Could the next Ernest Hemingway or Jane Austen be a well-engineered Al software program? It's a question becoming increasingly pressing as machine language-learning software continues to evolve.
Much of this is just nerves. Today's Al creative writing programs are not yet at a stage of development where they pose a serious threat to Colleen Hoover or Charles Dickens. But while attention continues to for us on the possibility of a blanket takeover of human literature by Al, far less consideration has been given to the prospect of Al co-working with humans.
Earlier this month, American sci-fi writer Ken Liu, who had been awarded Hugo and Nebula to his name, joined 12 other professional authors for a writing workshop on Google's Word craft. This Al tool, a language generating model, is not yet publicly available but is advertised as an AI-powerel writing assistant that can, when given the right instruction from the writer, provide helpful descriptions, create lists of objects or emotional states, and even brainstorm ideas.
The writers at the workshop, however, emerged with mixed reports. "Word craft is too sensible. Wow!"Robin Sloan wrote. "But‘sensible'is another word for predictable, overused and boring. My intention here is to produce something unexpected. "
I'm unconvinced that writers awarded the Nobel Prize have much to fear from Al. Their work, and that of countless other rnove lists, short story writers, dramatists and poets, is too particular, too beautifully unique. Even if a model learned what they had done in the past, it would not be able to predict where their creativity might take them in the future. But for authors who write following a pattern, Al might step in, first as assistants before some day to authorship.
Production-line novels are nothing new. In the 1970s, Barbara Cartland, who wrote more than 723 books in her lifetime, many of which are romance bestsellers, would read her novels for her secretary to type up at the remarkable rate of roughly seven chapters a week. But already machine has replaced the secretary's role. Perhaps creative writing software isn't that far from replacing the Mrs. Cartlands of today.
