Why are writers fighting the future AI?

Envylope said:

Reminds me of that time I told someone in real life I was a writer, and they said, "oh, I have an idea that you should write that would sell like crazy..." Okay, buddy.

Click to expand...

Rookie mistake, never admit to being a writer. I think I'd rather tell someone I was a prostitute.

LiteraryWho said:

Rookie mistake, never admit to being a writer. I think I'd rather tell someone I was a prostitute.

Click to expand...

They are not prostitutes now, they go by OnlyDucks Creator to get around legalities =P

Juia_Darkcrest said:

They are not prostitutes now, they go by OnlyDucks Creator to get around legalities =P

Click to expand...

Come to OnlyDucks to see Hot Chicks!!!

(I'm sorry, I'll see myself out)

Juia_Darkcrest said:

For me it is for what AI is being used for.

Way back in the day, it was touted as something we would use to do the jobs nobody wanted to do, letting humans pursue the arts and scholarly pursuits.

Instead, it is literally doing the opposite. We have it doing creative writing and drawing, yet these "Artist" are claiming it as their own. Students use it to do their homework, academia has it doing all their research (and failing miserably at times), yet they claim it as their own work. People are getting fucking dumber as they use and rely on AI more and more.

Many good, high-paying white-collar jobs are gradually getting replaced with AI, leaving people who have student loan debt from back before the AI boom now working at McDonald's to try to make ends meet. Or they need to go work in the oil fields/mines to make serious money. But the kids, they yearn for the mines, right?

All the while, these AI farms are a significant drain on global power networks, already consuming 1.5% of global power production, and that is expected to be around 3-4% by 2030.

Six years ago, OpenAI started, then four years ago, ChatGPT was released. Before that, AI was pretty dumb, like Siri telling people that she didnt understand the question, or Alexa turning the music on when you were not even talking to her. Now, we have AI that can write full on scientific papers and we have "Artist" who have them making art and writings through prompts. We have companies laying off artist so they can utilize AI for much of their work, because it is good enough.

What happens in four more years as we continue to train these creations? Will most of our media be made from AI, leaving the rest of us to join our friends in the mines as we try and make ends meet? Sure, there will always be people writing/drawing as a hobby, but the market will become so oversaturated by AI slop that has slowly become less and less slop-like.

AI might be the future, but that will not prevent me from trying to caution others about its use.

Click to expand...

Let me make sure I understand. Are you basically saying you feel like it will replace people jobs because of human greed. if that's what you're saying you probably have a point there, but does not come down to human beings themselves, not the tools?

Juia_Darkcrest said:

They are not prostitutes now, they go by OnlyDucks Creator to get around legalities =P

Click to expand...

Do these ducks have humanoid forms? Asking for a friend...

Dragonpig said:

I understand. I totally agree. Someone who uses AI and say they're just as good as a real writer or a writer that does it from scratch. Total bullshit. But I'm saying. Imagine what that writer can do with that tool. There will always be cheaters and lazy people, but those who Use that tool can be better. I feel like it's taking away from what they can become just my opinion.

Click to expand...

I think I see what you mean, and I think it's an important distinction that I need to think more about.

For now, I think I sit at,

If you fully disclaim that you used AI to produce a story, and don't call yourself a writer, I don't necessarily have an issue per se (though you wouldn't be in compliance with Scribble Hub rules)

If you use AI as a Google research assistant, or to occasionally format obscure supplemental content you made the substance of yourself- and disclose it- legitimate

Use it for basic spelling and grammar check- legitimate

Photographs capture the truth. A moment in time of some significance.They are a tool of record.

AI generated text is more of an event. Like taking a bunch of pigs and putting them in a meat grinder. What's the value of a record or photograph of the output of a meat grinder? I mean artistically of course, that's great data for science. But why look at a photo of the output of a particular meat grinder over any other meat grinder. Its all meat isn't it?

And that's what AI generated stories are. Pictures of mincemeat. Sure, you could probably make a few dinosaurs figurines out of meat and have them act out a drama if you've got the imagination. But… you could have made those dinosaur figurines out of modeling clay. Or lego. Or literally anything that you didn't need to sacrifice hundreds of animals for for no real reason.

Our_Lady_in_Twilight said:

I think its very telling that even people who are full-blooded AI apologists want to preserve their own agency in story direction. Often you hear 'Yes, but it's me who's choosing the characters, the scenes, the direction of the plot, so really its my story even if I delegate out the actual writing. I'm curious, if it were put to you that AI could do story direction far better than a human, wouldn't it make sense to abdicate this as well? You could just order a bot to 'make me a great fantasy novel' and see what comes out. It'd take you a couple of moments, at the most. Probably it could do characters, plot, a thrilling climax far better than you could imagine yourself. Would that be yours? You commanded it, after all, but do you feel you've expressed yourself?

I think the difference of opinion here comes from a descrepency between people who consider their real creative outlet to be story directing, and just do the writing to make that happen. For people who find their artistic expression more in writing, abdicating that part of the process feels as dehumanising as abdicating the story directing, if not more so.

***

(For me, personally, I'm in the writing camp. I obviously do both parts myself, but if it came to it I'd far rather take a directed prompt for a short story and consider how to write and sculpt it into something that felt my own, than I would try to think of a really creative prompt to pass on to a machine.)

Click to expand...

so is all about. Do you want to use the tool and what you want to use the tool for and what you want to be as a writer I get you because in my personal opinion I would not want a story totally written by the AI because I like the human connection. But again, I guess it comes out to taste interesting

Envylope said:

Reminds me of that time I told someone in real life I was a writer, and they said, "oh, I have an idea that you should write that would sell like crazy..." Okay, buddy.

Click to expand...

. Got a question is that pretty much like when people lift weights and . Take steroids. because I heard if you use them correctly and lift weights, it ain't that bad.

AliceMoonvale said:

Do you want all your tv shows, movies, podcasts, books/web novels, youtube videos, art and games all be ai generated with no human soul or coherency?

Click to expand...

Most people dont have souls to begin with.

Dragonpig said:

Let me make sure I understand. Are you basically saying you feel like it will replace people jobs because of human greed. if that's what you're saying you probably have a point there, but does not come down to human beings themselves, not the tools?

Click to expand...

Feel like? No, it already is; that is no longer a theory, but a fact. I can point to my old job as a meteorologist before I retired, where forecasters and people in our data centres are not being replaced as they retire/contracts are up, as AI and other machines are being used to replace the people behind the scenes. That app on your phone? Probably didn't have a single human look at it before the data went out. Pretty much the only places that get an actual person making a forecast are airports, or if you're lucky, a major city.

As for greed, that is exactly what is happening here on SH and by and large across creative writing spaces. These idea guys are tossing ideas into <insert your AI here> and having it pump out a few chapters of story, then posting them online with links to their Patreon or whatever if you want to see more.

As the models get better and better, I suspect we will see more and more people getting pushed out of these spaces, as there will be so much AI Slop that only a few lucky writers will get noticed, even by the readers. Buried in the piles of mediocrity coming from these idea guys and their AI slop.

People can tell me that AI will never be able to work as well as a real writer, but I am old enough to have heard that story before, that we will never see graphics as good as this... A year later, the PS1 was released. Now, we have entire movies done in CGI, and even some gameplay almost looks like real life, if not even better.

4 years ago, I would not have expected AI to write you a story. Now it can, albeit not great usually; however, it is learning and learning fast. What will the next generation of AI be able to do? Or the one after that?

Anyway, I have digressed too much here. To use a tool as powerful as AI is a check on your integrity, to not abuse the power in your hands, which people are failing miserably at.

This is why I rail against using AI for anything other than a tool to check over something that is already finished, as something that can check and verify someone's work, rather than produce the entire product.

Juia_Darkcrest said:

Feel like? No, it already is; that is no longer a theory, but a fact. I can point to my old job as a meteorologist before I retired, where forecasters and people in our data centres are not being replaced as they retire/contracts are up, as AI and other machines are being used to replace the people behind the scenes. That app on your phone? Probably didn't have a single human look at it before the data went out. Pretty much the only places that get an actual person making a forecast are airports, or if you're lucky, a major city.

As for greed, that is exactly what is happening here on SH and by and large across creative writing spaces. These idea guys are tossing ideas into <insert your AI here> and having it pump out a few chapters of story, then posting them online with links to their Patreon or whatever if you want to see more.

As the models get better and better, I suspect we will see more and more people getting pushed out of these spaces, as there will be so much AI Slop that only a few lucky writers will get noticed, even by the readers. Buried in the piles of mediocrity coming from these idea guys and their AI slop.

People can tell me that AI will never be able to work as well as a real writer, but I am old enough to have heard that story before, that we will never see graphics as good as this... A year later, the PS1 was released. Now, we have entire movies done in CGI, and even some gameplay almost looks like real life, if not even better.

4 years ago, I would not have expected AI to write you a story. Now it can, albeit not great usually; however, it is learning and learning fast. What will the next generation of AI be able to do? Or the one after that?

Anyway, I have digressed too much here. To use a tool as powerful as AI is a check on your integrity, to not abuse the power in your hands, which people are failing miserably at.

This is why I rail against using AI for anything other than a tool to check over something that is already finished, as something that can check and verify someone's work, rather than produce the entire product.

Click to expand...

Maybe about to say something ignorant here, but in the long run as human beings were cutting our own throats, because if only a certain amount of people do jobs and everything else is machines who's going to buy stuff economically that suicide
but I would still like to see a very good writer. Write a story without AI. then use this same skill and use AI as a tool. Post it see which one gets the most responses. I would like to see the results.

Dragonpig said:

Maybe about to say something ignorant here, but in the long run as human beings were cutting our own throats, because if only a certain amount of people do jobs and everything else is machines who's going to buy stuff economically that suicide

Click to expand...

And that is the crux of the problem that people keep sweeping under the rug to deal with another day.

It wouldn't surprise me in another 5-15 years that governments across the world will need to start putting some draconian laws in place to limit AI use to protect jobs for their own survival.

That said, I can't read the future; I can only be a small voice of reason in a crowd of people climbing aboard the AI train. Maybe in 10 years, when shit starts to truly collapse, I will have the moral high ground to say I told you so... but that won't change the fact that the line will change from 'Nobody wants to work anymore' to 'Nobody can work any more.'

Don't worry, though, most blue-collar work can't be outsourced to AI... yet.

Dragonpig said:

Maybe about to say something ignorant here, but in the long run as human beings were cutting our own throats, because if only a certain amount of people do jobs and everything else is machines who's going to buy stuff economically that suicide.

Click to expand...

We would need to shift to a post-capatalist society where scarcity is no longer an issue on a global scale.

Alski said:

We would need to shift to a post-capatalist society where scarcity is no longer an issue on a global scale.

Click to expand...

I don't know if human beings are that noble. But I think that would be fucking with somebody's money. I'm not that smart about global economics but I don't know about that man.

Dragonpig said:

Maybe about to say something ignorant here, but in the long run as human beings were cutting our own throats, because if only a certain amount of people do jobs and everything else is machines who's going to buy stuff economically that suicide

Click to expand...

Yeah sorta. The way it’ll actually work is that the economy will shift around as whatever roles exist that humans are required for will become more important and people who can’t do those things will be increasingly marginalized. Exactly what it is that humans can reliably do better than 2040 ai is at this time unknown, but hopefully there will be enough things to allow the economy to function

Being a nanny for the clankers will probably remain a common role for a while, and entrepreneurs will be able to clean house by harnessing squads of clankers alongside desperate meatbags who are willing to work for cheap. Not as cheap as AI employees that you can hire for the cost of a Netflix subscription, but pretty cheap.

Speaking of subscriptions, enjoy the proliferation of basically decent free ai now. Enshittification is real and it comes for all novel ideas in the modern era.

The paradigm where being a worker drone is viable will shrink and shrink because we will never be as good at being cogs in a machine as the clankers once they get advanced enough. Same thing goes for creating derivative slop; ai will easily get to the point where it can absolutely crush 80-90% of professional writers.
Indy projects will double down on being the last refuge of basically any art form as an art form rather than a product, because there is no world where modern Disney fails to create a giant hive of ten thousand AIs trained on market data and Disney properties from various eras that has a big button on the side that says “extrude product optimized for this month based on current market factors.”The Disney castle data center will be cheaper than Robert Downey Junior’s paycheck alone, and it can pivot seamlessly and choose a different demographic to target every week

Do I think this is a good thing or a bad thing? I dunno. Personally I’m juuuuust capitalist enough to believe that it’ll eventually settle into something livable, and hopefully that happens long before the Hunger Games capital decides to kill off all the poors so they can live in their ivory towers staffed by synthetic catgirl maids running Grok 47.2 as their baseline personality. The market finds a way. Sometimes that way is horrible, but usually it’s surprisingly banal.

Personally, of the dystopias on offer I’m hoping for Psycho Pass or West World over something like Cyberpunk or Altered Carbon. We are already in a fertility collapse situation which will have SO many problems but it will drive up the price of human labor assuming we are able to contribute anything of value whatsoever. So the real question is whether or not humans can justify our existence to our fellow man in this generation, or to the algorithm in the next.

Dragonpig said:

I don't know if human beings are that noble. But I think that would be fucking with somebody's money. I'm not that smart about global economics but I don't know about that man.

Click to expand...

Oh it absolutly is a pipe dream when looking at humans of today.

Juia_Darkcrest said:

And that is the crux of the problem that people keep sweeping under the rug to deal with another day.

It wouldn't surprise me in another 5-15 years that governments across the world will need to start putting some draconian laws in place to limit AI use to protect jobs for their own survival.

That said, I can't read the future; I can only be a small voice of reason in a crowd of people climbing aboard the AI train. Maybe in 10 years, when shit starts to truly collapse, I will have the moral high ground to say I told you so... but that won't change the fact that the line will change from 'Nobody wants to work anymore' to 'Nobody can work any more.'

Don't worry, though, most blue-collar work can't be outsourced to AI... yet.

Click to expand...

got a question for you. Been looking at these books you have hereWhich one do you recommend I read first because I know you got what three here

Jerynboe said:

Yeah sorta. The way it’ll actually work is that the economy will shift around as whatever roles exist that humans are required for will become more important and people who can’t do those things will be increasingly marginalized. Exactly what it is that humans can reliably do better than 2040 ai is at this time unknown, but hopefully there will be enough things to allow the economy to function

Being a nanny for the clankers will probably remain a common role for a while, and entrepreneurs will be able to clean house by harnessing squads of clankers alongside desperate meatbags who are willing to work for cheap. Not as cheap as AI employees that you can hire for the cost of a Netflix subscription, but pretty cheap.

Speaking of subscriptions, enjoy the proliferation of basically decent free ai now. Enshittification is real and it comes for all novel ideas in the modern era.

The paradigm where being a worker drone is viable will shrink and shrink because we will never be as good at being cogs in a machine as the clankers once they get advanced enough. Same thing goes for creating derivative slop; ai will easily get to the point where it can absolutely crush 80-90% of professional writers.
Indy projects will double down on being the last refuge of basically any art form as an art form rather than a product, because there is no world where modern Disney fails to create a giant hive of ten thousand AIs trained on market data and Disney properties from various eras that has a big button on the side that says “extrude product optimized for this month based on current market factors.”The Disney castle data center will be cheaper than Robert Downey Junior’s paycheck alone, and it can pivot seamlessly and choose a different demographic to target every week

Do I think this is a good thing or a bad thing? I dunno. Personally I’m juuuuust capitalist enough to believe that it’ll eventually settle into something livable, and hopefully that happens long before the Hunger Games capital decides to kill off all the poors so they can live in their ivory towers staffed by synthetic catgirl maids running Grok 47.2 as their baseline personality. The market finds a way. Sometimes that way is horrible, but usually it’s surprisingly banal.

Click to expand...

brother the dark side of the force don't have shit on you, but you got a point there.

Dragonpig said:

got a question for you. Been looking at these books you have hereWhich one do you recommend I read first because I know you got what three here

Click to expand...

The Deity Entertainment Network. By far my best one.

You do realize it is smut, right? It is labelled where it is if you want to skip those parts, and it is not the focus of the story. It's like a Light Novel where, instead of fading to black, I write a scene out instead.


The Narrator is still in its infancy, and I halted it because I didn't like how it was going... I tried a style I saw once, 30-some years ago, but it didn't resonate with me. I just haven't deleted it yet, as there are a few things in it I might use elsewhere.

MFGR is my first attempt at writing something other than an AVN in 25 years, and it's super fast-paced... too fast. I finished 2 arcs, but I want to rewrite arc 1 a bit at some point, to slow it down and explore the world more. It's a typical gooner LitRPG but has its good points.

Juia_Darkcrest said:

The Deity Entertainment Network. By far my best one.

You do realize it is smut, right? It is labelled where it is if you want to skip those parts, and it is not the focus of the story. It's like a Light Novel where, instead of fading to black, I write a scene out instead.


The Narrator is still in its infancy, and I halted it because I didn't like how it was going... I tried a style I saw once, 30-some years ago, but it didn't resonate with me. I just haven't deleted it yet, as there are a few things in it I might use elsewhere.

MFGR is my first attempt at writing something other than an AVN in 25 years, and it's super fast-paced... too fast. I finished 2 arcs, but I want to rewrite arc 1 a bit at some point, to slow it down and explore the world more. It's a typical gooner LitRPG but has its good points.

Click to expand...

Thank you I don't got no problem with sex. I'm grown. I will check it out. I appreciate you.

Dragonpig said:

I've been noticing a recurring debate among writers: pro-AI vs. anti-AI. But here's my take.

Think about what happened when photography was introduced. Anyone could pick up a camera, but that didn't kill painting. It actually did two things: it made visual capture more efficient and accessible, AND it pushed painters to become true specialists. The best painters didn't disappear. They became more intentional, more skilled, more valued.

I think AI is doing the same thing to writing. Those who choose not to use it are going to rise to the top as the best of the best, pure craftspeople. Those who do use AI tools are going to become highly efficient and still produce great work. Either way.

Click to expand...

I think where AI is invaluable is formatting the text to industry standards.

If you engage and pay a professional editor before submitting your work to a literary agent or directly to a press you will look at a hefty bill depending the level of editing.
An example. Something AI can easily do for free is copyediting (surface‑level corrections, typos, punctuation, consistency the lot) would cost anything between £12 and £25 per 1,000 words in the UK.

AI is not infallible but human beings are not infallible, either. So would you rather get a reasonable service for free, or a reasonable service for £12–£25 per 1,000 words.

Having said all that editing to industry standards is not a requirement for posting on SH. In fact, the better the editing the higher the risk that low-effort commenters leave the "Fully AI-created" stock phrase under the chapter.

I personally like to see more comments that acknowledge that the there's a beating human heart behind the story and praise the author for spending time on copyediting to enhance the readers experience. A conscientious commenter would take the time to figure out what is "fully AI-created" and what is "AI- or professional software edited". The difference is significant but not always obvious. If unsure? Well, I'd remain silent if I were in that situation.