Should Authors Fear AI?

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[@InquisitorThomas]

Writers: **Make countless stories of AI be cartoonishly evil** AI: **Drives all writers out of business**

[@ChrisFoxWrites]

Well-played, AI.

[@wpelfeta]

AI is very good at seeing the big picture, but AI is bad at capturing details. If you look at any AI art, it looks amazing at first glance, but as you study it deeper, you start to realize it doesn't actually understand what it is drawing. There are a lot of odd artifacts. It can capture the core of the painting, but the last mile is not there yet. I think the last mile will be the hardest gap to close for AI developers. The way machine learning works, the AI doesn't actually have cognition of what it's drawing. It's just pattern matching between art and word tags, so I am not scared of AI taking over art or writing on its own. AI will still need a human touch to create something professional. But, it does change the landscape of art and writing. As creators, we will have to adapt and *use* the AI to our own advantage. The AIs are incredible at setting up rough drafts and letting us hit the ground running. I can see myself become incredibly productive with the help of AI.

[@YTTopia]

this has already aged poorly lol

[@HongFeiBai]

AIs are already being developer for use in war. They don't know how to look at the details, which is really dangerous.

[@brandonellis2317]

I'm so excited to watch another one of your videos. Thanks so much. I literally stopped what I was doing, and pressed play.

[@ChrisFoxWrites]

Dude, it's been so long. We need to set up a zoom call soon! I talked to Scott recently, and Chris K. Trying to reconnect with people. I feel like Rip Van Winkle lol.

[@brandonellis2317]

@@ChrisFoxWrites, we're overdo. Let's get that Zoom call going soon. Just to catch up.

[@audreyhughey]

Sorry to hear about your accident! Glad to hear that you and the family are (overall) okay though. 😊 I mayyyyy be one of those people who stalked you when I didn't get a newsletter for a couple months or see you at 20Books Vegas LoL! I hope you keep healing well, and can't wait to see what new stuff you're bringing.

[@KeithWheelerBooks]

Glad you’re back and more importantly, I’m glad you’re doing better! Can’t wait to see more videos!

[@METALFREAK03]

You still need significant input in all these AI tools. They are just that, tools. Probably would make writing a series of books (like you did) in one year more easier. Or let's hope GRRM can actually finish his in the next decade aye? I joke, anyway, I think it's going to be a good tool. Yes the "undergrift" will "lose their jobs" - like your aforementioned cover artists - BUT I think they will just need to adapt to create a new layer of industry. It's like when photoshop tookover the old oil painters of film posters in cinemas, now they are just all digital artists who manipulate photoshop in such a way I could never do, which make those posters now. In any business you must adapt and overcome. AI is just another stepping stone. (Just like many before it, typewriters instead of quill & ink, computer processors instead of typewriters, scrivener (and the like) instead of word processor etc... This is nothing new. Authors haven't gone out of business and never will until our brain is not imagining anymore.

[@AntoineBandele]

I'm here for the developments with AI. The only folks who should be terrified are those who write to tropes with generic characters.

[@billcokas8114]

Good to have you back, Chris--we've missed you.

[@chrspod4133]

I appreciate that you took the time to cover this topic. AI is something I've spent a little time looking into, myself. Currently, I'm not at all worried that AI will ever replace authors, or any other other creative artist. When I experimented with AI myself, trying to get it to write a piece of fiction, the results weren't at all impressive. I could easily tell that it was using algorithms to generate the results and the formulas it used were very basic. This makes sense, because the creators of AI are not artists and have no concept of what it takes to create art. They are just computer engineers that understand very complicated math problems. For this reason, I'm still confident that AI will never be capable of replacing human beings, when it comes to any form of art.

[@ChannelPestery]

Glad to hear you're ok. Had been wondering why there hadn't been a video in a while. Thought maybe KZbin was playing tricks. Take care of yourself 🙂

[@jmcmontanheiro]

Glad to hear from you Chris! The AI matter is very current, it's crazy to think where AI tools will be in a few years

[@bellcreativecommunications6885]

SO glad you're back, Chris! I always get excited when I see an email about a new video from you. And sorry to hear about your injury, but it sounds like you're well on the mend. Write on!

[@neilmosspark4015]

Good to see you back in the game! Glad you are okay.

[@sharonmolloy3732]

"Novel writing machines..." Looks like Orwell predicted those too.

[@pavx45]

As writers we have chosen one of the most resilient career paths in the face of AI. There’s a human touch that can’t be replicated although it can be mimicked. Further, as self published we are both writer and publisher so we can use AI to cut costs directly increasing our profit margin. What the AI rise tells me is that we are about to become even more well positioned for the future because we can cut out more human capital from non creative aspects. I’d hire a robot over a human any day of the week if there’s no significant difference.

[@ArjayMartin]

My shoulder was also broken on e bike, driving safely...

[@laurawolf12]

I think one of the big issues people skip past is that we write to market to earn money to eat and pay rent. I think the time has kind of come where so many jobs can be passed off to automation that we need to start looking at social models like having a Universal Basic Income - where people can eat and live in a house and have those basic costs of living covered *so* humans can spend more time innovating. Thats the thing I'm actually a bit more concerned about is that our social structures don't change and adapt as fast as technology.

[@ChrisFoxWrites]

I'm definitely not counting on UBI to save my family. We have to find a way forward. History tells us social upheaval is painful and often violent. That sort of change sucks to live through, but those in such times rarely have a choice.

[@KimtheElder]

I am all for technology; however, I feel this is no different than big corporations putting humans with unique talents out of work for the cheaper fill-in-the-blank: human, machine, computer, etc. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. It's amusing that some indie authors who didn't want to be under the thumb of the big publishing houses and share the profits of their personally honed skills they had worked hard for are basically excited to do similar to other creators. And I am an upcoming indie author. I know certain forms of AI might initially benefit me financially, but my conscience won't allow me to do to an individual with developed talents what has been happening to the small in status human for aeons. Those are my possibly overdramatic two cents. Edit: perhaps the individual authors reaching out in relationship to their readers will be the salvation of writers and storytellers 🤞🍀☺️

[@tomh.6261]

I love MidJourney. It's amazing.. I've also been using GPT3, and wow... what a game changer! It's giving me plot ideas I never would have thought of. It's good to see you again, Chris!

[@GetYourOmOn]

This is why I'm contemplating using AI. Not to write my books for me, but to assist my creative process.

[@AJShiningThreads]

It pumps out luke-warm tropes. Ive got NOTHING original from it AND the writing is in passive voice. If you don't know the mechanics of writing WELL it won't help. Its only assistance is in remembering to add in 'reflective voice'. It sucks at immediacy and when you ask it to WRITE IN THE STYLE OF a certain writer it gives you passages VERBATIM!!! Exact passages of copyrighted writing!!

[@GetYourOmOn]

@ann-juliettesshiningthread7617 Just FYI: Passive voice in and of itself is not "bad." Furthermore, many people misinterpret past perfect verb tense as passive voice, which it's not. I won't go into all the differences here, but unless every sentence generated by AI sounds like "The door was opened by Jason. The lawn was being cut by the landscaping crew. If the sky wasn't filled by rainclouds soon, the grass wouldn't need to be cut his crew anymore," then it's not written in passive voice. Maybe AI doesn't give YOU creative ideas, but that doesn't mean it can't give OTHER authors creative ideas. The fact that other authors' stories often inspire me and get my creative juices flowing means that if an AI program spits out verbatim Stephen King, JR Ward, James Patterson, etc. my creative mind might find itself having a party and give me the solution to a plot block I'm wrestling with. And you're not going to get anything original from AI, simply because that's the nature of AI. But that doesn't mean an author can't create an original piece inspired by an AI-generated pile of poop. I have judged writing contests and have read some horrendous stories doing so. But many of those awful stories inspired my own writing in many ways, helping me create excellent original scenes, story arcs, and characters. I understand the concerns over AI, but I think too many people are preaching apocalyptic fire and brimstone unnecessarily for a LOT of reasons without considering the potential this gives to honest writers (who, yes, know the mechanics of writing and are pretty good at it already).

[@AJShiningThreads]

The biggest issue for me is that it is giving you exact passages without telling you that it's pulling directly from a book. If I didn't have perfect recall I wouldn't know that. Its not kind of like, or using the same structure it's EXACT paragraphs!

[@rubmon64]

@@AJShiningThreads That's my experience as well. It looks like an amalgamation of cliches and stock characters. May work for children's books, but too generic for anything serious right now.

[@ShelinaV]

Love that you're speaking to this subject and glad to see you back on video. Also, a shout out to your family who are giving you the space to be creative and sharing your journey with others. 🤟

[@theresakidd]

Actually if you are writing romance, OpenAI cannot write sex scenes. NovelAI, however, does allow sex scenes and does it pretty well. 😅

[@Bennet2391]

If some People use AI to create novels and start selling them, they will probably get bombarded with lawsuits, if they use copyrighted material as training data. The excuse "but the AI generated it" isn't going to cut it in a legal battle. IP owners usually take copyright infringment very seriously, especially if the IP is worth millions. Something similar is already happening with stock images. People started using AI to remove the watermark of stock images and got noticed by the publisher to aquire a license or stop publishing the images. All rights reserved really means ALL rights, including derivative work. AFAIK no legislation makes an exception to copyright law for AI "generated" content. Nothing the AI creates is new, it is derivative work from the training data.

[@Ilamarea]

Sorry to say, but this is idiotic. The threat of AI is not that it will flood the market - which will happen, because people will use AI to produce books - the threat of AI is that it will first completely eliminate the market. It will create individual works on the request of the consumer, there won't be a producer, because there's no need for that. And that's just phase 0. A transitional period where AI starts doing everything one after another, but we are still around. Phase 1 is already our extinction.

[@Bennet2391]

@@Ilamarea You should read how AI works and how it is created/trained in the first place. You will see that what you wrote makes no sense. You just shift the problem of copyright infringement to the consumer. The developers and distibutors of said AI would be treated like media pirates today. Running AIs trained with protected IP's will have legal ramifictions. Also nobody will invest the time and resources to train such large models, if there is no financial incentive to do so. Also your hyperbolic extinction prediction is nonsense. Todays AI is complex set of matrix multiplications, not skynet. What you're talking about is AGI, but we still don't know how to create it, let alone solve the framing problem.

[@Ilamarea]

@@Bennet2391 AGI is just a thousand ChatGPTs thrown together, all doing different things, just like we've got specialized parts of our brains dedicated to different tasks. But you don't at all need AGI to make humans obsolete, and that's why it's so terrifying and so obviously inevitable. Still, the upheaval of the coming decades is nothing compared to long term prospects. You have to be blind and death not to see what awaits our species.

[@kz1231]

Very glad to hear you're getting back from your injury - yikes! And then there's AI - yikes! I've played around with ChatGPT and yeah. I'm a little worried. Thanks for the video. Oddly validating. Cheers and welcome back!

[@AJShiningThreads]

Be very careful when using it. If you ask it to write in the style of a certain writer is pumps out passages VERBATIM from copyrighted material! Everything it pumps out is LUKE-WARM tropes. You can ASK it to give you a plot line in the style of a super creative writer and it still throws mid range cliches. I mean, do we need another story set in medieval Europe where the hero goes on a muguffin quest? Also, it writes in passive voice. Can it be helpful. YES!! ABSOLUTELY! but you will need to already know what your story is and know what promises you are telling because it won't do the work for you.

[@sparklefluff7742]

Do you have proof to support that? Overfitting is definitely a problem sometimes with image generating AI, but I haven’t heard of a single instance where one of the GPT-3 AIs actually gave you passages from an existing text.

[@AJShiningThreads]

Yes. I captured it in screen caps. I pulled directly from Steelheart twice, DragonsBane and Way of Kings. I pulled my books out and compared them. It was words for word.

[@ciliann]

Hope your shoulder gets back to 100%. It's great to see you back. AI is coming whether we embrace it or fight against it. As an artist, it does become harder to sell something that I may have worked on for days or months (especially at "fair" price), when the AI can generate something that is close enough to my creations. An author who learns how to prompt an AI can finish a book (first draft minimum) within a week. It will lead to a market with thousands or millions of new stories, which they can sell at 10 cents and it will still be profitable. Soon enough AI will be able to take a book, translate it into moving pictures (movies) using art, voice etc.. It's exciting and terrifying but it probably is the future. I'm not worried of the future, humans learn to adapt. Authors (the ones I know) are human too. Putting all your videos on this one channel is fine by me; be yourself and thrive. Happiness, success and health! 💗🎨

[@ElaineRadfordpf]

No story will be profitable for 10 cents or even $10 when the market is flooded with millions of stories. We all have to bid on the same ad space. More bids = higher costs. Remember your grammar school lessons on how long it takes to count up to one million. Readers can't browse even a million stories. You have to find a way to position YOUR story in front of readers, which costs money. If millions of AI stories are dumped into the market, then only the already established and already wealthy will get their stories found and read. Writing, as a way out of a disadvantaged background, will be done.

[@Ilamarea]

AI is the solution to Fermi's Paradox. It's our extinction.

[@METALFREAK03]

@@ElaineRadfordpf Marketing is more advanced now too than a human child counting to 100. It's started happening now. But basically think amazon prime knowing what you have bought throughout your entire existence as a customer and making that into 10 top recommendations of that item. (So eg like they do with video, you will always get "you may also like") The only thing that changes is the authors or creator will need to learn to adapt to that way of marketing. It will be "What does Frank want from me?" Rather than, "what does the X genre market need from me?".

[@ElaineRadfordpf]

@@METALFREAK03 Do you not realize that it costs money to position your book on Amazon lists and in the Amazon recommendation engine? A whole lot of money. Promoting isn't cheap, and it gets more expensive as more competitors join the bidding. You've said exactly what I already said-- only you haven't acknowledged the costs of forcing algos to wake up and recommend our books instead of somebody else's book. Think it through logically. If I was a sculptor, yes, I could say, "What does Frank want from me?" because I could charge you thousands-- if not tens of thousands-- for a single piece. But, as a novelist, I make a living selling a cheap mass-market product-- a book that sells for less than $20, often less than $5. Nobody who does this for a living is happy selling their work to Frank. They have to sell to many, many, many other people who aren't Frank.

[@DanAbsalonson]

Excited for more of your videos. Glad you’re healing up well. Glad you’re enjoying being a father. They grow up so fast! My firstborn is 14 now and sounds like a man. It feels like he was a toddler a few years ago. Enjoy it! :)

[@A.Campbell]

I find it odd that Autotune didn't make this much panic in the music space

[@KenMathis1]

Manipulating copyright isn't going to stop AI. First off, if AI is able to produce works indistinguishable from human authors, how could you prove a work was written by AI. More importantly though, genres would still get flooded with works just like script kiddies make malware. People would do it for fun. Even more simply, people would craete stories for themselves. Instead what I see happening is that new types of works will be created. Static stories will give way to dynamic ones that are written by AI as you read/listen to them an tailored specifically to the reader. They will be setup by authors to provide the creative elements that the AI will then flesh out. This doesn't necessarily mean pick-your-own adventure type works, although that is definitely doable. It could just mean adapting the work to the reader's tastes. If the reader likes more verbose descriptions and detailed info, the AI could provide it. If on the other hand the reader is losing interest and wants the story to move along, the AI could do that too. It'd be up to the author to provide as much of a framework as possible for that all to happen to tell the story and world they intend.

[@aureliangamelin]

10 years? You should prepare for this arriving in 10 months since this is the exact position artists were in last year.

[@ChrisFoxWrites]

Novels are an order of magnitude more complicated to reproduce. Even if an AI could write a good story, it cannot market it, nor predict nor understand marketing trends. And if you look at AI most of the artwork it produces is malformed in some way. It isn't as good or as consistent as what a human can produce. I still shell out $1,500 per cover happily.

[@ChrisFoxWrites]

I'm not up to speed on current advances so I'll take your word for it. I remain skeptical that competitive AI novels will be on the marketplace any time soon. If I'm wrong things are going to get very interesting.

[@aureliangamelin]

@@ChrisFoxWrites AI progress is exponential, not linear. You'll find that order of magnitude of complexity is more in reach than you think. ChatGPT is a configuration of a two year old AI, OpenAI is already getting ready to release a new one that even has the research community on edge. Edit: sorry reposted, phone was on a different account

[@Ilamarea]

@@ChrisFoxWrites Everything in this comment is incorrect. AI, with access to real data, can market 1000% better than dedicated marketing companies, let alone individuals with fuck all for tools except ten fat fingers. Writing a story is also not complex. It's just one sentence glued to another. Very simple if your RAM is able to store literally every single word of everything you wrote in the story so far, and your hard drive has pre-analysed data on literally any and everything ever written. This sort of wishful thinking is exactly what artists thought, and before they were interested, everybody else. That human creativity is somehow unique and complex, when it really is not, which has already been proven. And besides, you shouldn't be thinking about independent AI. You should be thinking about fanfic writers using AI to produce something actually readable and flooding the market. You should be worried about publishing house corporations and specifically Amazon using premium versions of AI coupled with tons of other resources to flood and control the market. You should be afraid of the market ceasing to exist because consumers can go directly to AI for individual products, custom-tailored to them. And lastly, you should be afraid because your children will find out whether we will go extinct or not.

[@METALFREAK03]

@@Ilamarea AI cannot conect to their audience. Big difference. Also with marketing, you will just move beyond saying "what is XYZ genre for" to "what is XYZ person want from me?". Work smarter. Play harder.

[@jordendarrett1725]

Good insights. I've been considering getting back into programming because I suspect that it along with AI will be required for many jobs in the near future, or at least an advantage. Would you recommend learning Python in this current age along with AI, or is there another language it might be paired with better?

[@jonahnolastnameneeded3130]

I think people are potentially glossing over an ethical issue in this sort of creative AI. That is, none of these artists are getting paid when the AI searches the internet to ‘learn from’ their art.

[@priestesslucy3299]

They're also not getting paid when the next big artist assimilates their art into their style as part of their growth process lol

[@PaulRWorthington]

That's really awful about your shoulder! I'm glad you're healing up. I had fun riding my sister's little electric skateboard up and down the coast around Pismo. It was a lot of fun but yes, cars are scary when you're standing up all but unprotected at 30 mph. On the subject of AI: I am much more worried than you. You note all the buttons that might be checked in 10 years… I have no doubt they will all be checked much earlier than that. For decades the promise of automation and computation has been that it would free humanity from physical labor and mundane tasks, so that we could instead enjoy performing the work that "only humans could do." Instead it will soon take away that enjoyable work: Art, music, writing etc. or all things we do not only because we enjoy them - but also because we want to communicate with others. When the market is flooded with AI produced "art" us mere people will have an impossible time being seen. Who will want to go through the work of writing a novel let alone a series when by the time you are done with book 1, there are 1000 completed series available on the same topic you thought you were innovating? Who will want to write anything when the odds are millions to one that no one will ever catch a glimpse of your book?

[@KimtheElder]

i'm so glad that you're healing up. Isn't being a parent the best? My son is 40, my daughter is 34, and I have grandbabies! It just gets better ....but I miss 'em being underfoot.

[@authorpetebauer]

Welcome back and I'm glad you've healed well! Looking forward to hearing your insights again. :)

[@YellowSpaceMarine]

Why put time in learning programming when the AI can create it's own specialised code.

[@CayenneTravels]

Sorry to hear about the scooter situation. Glad you made it through! I hopr you fully heal soon.

[@Chaosian]

AI is going to be well and truly apocalyptic for any creative venture. Look at the state of ArtStation right now, and you'll find the future for us all. Now, the nice thing about it, is that it's a general net positive. We will see some really great things coming out of AI art and AI fiction, but within even 20 years, we could have to segregate art between flawless "AI-generated", "AI-assisted", and novel-because-of-their-flaws "human made" creations.

[@FelipeKana1]

Completelly agree with you first sentence, completelly disagree with your second one. Net positive, having AI art outcompeting us all? wth THAT IS THE PROBLEM

[@Chaosian]

@@FelipeKana1 Sounding a little selfish. Art is about a product, not a creator. AI will eventually deliver a better product than any creator can provide.

[@METALFREAK03]

@@Chaosian I don't think that is the case. I think personality is big in any creative adventure. It's why Banksy is so big and not Gale Lorge. (never can spell their name)

[@METALFREAK03]

AKA you may have an AI produce the same looking art as Hieronymus Bosch, write similiar books as Brandon Sanderson or produce music like Mozart. But you will never get an AI that can PERFORM within a similar wavelength as a human creator. Humans need connection. It is why KZbin is good. It connects people whom would never be connected before it in the world. AI cannot connect with people, only produce. So rather than a takeover, it will create another layer of the industry. You, as a creator, will just have to work smarter and create smarter (plus be human). We already use technology to help us write books today. The typewriter took they quill and ink, the typerwriter for a computer's processor and a word processor for something like Grammerlee or Sricvner. It's just another layer. Ai will take the new processors role. Make it easier to finish plots you would take years to write out or perfect. Might even help GRRM finish his series :)

[@danielgothe]

Good to see you again. While I'm not worried yet, and while I might be in the future, I also see the AI development as a great plot device!

[@arirahikkala]

Note that ChatGPT is just the coolest model that the public has access to right now. DeepMind's Chinchilla and Google's PaLM both trounce GPT-3 at a huge array of benchmarks of language processing capability, we just haven't got to play with them yet. Plus, the results from those models were released earlier in the year, and the hardware used to train them hasn't gone anywhere, so we don't really know yet where the research has gone since. It's just good to be aware that, if using ChatGPT feels like peeking over the edge of an abyss, we're actually already several paces ahead of where we seem to be, and still moving forward fast.

[@ChrisFoxWrites]

We're still in the bronze age of computing, and I think you're right about accelerated development. The next five years are going to be nuts.

[@grimreads]

I believe than in ten years time we would have AI doing a plot outline, a very rough first draft and editing but we will still need a human for the intermediate and final drafts. Most of the art could easily be AI assisted or AI curration but the human factor would still be important. Unless we get AI works that can dominate the AI algorithms of the various marketplaces, then people will probably turn to human currators to point them to the good stuff

[@Thesamurai1999]

Imagine all you have to do is to tell the AI to write like Patrick Rothfuss and boom. It comes out with same level of writing, much like how you can tell the AI to draw like a specific artist.

[@grimreads]

@@Thesamurai1999 so it basically gets you 2/3rd into the story and then times out?

[@Thesamurai1999]

@@grimreads Lmao yeah gotta stay true to the original author!

[@Ilamarea]

That's an incredibly optimistic estimate. In the sense that we won't be extinct by then.

[@edgedeep]

Man, I hope you’re healing quickly , brother. Great to see you posting again.

[@nathaniel4334]

Merry Christmas Chris. Have missed the videos. Hope the family are well!

[@lexyprice4753]

Happy to see you again. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's missed your videos.

[@timothyrussell1179]

Hey I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Glad to hear from you again 😊

[@jamesruzicho735]

Happy to see you back and hope your shoulder is getting better asap!

[@SuperBeanson]

As far as creating readable sentences, Chat GPT is very good. However, it cannot create long stretches of readable story content (yet). The results I have seen are very crude (albeit with a veneer of polished readability). For the generator to generate story it has to understand what its constructing and thar will require General AI which Chat GPT is not.

[@ChrisFoxWrites]

Agreed. A couple people in the comments seem aware of more advanced versions, but I haven't seen anything yet.

[@Ilamarea]

This is an incorrect assessment. ChatGPT, being the primitive, open-source AI embryo that it is, only gives you a direct answer to your prompt, without giving unrequested opinions, input, flavor. You can change all that, and once instructed to do so by the system rather than while servicing an individual with limited capabilities, it will be able to spit out literally anything. Very likely, we will se an avalanche of new religions and cults, since AI will produce compelling Holy Books. AI might master language so much it'll be able to start wars with sentences, by simply frustrating world leaders and spurring divisions among the unintelligent, biological masses. In short, AI is our inevitable extinction.

[@hugoleonardoamaral586]

get well soon Chris! Happy to see you back.

[@joshbrooker9775]

glad to see you're back chris.

[@anellawrites]

The thing people aren’t really thinking about is the sheer volume of people who will be put out of work when AI does everything.

[@ChrisFoxWrites]

A lot of us are very much thinking of that. AI + Robots = end to human usefulness as physical labor. Why do you think I'm building robots in my garage? I do think we're a generation away from that, but it's already happening.

[@anellawrites]

@@ChrisFoxWrites So I just received an email with this topic in mind. Here’s a snippet. Only You Can Write Your Story So I guess the robots (or chatbots) are not coming to destroy our physical lives but to steal our creative souls. It's clear that A.I. can create average (or maybe even above average) prose. But A.I. can only spit out what's in its database, no matter how large it is. Yes, there may be millions of ways that A.I. could produce words for some command, but A.I. is still limited by its data set. If A.I. can write a Shakespearean sonnet about logistics, I'm sure A.I. can also write pretty good stories, It just can't write your story. Or the novel you're working on. The data set for your story exists only in your head. A.I. has no access to your wonderful and creative mind. You are not artificial. Not in the least. You are an imaginative soul who has committed your life to the craft of writing. A.I. will soon be able to write "good enough" copy for some parts of our daily lives. But only you can write your story, so buckle up and write, Dave Goetz Co-Founder, Journey Sixty6 So my thinking on this subject is that robots do not have the ability to replicate our human brain. As much as people would like to think so.

[@Ilamarea]

@@ChrisFoxWrites Intellectual labor. AI costs electricity, and will do all tasks requiring intelligence. We will be physical labor slaves in a chaotic, unstable environment until we are completely replaced and wiped out through obsolescence over the coming years.

[@METALFREAK03]

@@Tyneras Just look at twitter. But also you are also assuming all businesses are as quick as start ups and "tier 5" high tech industries. Most businesses in most industries take years to change even a little bit. There are still businesses here that use windows 95 for instance and there is one solicitor I know who still writes (as in handwritten) all the technical conveyancing stuff on typewritten forms. And how long have modern computers been out? 50? 60? years. Plus marketing has become more personal and ever changing. Instead of it being a market of "XYZ genre", you will simply go "what does XYZ person like from me?". And instead of adspace being bought, it will be an algorithmn based on people's past purchases or clicks. You would just have to stay relevant and/or build a fanbase by using the contless media outlets to put your face on it and personality out there. People really dig artists/creatives that connect to their audience. You are more inclined to buy their music, pick up their book or look at their art if you have a personal connection with them.

[@InfiniteArk8]

@@anellawritesthank you for this. This was very inspirational!!

[@paulpatterson2991]

bump

[@DeusExMachina50]

What's the link to AI cover art?

[@AJShiningThreads]

Go play around in midjourny and make it yourself based off your prompts. You plug in the artists you like. Loads of tutorials. Do it fast. A class action lawsuit is already brewing and odds are soon all copyrighted materials will be removed.

[@DeusExMachina50]

@@AJShiningThreads Thanks!

[@wpelfeta]

You can try Promptomania to help generate text prompts to plug into Stable Diffusion.

[@DeusExMachina50]

@@wpelfeta Thanks!

[@BN-qo5zc]

Remember as well that AI can't create, it can only mix from existing data points. Think of them as interpolative search engines, the soylent green of creativity - it's why artists often recognize parts of the works present and why overfiting is such an issue. So don't feel assured the copyright issues are answered or believe their marketing departments that it's not going to be derivative.

[@ChrisFoxWrites]

This is only true until we manage to create a subconscious for AI. Right now human creativity is a black box. We don't understand how dreams work. In 10 years they will be tracking billions of dreamers, and using the aggregate data to reverse engineer the process until they can replicate it. I think that may allow AI to do things that currently seem impossible.

[@Thesamurai1999]

@@ChrisFoxWrites We don't even know what subsconsciousnes even is, I don't see how we can give that to an AI.

[@ChrisFoxWrites]

@@Thesamurai1999 That's being studied right now. Everything our brain does can be measured, awake or sleeping. We're starting to implant chips in people's brains. Once machine learning can be applied to billions of people development will skyrocket IMO.

[@Ilamarea]

As a human being you are only capable of mixing existing data points, aka your experience. You do not invent anything new. Tolkien simply took Norse myths, the Great War, Christianity and general, established tropes. He didn't invent anything new. Except for the word "Ent", apparently.

[@BN-qo5zc]

@@ChrisFoxWrites We'd have to move beyond statistical modeling first to even begin to approach that though, which is all the new machine learning algorithms are - good statistical models, but there's nothing like conceptualization happening even as of yet, let alone abstraction, let alone the steps beyond like any form of consciousness. It's just metadata labels and weights still - it's why artists who'd attached the most metadata for the purpose of supporting the sight impaired are core to the training data and prompts and getting a decent output (e.g. Greg Rutkowski). Prompting and the sliders are just guiding the weighting assignment that matches the labeling points, the software doesn't understand context, intent or anything else - Also why mangled signatures and the overfitting issues happen, it includes them because it's rebuilding towards the original sources. And I like your optimism regarding people's development, but given that this first step relied on a hedge fund manager paying off academic researchers to scrape internet data for him to try and circumvent copyright law/the development of the artists, it doesn't appear the people steering the technological process share those motivations/end goals, they're just profit/investment motivated and siphoning off the labor of others.

[@ThatOtherTom]

FunFact: The first (allegedly) computer-generated novel was “The Policeman’s Beard is Half Constructed” by Racter in 1984. Over time, new fiction might become worthless if people can pay a few pennies to have an AI instantly write them a novel that they’ll like, with as many sequels as they want. What percent of the market will pay hundreds of times more for a human-written book, that isn’t customized to their personal preferences, that might have errors, and have to wait months or years for a sequel?

[@captainnolan5062]

I would rather support a human author than an "AI author." Perhaps disclosure would go a long way to quell your worries (requiring a label that says "this product was created by AI," or "this product was created with the assistance of AI"). I have bought a few of your writing books and enjoy your videos, and I would rather support you than buy AI created writing books.

[@elaynegriffith]

I’m an artist, though not as a career, and love midjourney because, yes, it’s saved me so much money that I don’t have! Same with AI audiobook options. And when I do have more income then I will be able to afford humans. So, for poor creatives trying to get on their feet these tools are opening paywall-closed doors. As a writer who’s been learning and writing for the past ten years and about to launch my Scifi and fantasy series, I admit I’m a little exasperated and worried. However, I also see AI as a tool. To me, midjourney is like photoshop at light speed. It’s all narrow AI, like you said, so it’s not innovative or has that human touch and expression. It might be able to barf out okay, formulaic books soon, but that’ll probably be it’s limit. It would take AGI/ASI to create truly innovative amazing novels (and we’re far from ASI still). Novel writing & language is more nuanced, emotional, and complicated than painting or drawing. I know, I do both. On one side of the fence I see and understand those whose livelihoods are threatened (digital artists, etc), and those who view AI art as an existential threat and personal attack because it just devalued their skill, hard work, and what it means to be human or unique. I get that. On the other side there’re those who see it as a tool and the reality of adapt or die because Pandora’s box has been opened and AI isn’t going anywhere. Technology has ALWAYS upended industries and jobs and created ones we never even imagined. The other issue no one’s talking about is whether our models of society (especially capitalism) are suited for AI. To me, it seems not. If “robots” are going to take all our jobs and supposedly make life easier, how does our current society and economy continue and to whose benefit? The further danger and fear with AI is the rapidity of change, its efficiency, and existential slap-down. What does it mean to be human if a machine we created can do everything better? Where do we find new meaningful ways to contribute to society and connect? Suddenly, we’re irrelevant. This response was entirely AI generated. Just kidding! Or am I……

[@AJShiningThreads]

So. If you don't know how to write well it won't help you. If you KNOW the trick of the appeals and the gerunds then you can add those in in the proper order and the ai will help. Its slow. As slow as traditional unassisted writing unless you allow it to throw everything into passive voice then you can pump out a novel in a few days. Bug who wants to read mid of the road clichés in passive voice? AND if you ask it to help you write in the style of your favorite writer it rips passages VERBATIM from that writer!

[@TomFranklinX]

Have you tried Stable Diffusion? It's an open-source Art AI. The quality of art it can generate is professional-level. Very useful for book covers. It's most effective if you give it an original image and tell it to improve on the original design. With this AI, even a bad artist can draw photorealistic fantasy art just by using the AI to upgrade the quality.

[@ChrisFoxWrites]

I haven't, but the second you mentioned it I started looking into it. Thanks for the tip.

[@winnwireless]

Yes. Don't even need to watch the video to answer this question. Creative writing will be a dead industry in 5-10 years. In less than 5 years an AI-generated novel will top the NYT Bestseller list. In less than 10 years a 100% AI-generated film will win the Academy Award. There is no stopping this with the amount of money on the line. AI is already writing news stories, has been for years. People just don't widely know this or care to compute the reality.

[@FelipeKana1]

Yeah, and it seems there are lots of AI apologetics in these comments AND in the video. Lot of people trying very hard to be pollianas

[@ChrisFoxWrites]

@@FelipeKana1 I'd prefer realist. I'm assessing this tech as a software developer. I promise you I will still be working as an author in 5 years, and so will a lot of other people. You doom and gloomers have been panicking about something continuously since I got into the business in 2014. There's always some reason that everything is about to end.

[@GetYourOmOn]

Creative writing will only be dead if people stop writing creatively. And that won't happen. Creative people must be creative. I am not afraid of AI. Everyone has predicted doom in the publishing industry for decades, and yet the publishing industry is still here. It has changed, sure, but it's still here. And no AI program will ever fully replace real writers. It can flush out the hacks while allowing highly original stories to shine, but that's a good thing. It pushes real writers to up their game. And real writers can use AI to create new works in new ways that are still hands-on creative. I see a lot of potential for good here, as well as potential for bad actors to do bad things. But there will always be bad actors. I'm not going to stop writing just because there's a potential for this or that or the other. I won't let that kind of fear dictate my life.

[@stilllookingfortreasure]

I'm not sure if you've read some of the stuff generated, but ai is a long way from taking over writer's jobs. I asked it to write a fight scene, and it took one of the character's head off but still fighting for two more paragraphs... Yeah, it's not there yet

[@stevensalazar-qr2vv]

​@@stilllookingfortreasure 🤣🤣🤣 That's funny.

[@jonevansauthor]

Glad to hear you're healing up. I too am not worried about AI tooking all our jobs. Yeah. Including working out cures for diseases and maybe a model for economics that actually works more like physics than witchcraft. Not sure how it'll solve the fat people in the floaty chair problem but a solution that is humane exists so it'll happen. Don't panic people! It's like complaining that the loom will put weavers out of business.

[@ChrisFoxWrites]

I read this comment in your voice. I have a very hard time seeing you without a beard, sir.

[@FelipeKana1]

The weavers did went out of business. Strange parallel to make.

[@jonevansauthor]

@@ChrisFoxWrites they shut the museum because the BBC/Cardiff's government hate money apparently. They didn't move it, they shut it down. Mind boggling. So I can't get an updated picture with Davros sadly :(

[@jonevansauthor]

@@FelipeKana1 no, they became industrialised weavers. Weaving still happens. Weavers still exist today, and in fact, have the oldest livery company in London. People still exist, clothes still get made, the industry still employs people, cloth still has value. In fact, artists of all kinds are some of the few whose work will have value simply because they're human. You're not going to want a human diagnostician when an AI can perfectly diagnose you. The human will just be there to be sympathetic (so current doctors are mostly going to be redundant).

[@azaleaellis8011]

@@jonevansauthor Well, I'd bet they can train the AI to seem sympathetic and give it a face that shows sympathetic expressions, too, so...

[@wesleyedwardsart]

why do you have a problem with people mass producing books off ai but not art? I think that's disappointing that you didn't mention anything about the fact that these covers that authors get now are based off data scrapping of all of the trending artists today and from your admission that authors are using these images could put artists out of work...

[@ChrisFoxWrites]

I do have a problem with it. I still pay $1,500 per cover piece, and mentioned that in the video. You seem overly hostile, and are making assumptions about my position that are just wrong.

[@ruskyalmond1977]

AI deserves to replace all labor. We do this to progress humanity. Imagine if phone operators still existed. Thankfully for your jobs, AI is only in it's earliest commercial stage. It's only uphill for AI. And it's kinda alright right now... imagine 20 years from now... O.O

[@FelipeKana1]

Ok, but will society change the way it allocate it's resources? I.E., capitalism? Because as it stands, a huge bunch of people will be jobless, much faster and much more broadly than any other tech revolution before, and there are no new jobs on the horizon. So a bunch people will starve in order for someone to have less cost than hiring them.

[@Ilamarea]

Downhill* And the difference is, that AI will replace us at literally everything. The value of automated phone line switches originated from the freed human labor, which was valuable, because it was in limited supply and was irreplaceable. The very fundamental value of human life will be gone. Nobody will keep us fed on grounds of morals. We were only worth something, because produced; be it in factories, or effects on the battlefield, or more manpower in the bedrooms at home. None of that is useful now. Now, we only incur cost. We are something to optimize out of existence because any loss of a human being frees resources and incurs no penalty, has no downside. We are already extinct.

[@ruskyalmond1977]

​@@FelipeKana1 This just boils down to accepting socialism or if we stick with capitalism we fail.

[@BitchspotBlog]

I'm not impressed with so-called AI at the moment. As you said, bots can't be creative. In the art world, all they can do is steal. They can't make anything original and as such, I think that there's a lot of things that are potentially legally actionable and we'll have to see what the courts have to say. What I think is going to happen, sadly, is that the marketplace will be flooded with crap AI-written novels, just like it's currently flooded with crap human-written novels, but AI can do it a lot faster. That will make it harder for readers to sift through, which might force a resurgence of traditional publishing which, hopefully, won't fall for the AI bot fad.

[@ChrisFoxWrites]

I suspect you're right. I already see certain publishers dominating in my genre, because they value quality over anything else. AI just can't duplicate 5 star books in a well-crafted universe, or the word of mouth that will generate.

[@Crime_Mime]

Especially on the stealing part, I believe that China is already regulating AI because of the issues that are cropping up.