circuit board forming human face to depict ai

Let’s put it this way: I’m not worried about my career.

Am I worried about the fate of human life on earth? Hmm. . . . I mean, not really. A robot takeover probably won’t happen, in my opinion.

However, I’m not placing any bets.

But the subject of this blog post will be the smaller of these scopes: How worried should we writers be?

According to Steve Almond in his fabulous new instruction kit and inspirational pick-me-up for writers, Truth Is the Arrow, Mercy Is the Bow, we shouldn’t be worried at all:

“Artificial intelligence programs pose no threat to your work as a writer. Bots do not possess a mind or heart or soul. They do not dream up stories. They generate content—mindlessly, heartlessly, soullessly—by looking for patterns in huge troves of language and predicting the next word. . . . Practically speaking, this is the precise opposite of how writers work. We’re looking for language that is unexpected—unexpectedly precise, unexpectedly nuanced, unexpectedly musical.”

That’s right. Writing isn’t a chess game where there are precise rules with a winner and loser. Writing is all about speaking truths that have not been spoken before. Or at least not in the particular way of you. You, as a living, breathing human being. A machine can’t get there from copying people’s (and other bots’) writing and rearranging already extant puzzle pieces.

At least, they can’t now. Or anytime in the foreseeable future.

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(When the robot revolution comes, all idle speculation shall be rescinded, lol.)

Truth Is the Arrow, Mercy Is the Bow is a book by a writer for writers. I share it with you today, even if you’re not a writer, because all of us are thinking about AI. But if you do happen to be a writer, here’s one of my favorite quotes from the book. And by the way—I highly recommend this book for all writers. It’s perhaps the most touching and nuanced book about creative writing since the classic 1994 favorite Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott. But back to Almond. He writes:

“Your job as a writer is to love and to mourn, to tell the unbearable story so that others might feel less alone in theirs.”

The act of sitting alone, reading a work of creative writing, is ultimately an act of human connection.

Is AI coming after your job?