When it comes to artificial additives that are meant for human consumption, we’re often warned about it on the label. And products that are made in the country you’re living in tend to get preferential treatment. A tip of the hat for being local and, theoretically, a greater contributor to the national economy.

In Australia, if you want to certify that your product is ‘Australian made‘, there are hoops you must jump through. We’re even told what percentage of the ingredients, if any, are imported. I don’t know how it works in your neck of the woods but there will likely be some protocols in place.

For a product to be certified as ‘Australian made’ it has to pass rigorous checks. Because it’s being presented as something that’s supposed to be of high quality. That little logo on the package assures the customer that what they’re about to ingest is safe and has been produced to certain standards.

Why am I discussing this on a writing blog?

Because, in any business, a good name means everything. Yes, you can present something in a nice, shiny package and price it lower than anybody else. But if you’re selling garbage, people will catch on to that and your name will end up being worth about as much.

Authenticity is important. So is consumer confidence.

This brings us to AI. Artificial Intelligence. My question is, if we stop learning to make things ourselves, what will happen to real intelligence?

Robots can make many aspects of life easier, I’m not denying that. And I’m not going to sit here and wheeze about how things were ‘back in my day’. Basically, I’m not one of those people that swore that electricity was from the devil or that telephones and email would kill the handwritten letter.

To be honest, the handwritten letter has taken a substantial hit, but we can’t let sentiment obliterate progress. Frankly, I like not having to wait months for a ship to puff it’s way over from America so I can hear how my family is faring.

Progress and technological advancement is well and good. But there is a very real danger that comes from having too much work done for us. There is an element of concern that future generations will slide back to a level of ignorance and inability that hasn’t been seen since the dark ages.

Is this a paranoid evil-robot rant?

Not at all. Computers aren’t sentient, they are not good or evil, they do what they’re told. The danger is, as always, lazy, impatient and/or greedy humans.

It’s the lazy and impatient human that no longer wants to develop a skill or hone a craft. They want something to do the work for them and then convince themselves that they’ll be admired for it.

I spoke with the daughter of friends a while back, and she wanted to show me her art projects. Or so I thought. This 13-year-old child proceeded to show me a little store-bought jig that aligns itself in certain positions so that she ‘draws’ a picture by doing nothing more than pumping the pencil straight up and down.

I’m happy to say that I swallowed my initial response, which was that she’d be better off ditching the plasticized dumpster fodder and learning to make something herself. She’s an absolute sweetheart and she felt like she’d done something. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, and I didn’t. But I couldn’t bring myself to gush over that or the other gimmicks she’d been given in lieu of real teaching.

The shame of it is that she’s smart enough to make things on her own; without having it spoon-fed to her. But she’ll probably never learn because she’s been handed a lazier option that’s cranking results out right now.

My issue with it is that, when I was even younger than her, I was sketching pictures freehand and experimenting with style and shading using my fingertips and wadded up tissues. That is not to say there was anything so la-di-da fancy about me, but I had to do it by myself and I developed a skill because of it. Yes, it took time, it’s supposed to.

What happens when people use robots to fake talent?

People will stop developing real talent, that’s what. We all need to understand that the time and effort required to become naturally good at something hasn’t changed. The people that want to be authors without doing any writing are never going to be good writers. No matter how many books their trusty computer cranks out for them, they themselves have not done the work and will never improve until they do. That’s the reality.

Another little slap in the face of reality is that their computer programs are standing on the shoulders of actual writers. And, speaking as someone whose work has been stolen to train AI, it’s not okay to do that.

If anyone wants to be a writer, just learn how to write. If you really love it and want to do it, you’ll grow and get better. Find your real voice and train it. If you can’t write…just do something else. It’s pretty straightforward.

The ripple effect

Okay, let’s say someone has asked their computer to make them look good by piecing together other people’s books and changing a few names. Will anyone be the wiser?

Ultimately, yes, they will because computers can’t create. Computers can rehash and stick things together, that’s not a recipe for a masterpiece. No matter how great it was when you started, if you throw a souffle in a blender it’ll come out looking like diarrhea.

Is AI writing better than it was? Yes, certainly. Will it continue to improve? Absolutely. Will it ever become creative, emotionally resonant and deeply affected by its life experiences? No. It won’t. It can’t.

A computer isn’t alive and doesn’t feel, therefore it cannot be imbued with creativity. Artificial Intelligence may spit out a beautiful picture or a sentimental lyric, but it hasn’t created anything of it’s own originality. It’s been trained to mimic and mash up the styles of people.

But don’t people learn from other people too?

Yes, we do. But we develop our own natural style. For instance, neither my drawing nor my writing closely resembles any of the people whose work I learned from and tried to emulate when I was starting out. I’d compare one of my drawings with the picture I was trying to recreate, and mine looked like crap.

Even when I developed some actual skill, my style grew along with it and still looked nothing like the pictures I’d admired growing up.

That’s the trouble with jigs like my young friend was using. They lock you in to a set path and there’s no deviating from it. If you can’t be free to move and learn, you don’t develop your own style and you’re basically just playing with toys, you aren’t really making something.

The shame is that now people are turning to AI to do their schoolwork, their secular work and even their entertainment. If those skills are lost because people convincingly fake their way through until the knowledge is long gone, that’s gonna be a bad and unhappy moment of realization.

What’s the solution?

Accountability and transparency. This is already being done on some platforms as far as images go. It’s early stages and it isn’t perfect, but Pinterest is putting ‘AI Modified’ tags on pins where it detects AI imagery. We can do that with books too.

Any book that is significantly composed by Artificial Intelligence should have to make that clear on the label. Just like the labels on other things that we ingest, in this case mentally rather than physically, we should be warned of artificial ingredients. The choice is up to the consumer from there.

I also suspect that we’ll end up having books that are certified human, kind of like organic food. I also think that certified human books will ultimately be held in higher esteem; I hope so anyway.

Put it this way, I’ve seen AI artwork and thought how great it looked. But when I see a beautiful picture that a human has made, that’s when I stop and stare. Because that’s really genuinely impressive, someone actually made that with their hands and their imagination. Amazing.

AI does have a place. It has many places, in fact, but it is at risk of overuse. I never write any books with AI, if people choose to, that’s their business. Using it for prompts and ideas doesn’t seem like a big deal, it’s the people that use it to churn out entire books that seem to be overcrowding the market with rubbish.

I do use AI for things like marketing graphics and concept art. It’s honestly too overwhelming and too expensive to try and either create or commission original artwork for marketing when you’re also being urged to post stuff every day. And bearing in mind that a lot of social media posts have a lifespan of minutes, it would be foolish to turn our noses up to programs that can churn out an image that suits our specific needs in seconds. Especially concept art. I also write fantasy and, trust me, it’s hard to find images that work.

But this is again where standards and application become key. I’ll use AI for a Facebook post, but I wouldn’t use it for a book cover. Book covers can be expensive, but they’re important, so I want them done by proper artists and designers.

When I write a book, I spend months and sometimes years writing and polishing it up. In return, I sell those books for less than the cost of a fancy coffee. That’s doable as long as enough people actually buy books. There are also libraries and subscription services like Kobo Plus for people that read a lot.

A person typically spends more time reading a book than they do looking at a picture. Throughout the day we will quickly see and go on to forget countless images on tv and social media etc. But what we read sticks with us and our time is valuable. So, we’re wise to be choosy.

The bottom line as far as books are concerned

We need to keep learning how to do things. Computers can support but they can’t innovate. If people stop creating and adding their own flair to things, we’ll hit the ceiling and everything will become one big beige mass of same old same old.

We also need to be ethical in what is fed to AI, and we need quality standards. We need a rigorous grading process that clearly identifies artificial work. As it stands now, when you upload a book to Amazon, they ask if you use AI. I don’t know what happens if you say yes because I don’t write with AI. But I do know that I’ve never been advised of AI content on a book page when I’ve gone book shopping.

So, Amazon knows, but they don’t appear to be advising their customers. We have the right to know what we’re consuming. Since AI books are comparatively new, the general assumption would be that a book has a human author unless otherwise stated. If that’s not the case, please state it so we will know.

AI isn’t going to go away and that’s all right. We need to work with it and around it. It has it’s place, but it should be clearly identified when it’s used for writing, especially when it’s extensively used. The book becomes a different beast and the consumer should be warned. They may not care, but they deserve to be informed.

Here’s hoping that we get some warning labels sooner rather than later.

All the best,

Camille (100% human)