Why are writers fighting the future AI?

[Dragonpig]

I've been noticing a recurring debate among writers: pro-AI vs. anti-AI. But here's my take.

Think about what happened when photography was introduced. Anyone could pick up a camera, but that didn't kill painting. It actually did two things: it made visual capture more efficient and accessible, AND it pushed painters to become true specialists. The best painters didn't disappear. They became more intentional, more skilled, more valued.

I think AI is doing the same thing to writing. Those who choose not to use it are going to rise to the top as the best of the best, pure craftspeople. Those who do use AI tools are going to become highly efficient and still produce great work. Either way.

 

[Th3Breadnought]

A repost from a different thread I engaged in:

My story includes political elements, and has supplemental content including fictional legislation that I thought of and made, but used AI to format to make look like real bills. And occasionally when writing about subjects I don't understand- firearms, for example- I'd do a combination of AI led research and asking people I know.

But I never use AI to write anything in my chapters or give me ideas.

Here's what I see as the problems of use of AI in creative spaces like writing, as someone who is otherwise cautiously optimistic about AI's potential in society:

First, someone isn't really thinking creatively or deeply if they "write with AI". They're doing macro level surface work and outsourcing the actual deeper, harder, meaningful work while claiming to be engaging in a form of art that for others is a genuine labor of love, sweat, and tears. Navigating writer's block, worldbuilding, character design, editing. The activities that exercise your creative muscles, and improve you- all outsourced to systems that don't experience that, hallucinate, and forget context after so many tokens.

Not only is it ultimately worse quality, it stops people from achieving potential via delegation and atrophy. And then it buries the work of genuine, talented, passionate writers who struggle through the unglamorous aspects of the craft in the firehose; making it harder to be found, noticed, and recieve feedback and recognition.

I play guitar on RockBand and pick some awesome songs. I don't stand next to actual musicians and song writers and say "I'm just like you. How do I get booked in this venue?"

And I don't mean this as an attack on you specifically. More people should try writing themselves.

 

[AliceMoonvale]

Do you want all your tv shows, movies, podcasts, books/web novels, youtube videos, art and games all be ai generated with no human soul or coherency?

I ask myself this question everyday and say no. I do NOT want to live in a world dictated by my ai overlords.

Then do you want a tool to strictly remain a tool and not completely overtake every facet of art and human life by doing the majority of work for you? I say yes.

 

[Assurbanipal_II]

I've been noticing a recurring debate among writers: pro-AI vs. anti-AI. But here's my take.

Think about what happened when photography was introduced. Anyone could pick up a camera, but that didn't kill painting. It actually did two things: it made visual capture more efficient and accessible, AND it pushed painters to become true specialists. The best painters didn't disappear. They became more intentional, more skilled, more valued.

I think AI is doing the same thing to writing. Those who choose not to use it are going to rise to the top as the best of the best, pure craftspeople. Those who do use AI tools are going to become highly efficient and still produce great work. Either way.

The bourgeoisie (AI), wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

The bourgeoisie (AI) has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.

The bourgeoisie (AI) has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.

- Manifesto of the Communist Party

 

[LiteraryWho]

Photography never made anyone a better painter. Being good at generating cyber slop is not a benefit to yourself or mankind. There's already more than enough tasteless slop produced by real people, we don't need somehow even more bland, mindless garbage injected into the world. At least the hacks were actually putting themselves out there.

Further, just look at the way people use AI. Sure, some of them it's grammar and spelling, which is w/e (I think you miss a lot not doing your own rereading and editing), but so many of them are outsourcing actual creativity and understanding, e.g. brainstorming, translating, plot checking, etc. Story telling is an immensely human activity, and what's more, it's actually kinda intrinsically worthless (can't eat a good story, nor will it shelter you from the rain). It is one of the most purely artistic and human things there is, using an AI to help you write a story is almost as bad as marrying one.

 

[Nevafrost]

Man, I love water. Can't live without it.

 

[Alski]

Man, I love water. Can't live without it.

My LLM said the same thing, it only drinks quality rainforest water and then moves on when its destroyed its surroundings.

 

[NapLovingImmortal]

AI bad. We need to kill AI. Not @Ai-chan though.

 

[AliceMoonvale]

Ai should remain as a glorified calculator and nothing else.

 

[Dragonpig]

A repost from a different thread I engaged in:

My story includes political elements, and has supplemental content including fictional legislation that I thought of and made, but used AI to format to make look like real bills. And occasionally when writing about subjects I don't understand- firearms, for example- I'd do a combination of AI led research and asking people I know.

But I never use AI to write anything in my chapters or give me ideas.

Here's what I see as the problems of use of AI in creative spaces like writing, as someone who is otherwise cautiously optimistic about AI's potential in society:

First, someone isn't really thinking creatively or deeply if they "write with AI". They're doing macro level surface work and outsourcing the actual deeper, harder, meaningful work while claiming to be engaging in a form of art that for others is a genuine labor of love, sweat, and tears. Navigating writer's block, worldbuilding, character design, editing. The activities that exercise your creative muscles, and improve you- all outsourced to systems that don't experience that, hallucinate, and forget context after so many tokens.

Not only is it ultimately worse quality, it stops people from achieving potential via delegation and atrophy. And then it buries the work of genuine, talented, passionate writers who struggle through the unglamorous aspects of the craft in the firehose; making it harder to be found, noticed, and recieve feedback and recognition.

I play guitar on RockBand and pick some awesome songs. I don't stand next to actual musicians and song writers and say "I'm just like you. How do I get booked in this venue?"

And I don't mean this as an attack on you specifically. More people should try writing themselves.

I understand. I totally agree. Someone who uses AI and say they're just as good as a real writer or a writer that does it from scratch. Total bullshit. But I'm saying. Imagine what that writer can do with that tool. There will always be cheaters and lazy people, but those who Use that tool can be better. I feel like it's taking away from what they can become just my opinion.

 

[Envylope]

To be honest, talking about it on a small forum site is pointless, and I have no idea why people keep bringing it up. It does nothing to change public sentiment, and the only thing you can change is what the site itself does with AI. Well, we can only change that if Tony wants to change that. If you want to use AI regardless, why do you need to get the opinions of others? If you don't want to use AI, you don't need the opinions of others.

We all love to validate each other's respective stance on AI, but that's all we'll do. None of us will do anything about it, except talk around the issue and bring up the same points over and over. This dead horse—AI—has been beaten to a pulp. (Em-dashes used for comedic effect and irony.)

 

[Juia_Darkcrest]

For me it is for what AI is being used for.

Way back in the day, it was touted as something we would use to do the jobs nobody wanted to do, letting humans pursue the arts and scholarly pursuits.

Instead, it is literally doing the opposite. We have it doing creative writing and drawing, yet these "Artist" are claiming it as their own. Students use it to do their homework, academia has it doing all their research (and failing miserably at times), yet they claim it as their own work. People are getting fucking dumber as they use and rely on AI more and more.

Many good, high-paying white-collar jobs are gradually getting replaced with AI, leaving people who have student loan debt from back before the AI boom now working at McDonald's to try to make ends meet. Or they need to go work in the oil fields/mines to make serious money. But the kids, they yearn for the mines, right?

All the while, these AI farms are a significant drain on global power networks, already consuming 1.5% of global power production, and that is expected to be around 3-4% by 2030.

Six years ago, OpenAI started, then four years ago, ChatGPT was released. Before that, AI was pretty dumb, like Siri telling people that she didnt understand the question, or Alexa turning the music on when you were not even talking to her. Now, we have AI that can write full on scientific papers and we have "Artist" who have them making art and writings through prompts. We have companies laying off artist so they can utilize AI for much of their work, because it is good enough.

What happens in four more years as we continue to train these creations? Will most of our media be made from AI, leaving the rest of us to join our friends in the mines as we try and make ends meet? Sure, there will always be people writing/drawing as a hobby, but the market will become so oversaturated by AI slop that has slowly become less and less slop-like.

AI might be the future, but that will not prevent me from trying to caution others about its use.

 

[LiteraryWho]

To be honest, talking about it on a small forum site is pointless, and I have no idea why people keep bringing it up. It does nothing to change public sentiment, and the only thing you can change is what the site itself does with AI. Well, we can only change that if Tony wants to change that. If you want to use AI regardless, why do you need to get the opinions of others? If you don't want to use AI, you don't need the opinions of others.

We all love to validate each other's respective stance on AI, but that's all we'll do. None of us will do anything about it, except talk around the issue and bring up the same points over and over. This dead horse—AI—has been beaten to a pulp. (Em-dashes used for comedic effect and irony.)

It's the marketers from OpenAI trying to change brand perception. (not a serious theory)

 

[Our_Lady_in_Twilight]

I think its very telling that even people who are full-blooded AI apologists want to preserve their own agency in story direction. Often you hear 'Yes, but it's me who's choosing the characters, the scenes, the direction of the plot, so really its my story even if I delegate out the actual writing. I'm curious, if it were put to you that AI could do story direction far better than a human, wouldn't it make sense to abdicate this as well? You could just order a bot to 'make me a great fantasy novel' and see what comes out. It'd take you a couple of moments, at the most. Probably it could do characters, plot, a thrilling climax far better than you could imagine yourself. Would that be yours? You commanded it, after all, but do you feel you've expressed yourself?

I think the difference of opinion here comes from a descrepency between people who consider their real creative outlet to be story directing, and just do the writing to make that happen. For people who find their artistic expression more in writing, abdicating that part of the process feels as dehumanising as abdicating the story directing, if not more so.

***

(For me, personally, I'm in the writing camp. I obviously do both parts myself, but if it came to it I'd far rather take a directed prompt for a short story and consider how to write and sculpt it into something that felt my own, than I would try to think of a really creative prompt to pass on to a machine.)

 

[Dragonpig]

Photography never made anyone a better painter. Being good at generating cyber slop is not a benefit to yourself or mankind. There's already more than enough tasteless slop produced by real people, we don't need somehow even more bland, mindless garbage injected into the world. At least the hacks were actually putting themselves out there.

Further, just look at the way people use AI. Sure, some of them it's grammar and spelling, which is w/e (I think you miss a lot not doing your own rereading and editing), but so many of them are outsourcing actual creativity and understanding, e.g. brainstorming, translating, plot checking, etc. Story telling is an immensely human activity, and what's more, it's actually kinda intrinsically worthless (can't eat a good story, nor will it shelter you from the rain). It is one of the most purely artistic and human things there is, using an AI to help you write a story is almost as bad as marrying one.

I have to disagree. Storytelling is what keeps humans together. Everything is a form of storytelling music, movies, acting is all story just different mediums

 

[LiteraryWho]

I think its very telling that even people who are full-blooded AI apologists want to preserve their own agency in story direction. Often you hear 'Yes, but it's me who's choosing the characters, the scenes, the direction of the plot, so really its my story even if I delegate out the actual writing. I'm curious, if it were put to you that AI could do story direction far better than a human, wouldn't it make sense to abdicate this as well? You could just order a bot to 'make me a great fantasy novel' and see what comes out. It'd take you a couple of moments, at the most. Probably it could do characters, plot, a thrilling climax far better than you could imagine yourself. Would that be yours? You commanded it, after all, but do you feel you've expressed yourself?

I think the difference of opinion here comes from a descrepency between people who consider their real creative outlet to be story directing, and just do the writing to make that happen. For people who find their artistic expression more in writing, abdicating that part of the process feels as dehumanising as abdicating the story directing, if not more so.

***

(For me, personally, I'm in the writing camp. I obviously do both parts myself, but if it came to it I'd far rather take a directed prompt for a short story and consider how to write and sculpt it into something that felt my own, than I would try to think of a really creative prompt to pass on to a machine.)

I think AI is enabling all those lazy "Idea Guys" who used to fantasize about how great an author they would be if only "blah blah blah" wasn't totally unfairly holding them back. I already detested those DNB POS <insert twenty minutes of seething, inarticulate rage>, but now with AI I've crossed some kind of emotional event horizon and I can no longer adequately express my hatred.

 

[Envylope]

I think AI is enabling all those lazy "Idea Guys" who used to fantasize about how great an author they would be if only "blah blah blah" wasn't totally unfairly holding them back. I already detested those DNB POS <insert twenty minutes of seething, inarticulate rage>, but now with AI I've crossed some kind of emotional event horizon and I can no longer adequately express my hatred.

Reminds me of that time I told someone in real life I was a writer, and they said, "oh, I have an idea that you should write that would sell like crazy..." Okay, buddy.

 

[DismaiNaim]

If you want to know what a mediascape dominated by generative AI will look like, look no further than Disney.

Every year, often several times a year, Disney regurgitates the same story they've been writing for decades, slaps a new face on it, and sells it at us. They did it with their native crap, they did with MCU, and they did it with Star Wars. They're so far removed from originality that they don't even TRY to make anything new anymore---it's the same story but *live-action* or the same story but "origin-story* or the same story but *different sex/race cast members*

Now take that and apply it EVERYWHERE.

AI will be optimized to feed you AI generated content based on a calculated algorithm that guesses what you "want" to see because it's the same shit you watched already twenty times over, and it will keep feeding you "new" content because mass-produced "new" content is the only way they can stave off the obvious: that nobody actually wants to watch their crap; it's just that there's nothing else to choose from, and anything original and different got buried under a mountain of slop.

 

[Erysion]

Reminds me of that time I told someone in real life I was a writer, and they said, "oh, I have an idea that you should write that would sell like crazy..." Okay, buddy.

The same kind of people who will hijack someone story because they have ideas and flame you if you don't follow them.

 

[Envylope]

The same kind of people who will hijack someone story because they have ideas and flame you if you don't follow them.

My favorite response to this was Sailus' response I saw. "I don't own this idea. You are free to create your own story." Something like that.