How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Sort of Love AI

When I wake up screaming, it’s not about whether I will be replaced by AI.

When I wake up screaming, it’s not about whether I will be replaced by AI.

As an author, there are some days I wouldn’t mind being replaced by AI — that is, a Jacquelyn clone who writes books that sound like the kind of stories I’d write.

Much is made of Stephen Marche’s use of AI to essentially replace himself with a bot to write a mystery called (wink, wink) Death of an Author. It’s a whodunit in which AI is both the question and the answer.

As described in AI@Work, Marche, however, had to force the bot to write the book he wanted, sentence by sentence. Which sounds to me an awful lot like writing a book the usual way.

Until recently, to my shame, I had never tried to use AI for anything. At the behest of my agent, I tried using ChatGPT to brainstorm book ideas, as book ideas are my bête noire. All my author friends say they will never live long enough to write all the books they’ve thought up. I, on the other hand, am absolutely sure I will live — and longer.

ChatGPT (breezy British accent) was a revelation. It was so much fun that I could barely stop once I started. At first, I thought the bot was coming up with ideas for books that had already been written (e.g., Cryptic Crossword: A crossword writer finds clues to brutal murders in a colleague’s puzzles and must try to stop the murderer or discover if these are fantasies or true events).

I found out that, no, they weren’t, and that I could customize my requests for ideas (big book, lots of money, a little supernatural, no mysteries, no vampires, literary fiction).

Wow.

Now I know why AI is going to take over the world.

Except for one thing. One of my favorite quotations was set down more than 2,000 years ago by the Greek dramatist Aeschylus:
"Even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God."

AI may be brainy, but I don’t trust the emotional loading.

I want to point out that there are plenty of times when, as a person, as a woman, as a mother, wife, grandmother, sister, and friend, I wouldn’t give you three bucks for the whole gamut of human feelings. There are times when I’d be happy (I know, that’s a feeling) not to experience them.

But emotion — the possibility of vicariously experiencing the emotions of others, coupled with experiences we have not had — is why we crave stories. It is the quality of emotion that determines a story’s lasting effect.

I want to suggest that a bot can’t have the same capacity … although Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun argues otherwise, persuasively and poignantly. - JM

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HOT LIFE TIP:

Here’s the best resolution you can make:

Politics might break your brain.

You might have ten pounds to lose or fifty.

You might want to finally see Paris.

You might do all those things, but here’s a promise you can keep to yourself:

Read more books.

You can do this.

You can take them from the library. You can read them on a reader. You can buy the old-fashioned kind with pretty endpapers and two hardcovers.

I once had a friend who, each January, proudly selected the one book she would read that year. And though I liked her in other ways, the fact that this was the limit of her ambition as a learner did not endear her to me.

I have more faith in you.

Read more, for Pete’s sake.

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VERY Easy Au Gratin Potato Soup

In keeping with the theme of shortcuts, here is a recipe for a quick and delicious dinner ready in literally minutes:

• 5.25 oz. packed au gratin potato mix

• 3-4 Yukon Gold potatoes, cubed

• 1 ½ cups chicken stock (or, for vegetarian, stock with No-Chicken Bouillon)

• 3 cups water

• 2/3 cup diced carrot

• 2/3 cup diced celery

• 1/2 cup heavy cream or sour cream

• 1/2 cup shredded sharp cheddar (optional)

Mix potato slices, cheese sauce mix, broth, water, carrots, and celery in a large saucepan. Heat to boiling, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 25 to 30 minutes or until potatoes are tender. Remove from heat and stir in cream or sour cream.

If using an Instant Pot, just throw everything in and set the timer for ten minutes, adding the cream or sour cream when the rest is cooked.

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HOT WRITING TIP

There’s really no excuse for ever using words like “gonna” or “gotta” in your prose. And the correct spelling of the word that means a command to stop is not “Woah” — it’s “Whoa.”

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HOT READING TIP

It is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A child is taken by her father to live with relatives on a farm, not knowing when or if she will be brought home again. In the Kinsellas’ house, she finds an affection and warmth she has not known and, slowly, in their care, begins to blossom. But there is something unspoken in this new household — where everything is so well tended to — and this summer must soon come to an end.

This story is only 100 pages, but it turned my heart with its concise capture of a child’s consciousness.

I recently watched a film made from another Claire Keegan novel, Small Things Like These, starring Cillian Murphy, who won an Oscar for Oppenheimer.

Watch the trailer here.

This is the saddest Christmas movie ever made, many have said, but ultimately uplifting in that the local coal hauler, Billy Furlong, will right the wrongs of the local convent “laundry” and the girls who live there as they wait in disgrace for babies to be born in 1985.

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Don’t forget - my latest novel, A Very Inconvenient Scandal is available everywhere good books are sold. You can get your own copy today.

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FINALLY, if you’d ever like to write to me, you can do so here.