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I read the novel 'written by AI'
The second half of the survey about Backstory will now follow next week… what follows was too juicy to wait! WELL, WE WERE WARNED. Before the reader even reaches the prologue of Shy Girl by Mia Ballard, you alight on a chunky “WARNING”. The book, you are told, will “leave you squirming and linger in your mind for days. Proceed with caution.”Quite. The squirming that Ballard has prompted, though, has been less about the graphic depictions of the “absolutely feral” controlling relationship between Gia and Nathan, and more over the question of how a major publisher put out a novel that its “author” now concedes was edited with the help of AI. (Ballard denies using AI herself, saying it was used by someone she hired to edit the novel.) Hell, the book even (briefly) graced the bookshelves of Backstory. Blushes all round.When The New York Times broke the story last week, the publisher pulled the book. Darby, our bookshop manager, banished our last remaining copy to the basement with this appropriately stern note:Brutal, umcomfortable and visceralAs usual with my perverse run-towards-fire instinct, all of this fuss made me more, not less, keen to read the thing.And I have bad news.The writing is not bad. I mean, obviously it is bad. Unreadably so: I eventually allowed myself to give up after 100 pages. But it is not that bad. I’ve read much worse, both in raw copy in newsrooms and novels published by celebrities to much ballyhoo. If AI did any more than just brush up the punctuation, I have to conclude that it’s really not at all bad at this writing game.Sure, there is some deeply weird phrasing (“I just trudge upstairs…the weight of his smile pressing into my back”), lots of passive voice (“When I finish, the plate is rinsed immediately”) and some slightly peculiar lists (“I bring out the roast, the green beans, the potatoes…”). Everything is either sticky, wet, steaming or draping, or else contained within Declarative. Short. Sentences.But if anything, the overall impression is of a story that is overwritten rather than underdone, as if the author or the editor or the bot — let’s say “the collaborators” — is trying just a little too hard. When a character is at ease, their body is “loose, unguarded, comfortable”; when they are not, they are weighed down by “a suitcase big enough to fit forever”.I disliked this derivative and poorly written novel. But it felt like I was reading a derivative and poorly written novel, not a random amalgamation of words.To show me ...
Artificial intelligence in fiction - Wikipedia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Artificial intelligence is a recurrent theme in science fiction, whether utopian, emphasising the potential benefits, or dystopian, emphasising the dangers. The notion of machines with human-like intelligence dates back at least to Samuel Butler's 1872 novel Erewhon. Since then, many science fiction stories have presented different effects of creating such intelligence, often involving rebellions by robots. Among the best known of these are Stanley Kubrick's 1968 2001: A Space Odyssey with its murderous onboard computer HAL 9000, contrasting with the more benign R2-D2 in George Lucas's 1977 Star Wars and the eponymous robot in Pixar's 2008 WALL-E. Scientists and engineers have noted the implausibility of many science fiction scenarios, but have mentioned fictional robots many times in artificial intelligence research articles, most often in a utopian context. The notion of advanced robots with human-like intelligence dates back at least to Samuel Butler's 1872 novel Erewhon.[1][2] This drew on an earlier (1863) article of his, Darwin among the Machines, where he raised the question of the evolution of consciousness among self-replicating machines that might supplant humans as the dominant species.[3][2] Similar ideas were also discussed by others around the same time as Butler, including George Eliot in a chapter of her final published work Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879).[2] The creature in Mary Shelley's 1818 Frankenstein has also been considered an artificial being, for instance by the science fiction author Brian Aldiss.[4] Beings with at least some appearance of intelligence were imagined, too, in classical antiquity.[5][6][7] Utopian and dystopian visions[edit] Artificial intelligence is intelligence demonstrated by machines, in contrast to the natural intelligence displayed by humans and other animals.[8] It is a recurrent theme in science fiction; scholars have divided it into utopian, emphasising the potential benefits, and dystopian, emphasising the dangers.[9][10][11] Brent Spiner portrayed the benevolent AI Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Optimistic visions of the future of artificial intelligence are possible in science fiction.[12] Benign AI characters include Robbie the Robot, first seen in Forbidden Planet on 1956; Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation from 1987 to 1994; and Pixar's WALL-E in 2008.[13][11] Iain Banks's Culture series of novels portrays a utopian, post-scarcity space...
Publishers face reckoning as AI-written novel slips through detection
TL;DR: The revelation that horror novel Shy Girl may be up to 78% AI-generated has sent shockwaves through publishing. AI detection tools remain unreliable ...
I wrote a novel using AI. Writers must accept artificial intelligence – but we are as valuable as ever | Stephen Marche | The Guardian
Generative models are fundamentally cliche machines. If you ask AI to write a film script, it will produce an average film script masterfully. If you ask it to write an essay, it will produce an average essay masterfully. Once upon a time, mastery of the banal was adequate for writers. It was enough to prove that you were capable of writing. But that skill has no purpose any more – it can be automated.
