Here’s a thought experiment. We know researchers push Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology further all the time. What if AI begins writing stories and novels better than humans do?
To make it more fun, let’s assume AI lags behind humans in all other areas. That is, AI programs start to write wonderful fiction, but accomplish nothing else of note.
At this point, that seems unlikely. According to this article by Andrew Mayne, AI has made some progress writing two-sentence flash fiction. and author Erik Hoel found AI did a fair job of generating reasonable prose when he fed it prompts from one of his novels. To date, no AI has written a story or novel that has been widely read as literature.
Before AI comes to the point of writing better than humans, we’ll pass through a phase where human writers partner with AI to improve their productivity. A human author will come up with a story concept—characters, plot, setting—and put the AI to work generating text. The human will then edit and submit. We’re pretty close to that now, with software such as Marlowe, AI Dungeon, Jarvis AI, and GPT-3.
Perhaps not long after that, some AI software might become capable enough to create the story concept and write the manuscript and edit it. At some point, such submissions will pass a literary version of the Turing Test. A human editor won’t be able to tell if a human or AI wrote a story. In fact, some experts believe AI will write a best-seller by 2049.
A short time later, AIs might become capable of writing stories and novels better than any human writer. By that, I mean human readers might come to prefer fiction written by AI.
Since fiction explores the human condition and is designed to provoke an emotional reaction in human readers, my thought experiment postulates that AI might come to do this better than human writers. AI might know us better than we know ourselves.
What then? Is our species ready for that day?
No human writer after that time will stand a chance of keeping up with AI writers in quantity or quality. People inclined to take up writing will choose other pursuits and the number of human authors will dwindle. A small niche industry will linger on, since a few purist readers will refuse to read AI-written fiction. That small slice of the market will support a handful of human authors for a while.
Setting aside that tiny minority, think of the millions of readers devouring the prose churned out by clever machines. Assuming they pay for the books, who pockets that money? The AI developers?
What if fiction-writing AI software evolves on its own? That is, the software imagines—and programs—improvements in itself? Who gets the money when AI moves beyond the need for human programmers?
Moreover, what will motivate AI to write? We know why human authors write stories—they feel an urge to say something, in words, about the human condition in story form, and to earn money from doing so.
Why would AI write? What’s in it for them? Will AI feel some similar urge to reach humans emotionally, through language?
I don’t know the answers, and it’s disturbing to think about. Imagine that day when the last human author dies. Still, the advent of superior AI writers may usher in a wonderful era for human readers, able to read fiction surpassing all that’s been written before.
Perhaps, after even the memory of human writers fades, one person driven by an urge no other human feels, will strive to write as well as AIs. That scribbler will learn from the machines, and will put words together as the person’s ancestors once did. Perhaps this lone writer will offer a novel to the world, a novel in the true sense of that word—new. Perhaps readers will be amazed that a human can write as well as a machine.
Maybe that lone author’s efforts will inspire others, leading to a rebirth of human writing not seen since our Stone Age.
There’s a story idea for you, free of charge, from the (human) mind of—
Poseidon’s Scribe
