AI writers? Let’s discuss.

Sorry gang, I took a few days off to concentrate on my husband’s birthday. It was his fiftieth, but the number doesn’t really matter. We’re the same person we were the day before and the day following. The number is but a marker. However, I am of the opinion that your birthday should be a holiday for you. Other holidays are awash in tradition and obligation, but your birthday should be the day that is a celebration of all things you. It should be the day that someone says – hey I know about you, I love you, and I want to make this day special and a lasting memory. You relax, I’ve got this. Today is the day that you don’t have to think – just be you and let us love you and celebrate you. This year I made that last for weeks before and days after, because he is special to me and because I love him.

To get to the title – the world is awash in AI right now. It is dominating the headlines, the workplace, and social media. The thought is that AI will help humans with simplistic tasks. So far I have found that AI’s are not perfect and are based only on the information they are fed which is cultivated by humans and therefore fallible. I think they will be empathetic listeners and might make it easier for people to process emotions, but that also leaves us vulnerable as our information and conversations with AI are only as private and secure as a developer cares to make them.

Someone asked me recently, if I worried, being a writer, that the development of AI would effect the industry. My thought, after I quickly apologized for being an unpublished writer for the thousandth time (why do I feel the need to do that?) was no, AI cannot be writers because being a writer is to understand the beauty of being human. It’s to understand that humans have emotions and character flaws; to comprehend love and all of its complexities; to know that we need friendship, laughter, and happiness and that these things are essential to human nature as are air and water. I don’t think an AI can get that. What do you think?