AI Rebuttal

 

I've asked my friend, the great fantasy novelist, James Kafka, if I could present my argument in defense of artificial intelligence here to his esteemed audience.

 

Greetings Blog Readers,

 

I am a writer who uses artificial intelligence. Please unclutch your pearls, I do not seek to play the devil's advocate or gaslight you with my optimism on this dangerous new technology. Rather, I want to share my experience as a child of the 1980s, so that you can see how this inevitable new era of writing inspires my wonder.

 

The sound of the keyboard the first time I typed my name, long before I started school, clicked and clicked with importance. It sounded like hope. I wasn't old enough to write my name yet. But as I played the Oregon Trail game, I imagined my ancestors forging rivers, marrying the natives, and finally settling in the Willamette River Valley. Games were like a story and I was the main character.

 

We still fought and played outside, but when the doors opened to the back room where the retired monitors sat collecting dust, it was as if the C Prompt were the keys to the dungeon and a horde of gold lay only a few clicks away.

 

Computers promised a portal to magic. Books also led us through adventures to new worlds, but they didn't lead directly to another soul. As I reached adulthood, the Internet entered every home. I abandoned a town of eighty people to embrace the world right when I came of age.

 

When I fell in love with a popular television series, fan fiction extended it indefinitely. If a book from an indie author changed my life, I could email him and express my boundless gratitude. Everyone in my life may have relocated, but no one ever left. As the member of a generation defined by being forgotten latch key kids, technology was the tether to lifelong friends. All community resources were a click away.

 

As a grandmother now, I don't disconnect from the digital world. I keep my Fitbit on my wrist and my phone in my pocket when I hike. Instead, I set my device to “Do Not Disturb” in my home whenever I feel like it. I disconnect when and where I want, because it's not tech that burns you out. It's the people on the other end. The ads. The disinformation. The propaganda. The divisive rhetoric. The horror of the over-evolved chimps downing energy drinks and beating their chests...

 

But I understand luddites. I was raised by two back-to-earth hippies who shunned everything with a button. I know artificial intelligence spooks people. We can't predict how it will be used or who will drop it on their enemy like a nuclear bomb. Over the years, we've seen the worst of human nature at www-dot-something-really-dark-and-scary-dot-com. If a bit of that slips into a psychopathic server with quantum processing speeds, surely, we'll all wake up in the netherworld tomorrow?

 

No, not really, but we are experiencing what it must have been like when the first ape brought home a burning branch ready to cook their food. And while I love fiddling with Chatgpt, it has no soul. It mimics life. It has no life of its own. It sounds exactly like us, but so does a mockingbird.

 

We aren't on the precipice of discovering a new form of life, but I think we are looking for the first time at how a mind operates without a soul. We're about to discover that things we can't measure, things we dismiss as supernatural or spiritual, are real. We're learning more about what makes us human.

I'm okay with that. If AI runs loose like a virus, people will direct a hoard of AI after it to contain and hospitalize the afflicted. If it's made into a weapon, it will be used for defense. Where there is bad, there is good, and vice versa. The real threat comes from within us and what matters is the balance between the forces of creation and destruction. As natural innovators, we're a curious species–always fighting against the same forces, engaged in the same battle against ourselves.

 

Carrie Bailey Allen writes as OA Allen and edits The Handbook of The Writer Secret Society (https://peevishpenman.com/pages/wss-handbook). She's currently obsessed with researching ancient alchemy (www.vermontpurealchemy.com) and she's still furious about what James Kafka let happen to Tark, in his first book, Vanguard.

My associates are not as open as I about allowing opposing opinions.

                             Thank you Carrie Bailey Allen

Recent Ice Age Drama

Near Stag Clan Territory:

On a clear, frigid afternoon at the Neanderthal Creek by Crosgarc Estates in the Northern Waste Lands, Zaab Stag was fishing with his new, z-3200 fishing pole alongside his brother Agga, when a very lucky thing happened; Zaab hooked a small, Stumptooth Gambusia fish.

Stumptooth Gambusia is a vanishing species, and Zaab Stag, who is a vanishing species researcher at the University of Cro-Magnon State College, has been trying to tag and record the Neanderthal Creek, Stumptooth Gambusia fish, since they were listed as “threatened” under The End is Near Act. 

The law effectively makes it illegal to catch and eat the endangered fish.

The law is also the catalyst for the Stag Clan's attempt to halt a huge and controversial ceremonial burial site project at Crosgarc Estates proposed by the Cave Bear Clan.

The Stumptooth Gambusia fish relies on the running glacier waters feeding into Neanderthal Creek to eat, nest and live.

 

Zaab weighed and tagged the fish before gently placing it back in the creek. 

“They’re really a repulsive looking fish,” said Agga.

“True, but the species is important to the local ecology; they eat invasive Akstafa Spring Roaches and clean the water by consuming Skibo Pelican scum,” replied Zaab.

 

Not a Stumptooth Gambusia, but it is ugly.

Professors and ecological groups of the Stag Clan warn that the ceremonial burial site would be devastating for the fish. Also, other Clan’s say the burial project could have a far-reaching economic impact beyond Crosgarc Estates, frightening the vacation industry and other commerce downstream.

 

“We will do whatever it takes to ensure that the Stumptooth Gambusia fish receives the protections it is authorized under The End is Near Act,” said Gnurk Nenge, a senior attorney for the Stag Clan and Biological Multiplicity Group, a profit-making federation working to protect imperiled species.

 

“This is a troubling situation,” said Dhar the Brave, attorney for the Cave Bear Clan. “The Cave Bear Clan is wanting to build a ceremonial burial site for all to enjoy, and they understand the Stumptooth Gambusia fish would be a tragic loss. But what the heck, it's just a fish; there are plenty more in the creek.”

 

The Shamans Court of Amalgamated Cave-People Human Rights said they’ll rule on the case with “reasonable and prudent” objectivity, and could adopt a plan to minimize the impact on the fish in the project area. The possibilities may include a new habitat relocation proposal or a huge fish fry festival in the spring.

 

The Shamans Court will issue their decision after the big Wholly Mammoth hunt later in the year.

j/k

 

 

My Competition is Me

 Greetings Fellow Writers and Readers

 Why do I write is today's topic - and other stuff

I write for several hours every day, working on short stories and novels. The company I write for is me. I work alone in an office full of bizarre and peculiar items that has no value to anyone but me. Occasionally, I will take a break and chat with other published novelists and freelance journalists. What I write about is of my own choosing, and I never run out of ideas. The pay is non-existent. The downside, however, is only a small fraction of what I write will ever be read, even the books and articles I have already published.

Why?

The reason is, thousands of books are published every year, and blogs and social media drench the internet with words to be read.

My Creative Team

And now there is a new participant in the game for writers to compete against – AI ChatGPT.  

Some have embraced this new technology, because the human quest, for some, has been and always shall be, the need for speed and wealth. But computerized words are just words with no compassion, love, pain, or sorrow. AI is incapable of understanding the human condition. Only a writer, pecking out words, in the dark of night, sitting all alone, can instill passion into a story.

 

Passion: strong and barely controllable emotion.

 

Passion: there is no greater word I could think of that perfectly describes the essential ingredient of every good or great story.

 

Only humans know what it feels like to shed a tear, hug a sick child, lose a loved one, or my personal favorite – squeezing my toes in the puddles of mud in my garden after a good soaking from a warm summers rain.

 

Sorry, I wandered off from the point of this article.

 

When you first begin writing a novel, there is a question you should ask yourself.

 

Who or what are you writing for?  My answer is always – Myself. Mainly, because I really need to dump all the tempestuous, creepy, and strange stuff that roams freely inside my head.

 

“I know that’s right, Mr. Kafka.”

“Thanks, jimmy. Now go back to sleep.”

 

My competition has always been me against me. It is how I push myself to be better.

 

I don’t hold any ill feelings for those who write for fame or fortune. We all have our different reasons for writing novels and I understand – you do you.

 

I will leave with this for now – Prick your finger and add three droplets of blood to the Goblet of Desire on the night of the full moon; the final ingredient necessary to create the Potion of Passion and Wickedness. Yes, Wickedness, my young apprentice. It is vital a component. Wickedness to twist their brain in such a vile manner that it will force them to continue reading and constantly begging for more, and more, and more, never wanting the story to end! 

(sinister laugh)

 

Until next time, always and forever, write like you mean it.

 

j/k