Man Machine

I thought about having an AI write something for me many times before. Out of curiosity much more than necessity (I am OK with being paid to write, thank you), I wanted to know what an artificial intelligence would say when trying to think my thoughts. Today’s issue was written with the help of an AI. I know, it’s super cool. This AI was not particularly tailored to my needs; it 's based on GPT-3 and trained in creative writing, so generally speaking it will try to write prose and dialogues. So I posed it a challenge just to see what it could do.

I told the AI this is a newsletter about storytelling. I wrote this introduction and asked it to write some paragraphs about the subject, picked up from it, then asked for them to write some more, thus building the narrative of this issue itself. Very meta. But it was hard for the AI to keep a line of... thought? Somehow it assumed it had to pose as someone who has written a story and is teaching others how to do the same. Not creepy AT ALL.

Some light editing was made for clarity, and the paragraphs written by it are highlighted in italic. Just in case you need to know.

First, a word about the writing process. I had a clear idea of what I wanted to express by the time I’ve started to write. I wanted to talk about how writing is not only speaking, but also crafting a series of layers, as in a painting. I started with a skeleton of my keynote, and let it develop on its own. I had a thought and a quote to start with, and then I thought I should include an anecdote and a fact. To improve the story, I decided to make it more dynamic and added an additional layer of two stories to complement the main narrative.

After this main story was written, I started to remove words and sentences I knew I could change.

Just as we do in any other communication form, I suppose. Editing is a big part of writing, more than ideas themselves. I might have known where I wanted to go from the start here, but I am not the only one contributing to this text. So apart from my own mental editing that happens even before my fingertips touch the keyboard, there is also the added effort of editing someone else’s - or rather something else’s - thoughts. A prompt and some knowledge are no guarantee that the outcome will follow your logic. It is a great responsibility to take someone’s vision and make sure it sees light of day. Similar to what happens when you edit a movie; I was always amazed by how much of a movie is told by the eyes of its editor, not just its director or screenwriter.

Not all my stories are so well edited in the first place, but I enjoy the process of writing articles like this one.

The story begins here:

It is not relevant right now what the hypothetical person in this little story wanted to tell the hypothetical character who I am strangely assuming it’s me about how they write. It starts with the right ingredients: a place, a time, characters, an intriguing dialogue. Conflict.

What I do care about, however, is how this seems like a scene straight out of Before Sunrise, WTF. This took a fast twist to uncanny, amirite. Is the AI trying to tell me something? This is odd. Are they reading my past issues? I don’t enjoy where this is going.

You know what?

Don’t.

I’ll keep writing on my own, for now.

-Maíra (and HAL, the AI)