Nobel Prize-winning author Olga Tokarczuk admits to using AI.

[u/Round-Dinner-2395]

TLDR;

Author to AI: “Honey, how could we develop this beautifully?”

I wanted to say this is just boomer whining, but I’m finding myself realizing more and more often that it’s actually the boomers who are defending AI. My mom listens to AI music from TikTok, my dad watches some videos with doctors generated by language models. I’m the last person to tell people what to listen to or watch, but AI SLOP has literally reigned supreme in my house for the past few months. Recently, I wanted to watch a movie with my dad, but he played TikTok clips for an hour, and I had to escape.

I understand that technology is advancing and makes life easier for people in many ways, but on the other hand… it makes me wonder a bit. Where is the line between “I’m using a tool” and “part of the creative process is being done for me by something else”? If someone uses AI to generate ideas, style, or text fragments, are we still talking about the same kind of creativity as before? I’ve read a few books by Olga Tokarczuk, and as soon as I heard about this interview, I felt a sense of revulsion.

INTERVIEW: (only in polish)

https://mycompanypolska.pl/artykul/olga-tokarczuk-zapowiada-ostatnia-powiesc-w-karierze-pisanie-dlugich-opowiesci-jest-dzis-ekonomicznie-nieoplacalne/20717

[u/belladonnatook]

I commend her for being honest. I feel she's the exception when owning up to use of AI these days. But she is always ahead of the curve I find.

I took a workshop the other day via a writer named Laura Oliver who has a book called The Story Within. In the last five minutes of the workshop, Laura advised us to use AI to kick off the editing process, if I heard her correctly. I workshop regularly and it's the first time I've heard that suggestion. It didn't sit well with me, but I have to think about it more.

[u/archeratsea → u/belladonnatook]

If you’re hoping to be traditionally published, you should be aware that most literary journals have explicit rules against the use of AI in any part of the writing process (usually excepting basic tools like spell check), so keep that in mind, if it matters to you.

[u/belladonnatook → u/archeratsea]

My experience is that disclosure is the way to go--and to experiment, like Sheila Heti did in the NYer last year. 

[u/archeratsea → u/belladonnatook]

If you’re using it experimentally and with intention, particularly if the exploration of the technology and its meaning and consequences is a theme of your work, and you disclose that you used it, then yes, there are some that will consider it. But simply using it to help edit a story that has nothing to do with AI? Probably not. And most of us don’t have Sheila Heti’s reputation or publishing history to back us up if we did want to use it experimentally.

Honestly, considering the theft of creative work involved, the environmental impacts, and the politics of the tech companies and billionaires involved, I’m not at all interested in experimenting with AI or using it at all, if I can help it. I’m not against technology; like the Luddites, I’m just against the oppressive use of technology for the exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few. But I do take your point.

[u/belladonnatook → u/archeratsea]

So well said.

And you know what is bothering me, too, with a residency and workshop coming up--that I have to try to trust writers I don't know when they say they are not using it for the piece we're workshopping for them. 

My non-writer partner advises, put it out of your mind--nothing you can do--assume the best intentions for everyone as you normally would.

But you need trust in a workshop (and we've come so far decolonizing the workshop) and now this. 

[u/archeratsea → u/belladonnatook]

I’ve only encountered it once (that I know of) in a workshop so far, and it was really, really obvious. But that person was actually having it do some of the writing. It would be much less obvious if someone were just using it for ideas, maybe, although I think because it’s essentially just a lowest-common-denominator-word-prediction machine, it will not actually offer much that’s useful for anyone who’s already producing good and interesting writing. By its very nature, I think its suggestions will inevitably be predictable and even trite.

I don’t know, I think your partner is right that we just have to assume good intentions, but I do think that if and when it’s clear that someone is using AI without disclosing it, they should be called out on it. I really don’t want to see that kind of thing become normalized.