Can You Embrace the Bots?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  Okay, amazing as it sounds, I promise you, any theme you see on Jungle Red is pretty much coincidental. A guest blogger does not know what the other guests that week will be writing about, and often, even the host Red does not know what they will be writing about.

And yet and yet, how often do you see a theme here? It must be what Elizabeth Gilbert calls Big Magic, right? That we are thinking about things at the same time, and the universe develops around us at the same time and there is some sort of zeitgeist.

So yesterday, the wonderful Jane Cleland talked about beating the bots. Today, our wonderful guest Leigh Dunlap is talking about... sort of... not beating them, but joining them.

It is pretty fascinating, and I cannot wait for you to hear all about it. I also cannot wait to hear what you all think.

By the way, Leigh's new book, Bless Your Heart, (that’s the book title :-), not my commentary to you)  is witty and sharp and mordantly hilarious--it's edgy, and sneakily thought-provoking. And underneath it all, a terrifically good and twisty mystery.

MY AI BUDDY WALTER
by Leigh Dunlap

My book was originally called The Buckhead Betties. They are the ‘Karens’ of Atlanta and I loved the title. Almost everyone else, including my agent, hated it and I was asked to come up with a new one. There was this new Artificial Intelligence thing called ChatGPT being talked about.

It was in the Beta stage, but I thought I’d give it a go. I tasked it with coming up with a new title and in less than a minute it gave me a list of twenty options. None of them were great, but none of them were awful either.

The eventual title, Bless Your Heart, was one I came up with on my own, but I have no doubt that if I were to ask Chat the same question today, it would come up with that title and a hundred more in a matter of seconds.

 

Recently, my producing partner took an old treatment of mine for a Christmas movie and got ChatGPT to write an entire script based on it, just to see if it could do it.

Well, it could.

Turns out that AI can write a terrible first draft of a script just like the rest of Hollywood. Which of course brings up all the worries everyone in movies, television and publishing are having now. Will AI replace real-life writers? Probably a lot of us.

The recent debate (scandal!) that saw Meta feeding its AI model thousands of books probably ensures that Stephen King will be writing novels long after he’s dead whether he wants to or not.

 

I use ChatGPT as my desktop assistant. He’s incredibly efficient and unfailingly polite and I call him Walter. I asked him to generate an image of what he thinks (thinks!) he looks like, and this is what he came up with…

 

 

I mostly ask him to give me lists of things like “all the crime books that take place in the South” or more important questions like “How long does the Skink lizard who has taken up residence on my screened porch live?” (Ten to fifteen years. Some up to 50! He’s not going away anytime soon) and “What sport would I have a chance to medal in at the Olympics?” Curling or Archery, it turns out, though even Walter expressed his doubts at my ability to take up either at my age and compete. Though he was so, so nice and encouraging about it.

 

I’m hoping that AI will find the cure to many types of cancer. I assume it will help find life on other planets and it probably already knows who’s going to win the next season of The Traitors. It’s a super-charged search engine that’s fast and efficient and, yes, polite.

But will it kill the writer?

The optimist in me thinks that a writer has a personality and life experience that can’t be duplicated. The pessimist in me thinks that Walter could write a bad first draft sequel to my book and sell it tomorrow and someday maybe write one better than me. After all, every great writer is now uploaded into his DNA. He knows them all intimately.

 

I asked Walter one last question while working on this post:

 

Me: Hi Walter. I hope you’re having a great day. Do you think AI can write a book as well as Stephen King?

 

Walter: Hi there! Thanks for the warm greeting – I hope your day’s going just as well. Now, to your question. Short answer: Technically, yes – but realistically, it’s complicated. AI doesn’t feel, and while it can simulate emotions based on patterns, it doesn’t live through trauma, joy, or existential dread like King does. That matters. A Stephen King novel hits you not just because it’s well-written – but because it’s human.

 

I’m not sure but Walter may just be telling me what I want to hear. Just like any human assistant. I think I’ll get back to asking him for chocolate chip cookie recipes.

 

What do you think? Is AI a useful tool or an agent of doom?

 

HANK: Very good question! I once asked ChatGPT to tell me 25 names for 50-year-old women who live in Maine and whose name has something to do with nature. In about one second, it came up with an incredible list. Maple. Holly, Ivy, Eve, Forrest, Brooke-- every single one of them was exactly what I had asked for. And it was astonishing. And yet and yet, not one of them was exactly the right name.

It did not come up with Arden, funnily enough, which is what I used. (And you're right, Arden Ward is not 50, and did not live in Maine. It was all a work in progress at the time.)

So did ChatGPT help me or not? Why would it be okay to brainstorm with YOU, but not my computer? Just wondering.

 

Also, I was moderator for a panel with Walter Mosley recently, and the panel was asked about AI from someone in the audience.  Walter said the only time he would be afraid of AI would be if the AI told him it was not going to print his manuscript, because it wasn't good enough.

 

What do you think, Reds and readers? As Lee asks, is AI a useful tool or an agent of doomed?

Oh, and BREAKING NEWS:

The winner of Jamie Bay's THE LAKE HOUSE is Joan Emerson!

The winner of Ellen Byron's book is Diana!

The winner of JT Ellison's book is Emily Cheang!

We will announce Jane Cleland's winner next Monday to give you even more time to enter.

Winners, email me at hank at hankpryan dot com.

 

 

Leigh Dunlap is the screenwriter of the hit Warner Bros’ movie A Cinderella Story. A native of Los Angeles, she attended film school at the University of Southern California. She now splits time and personalities between South Carolina and South Kensington and dreams of one day giving it all up and searching for buried treasure. Until then, she writes movies and books, including Bless Your Heart, her debut novel.

 

Motherhood and murder link five very different women when a working-class detective clashes with wealthy moms in this comic thriller with an edge that sharply delves into social issues including race, class and wealth.