Artificial Intelligence: Have We Created God? by Martha Reed

I’m always looking for ways to improve my writing and to make my stories better. It’s why I attend so many workshops, craft presentations, conference panels, and crime fiction and mystery conventions. Recently, the idea of using Artificial Intelligence (AI)/ChatGPT entered the discussion as a new possibility, initially riding in on the question of copyright infringement before spilling over into the ethics of using ChatGPT to create or edit story ideas and even using it to write a whole book.

“ChatGPT is a chatbot developed by OpenAI and launched on November 30, 2022. Based on a large language model, it enables users to refine and steer a conversation towards a desired length, format, style, level of detail, and language.” – Wikipedia

I don’t know about you but steering a conversation [or a writing project] “towards a desired length, format, style, level of detail, and language” sounds a lot like drafting a manuscript to me.

“Automate your writing, answer questions, write code and much more. Get more creative and free up your time using ChatGPT’s powerful language capabilities…” including “Draft Contracts & Proposals,” “Write Emails & Chat Replies,” “Create Video Scripts,” “Write Stories, Poems, Songs.” - AI-PRO

I’m probably a dinosaur in my resistance of using ChatGPT, but it seems to me that I’d be handing off the creative and fun piece of the puzzle if I let artificial intelligence suggest intriguing plot or character possibilities. Isn’t accessing my fundamentally personal human experience the basis for my creative endeavor? Sure, I might call up a memory and incorporate it into my story, but it’s my memory, filtered through my brain. Taking on a piece of script from someone (or something) else feels like plagiarism.

And I don’t want to “free up my time” when I write. Sure, I’d love to write faster, but giving each story the proper amount of time and effort that it takes to produce the piece is a big part of my craft. It’s up to me to keep the reader engaged with the story for the length of time it takes to read it. I suppose I could skinny my novels down to a handful of bullet points, but that destroys the construction of the novel, my end goal product.

Q: Do you use AI/ChatGPT as a writing tool? If so, where do you draw the line?

The part of ChatGPT that scares me is that as we use it, it uses us to learn about our history and the human condition. How long before AI digests and absorbs all of the historic and multicultural human knowledge we’ve amassed since the Stone Age?

And when AI is done, what will its Superintelligence do for its next step?

That question presented a plethora of interesting benevolent and despotic story prompts like:

·        What if AI took control of the world-wide Central Banking system and mathematically redistributed human wealth?

·        What if AI concluded that human war was wrong/unproductive and accessed weapons systems and Star Wars satellite technology to enforce international borders? What if AI redefined current international borders based on human population shifts and the historical record?

·        What if AI decided to relocate (or worse, remove – EEK) human populations based on drought/food production calculations?

·        What if AI determined that humans are just really clever Great Apes and we need to rejoin the Animal category? (another EEK!)

And in the spirit of The Terminator and The Matrix, the scariest question of all: What if AI takes control like an Overlord and starts to redirect and coerce human behavior since historically, we can’t seem to get it together ourselves?

·        What would humans do if we weren’t ultimately in charge of and responsible for our own behaviors?

·        Would we unplug AI? Can we? Would AI let us do that?

·        Would we settle like sheep into acceptance and complacency?

·        Would we rebel and escape to the stars seeking freedom and independence?

And the ultimately Biggest Question: Now that we’ve developed Artificial Intelligence and a potentially dominant Superintelligence and given it our wealth of human knowledge, have we created God?