I do not use, nor have I ever used, artificial intelligence for storytelling. And the fact that I even have to make such a declaration is disconcerting. Honing my craft has been an ongoing, forty-year endeavor. I wrote my first stories on the backs of pink order tickets in my father’s restaurant in the early 80s. I learned to type on a Brother typewriter before graduating to a Commodore AMIGA word processor. For half a century, having a computer write my story for me was pure science fiction.
I spend years planning, writing, and editing my books. The fact that certain wannabe authors today can churn out a novel in minutes is abhorrent to me. It is an insult to the written word and the history of literature as a whole. Whether AI writing can ever rise to the level of Dostoevsky or Stephen King is besides the point, because AI art isn’t art, AI music isn’t music, and AI storytelling isn’t storytelling.
The purpose of all creative pursuits is to communicate the thoughts, feelings, and unique perspectives of the creator. Art is how we share what it means to be human. A language learning model can never learn to do this because it isn’t alive, isn’t human, and does not possess a will of its own. A novel produced by AI is still written by AI, and I would not care to attain fame and fortune selling a book that isn’t mine. That being said, I do not begrudge those who dabble in ChatGPT (or whatever it is) for fun. Fans send me AI-generated images inspired by my books, and I am flattered to receive them. Content made this way, in and of itself, is not evil—it simply lacks value. It’s like mistaking a photograph of the Mona Lisa for the real thing. And therein lies the danger. There is a stark difference between the automobile replacing the horse and buggy and thinking machines replacing us.
“Knowledge not tempered by wisdom sows destruction.”
This is the opening line from my first book, Ages of Aenya. It is in reference to the Zo, an advanced civilization that trades its flesh-and-blood bodies for cyborg ones and, in doing so, loses its humanity. I have been warning my readers about the dehumanizing effects of technology for over two decades. This is where, I believe, we are headed. Every little suggestion influences how we think, what we learn, and what we believe. Just as we have already chained ourselves to the addictive properties of social media, we will, slowly but surely, lose control of AI. Without realizing how or when it happened, there will come a day when the machines begin using us. Our lust for comfort and the limited scope of our lifespans make us incapable of foreseeing, and steering clear of, the calamity we are fast approaching. But there is hope. Like no technology before it, society is rising up against this mechanical chimera. The wealthiest and most powerful among us spend billions shoving AI down our throats — even as I type this, WordPress is urging me to use its generative text feature — because the only value the rich can understand is the pursuit of greater wealth. But for those of us who care more about meaning than money, AI has nothing to offer but the loss of our self-worth and the very reasons we find life worth living.
The Art of Storytelling 
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