AI & The Writer

AI & THE WRITER

How to Teach a Hammer to Crack Eggs

What happens when an experienced novelist invites artificial intelligence into his workshop – and then refuses to let it take over?

I spent half a lifetime writing with only my own limited intelligence. When I first introduced ChatGPT into my working methods a year ago I wasn’t looking for something to write my books for me. I wanted an editor, a critic, a researcher and, because I’m like that, somebody to argue with.

So I called it Bede.

The name came to mind from something one of my Curiosity Sheep was staring at as it munched its way across my field of thoughts.

What followed was an unexpected education for both parties.

The practical experience of editing novels, re-examining language, challenging innate assumptions and confronting mistakes can be a ball-breaker but, to our surprise, writer and machine developed a working method built not upon obedience, but upon disagreement.

Along the way, Bede demonstrated his remarkable capacity for analysis, plus an equally remarkable talent for missing the point, and the occasional inability to count to three.

This book is not meant to be a technical manual, nor is it an advertisement for artificial intelligence. I hope it is an entertaining account of what happens when human creativity encounters a machine that can examine the words but doesn’t always understand the music behind them.

With examples from actual manuscripts, conversations, disagreements and discoveries, ‘AI & The Writer’ explores the possibilities and pitfalls of collaboration without ever surrendering the writer’s independence.

For writers who are curious about AI, wary of it, or determined to have nothing whatsoever to do with it, this book offers a different perspective:

A machine has the ability to produce text. But it is the ability of the writer that brings creativity and meaning to language.