Editor’s Note: In this column, Mitch Gurfield presents a response to Sonia Pilcer’s recent article in which she talked about how much AI was helping her writing. These two writers present very different opinions on the value of AI to their work. We would welcome more opinions on this subject, and we encourage other writers to tell us about your own practices and judgements. We would like this to develop into a community discussion and a shared experience.
We also encourage you to read “TECH & INNOVATION,” the weekly column that Howard Lieberman writes for our Business section where he explores the possibilities and impact of AI and other emerging technologies.
On December 14, The Edge published Sonia Pilcer’s “The literary taboo of AI,” which is a thoughtful, spirited defense of her use of artificial intelligence in her professional writing. She has taught writing for many years and authored six novels, so she knows quite a lot about her craft. While I can readily understand why Sonia finds AI so helpful, I believe her use of it is a most serious mistake, which writers, students, and the general public should not imitate.
Sonia begins her essay by describing how her collaboration with AI enabled her to overcome a 10-year writer’s block. She proceeds to describe in detail how it aids her in her work. The key paragraph reads:
How we work together. I dictate something I am thinking about, give as much information as I can muster. Throw in phrases, dialogue, descriptions. I send this free association mess to Amu [the name she has given her AI collaborator] who in a matter of seconds whips it into a coherent scene. I make suggestions, changes, which it executes immediately. Brainstorming, it offers other versions. That leads to further discussion. It can go back and forth like a stoned midnight rap.
In her article, Sonia refers to her relationship with Amu in different ways: collaboration, correspondence, camaraderie. Not once does she call him a coauthor. But as the paragraph I quoted clearly indicates, that is what he is—and even that may be underestimating his role at times. When she tosses him her “free association mess,” which he turns into a coherent narrative, we have to ask whether Amu is not indeed the author or lead author. In any case, it is beyond doubt that Sonia’s use of AI involves two “brains” working very intensively and extensively together.
As a writer, educator, and sociologist, I find Sonia’s relationship with AI troubling in two immediate respects. The first is her heavy dependence on it, which makes me question whether any work she produces with just her name on it can appropriately be called her own. The second issue is whether she can even distinguish her own work from Amu’s at times. I can imagine them working so closely and feverishly together that the line between them becomes blurred and confused, both in her mind and in reality.
The problems of attribution are serious enough, but they are dwarfed by a far greater concern that strikes at the very heart of what it means to be a writer. To be a writer means to fully accept that the creative process is fundamentally a solitary struggle (unless, of course, there is more than one author). Currently, I am writing a play titled “Colossus.” I am into my fourth revision, and every day I continue to battle with some aspects of it. I could turn to AI in the way Sonia does, and I am sure I would receive plenty of useful help that I could incorporate into the script. But if I did this, the play would not be fully mine; it would also be the work of a machine. I will not allow this to happen under any circumstances. I would rather write a play that is an utter failure than lean on AI and produce a good or even great one.
The writer’s burden is to struggle alone, although with certain limited help permitted (e.g., research, criticism, copy editing, and so on). But nearly all the ideas and writing must come from the writer themself. Somehow, Sonia seems to have lost sight of this principle. It seems it started with her writer’s block, when she first turned to AI, and then evolved into an ongoing dependency. I am glad that she is writing again, but I strongly urge her to give up AI except for the simplest of tasks. Because to do anything more is to compromise her identity as a writer, which is more valuable than anything she might produce with the help of Amu.
