them, and have spent a huge amount of time talking about them on my blog, in panel discussions, interviews, podcasts, etc. So yes, I think – for me, anyway – addressing them directly is important and necessary, and helps frame the conversation in better directions, even if these blog posts don’t garner likes on social media.

As to pen names, I think it depends on what your personal preferences and tolerances to criticism are. Because of my prior work handling complaints, moderating content, working in privacy/data protection, I didn’t put photos or video of myself online for years and years, and was extremely protective of my identity. Because I knew what kinds of horrible things people are capable of online. But then, eventually, I had the chance to talk about what I was doing, and if you want to play ball in the media, you have to use your face and your name, pretty much. Maybe there’s a way to get press anonymously or pseudonymously, but I think it be more difficult and greatly reduced compared to what I’ve been able to do by exposing myself and my person. I think also there’s something to be said for not being cowed, not being shamed or shouted down from the raging mobs, and simply being like, yeah, this is me, this is an art experiment I’m doing, etc. I’m not forcing anybody to like it, but I’m being true to my part of the dance, following my inspiration, battle testing the tools, finding the good and bad in all of it, and just sharing and being upfront about it.

That said, using another identity as a shield can be a very very good thing psychologically, and for other practical reasons. One benefit can be that it gives you a kind of mental distance – almost a ‘plausible deniability’ – for when the angry hordes come for you (and they will if you’re upfront about what you’re doing). This helps you to see that the people are reacting to the front you’re putting up about what you’re doing, and lets you get less hung up on reacting to like, oh they’re reacting to ME!! and they hate ME!! Like, okay, sure, they might “hate you” in the way that internet people hate everything, all the time, for any or no reason. But the people who complain most about my work haven’t read any of it, haven’t really read any of my articles or blog posts in any depth, haven’t listened meaningfully to my podcast or panel appearances, and haven’t actually engaged with anything I’m saying. They’re generally just reacting to a headline, and – dare I say – repeating popular talking points they heard elsewhere about why “AI bad” and how I’m just another example of ____[thing they already hate].

So, anyway, I don’t know if this is inspiring or even helpful or not, but it’s at least a true accounting of my experience. Your mileage, as ever, may vary.

Anyone else have any questions, feel free to email me, and assuming that’s okay with you, please provide permission to use the text of your email publicly. I will redact any personally identifying information from the text of your inquiry.

Cheers!

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