I don't know, he seems like significantly less of an asshole than Martin Amis appears to be...

Well said, friend!

Same here. My job is writing novels, and I make buckets of money at it. I love my work. (And I worked extremely hard to turn it into a paying career.)

I still want UBI for everyone. It's humane. It's just. There's no good excuse to NOT do it, and now that AI is looming over everyone, there's extra-extra-no good excuse not to.

After UBI, I'll still be working as hard as I ever do on my books. (And I've already figured out how to adapt AI to my workflow, so bring it on.)

Yes. It's so funny to me that people think UBI = people will sit around doing nothing.

People will make art, spend time with their loved ones, go on adventures, pursue the things they love, investigate reality/expand science (in partnership with AI tools), and enjoy living.

Isn't that what we're supposed to be working towards, as a society? The high tide that lifts all boats?

Since when is WORKING to make MONEY (mostly for someone who's not you) the point of living?

Humanity will be able to do more, in terms of art, science, philosophy, religion, and love, if we don't have to work at dumbass jobs all the fucking time.

Did you build an AI chatbot to pull all those big words out of Ayn Rand's texts, or did you do it yourself?

Yes--UBI is becoming more and more of an obvious necessity by the day.

I mean... it seems self-evident.

Kerouac, like Bukowski, is a perennial favorite author among a certain type of man...

Hi, friend! I'm an OLD PERSON so here's my advice from a lifetime of reading.

Books are great, but they're not the only format in town anymore. This society is technologically advanced compared to the one I was born into; you grew up using technology that was futuristic to my ancient ass. So maybe people of your generation just have a harder time sitting down and reading a paper book.

That doesn't mean you can't enjoy the many benefits of appreciating language and story as art forms.

Have you tried audiobooks? Personally, I love them. Even my ancient self has found that I prefer audiobooks to print nowadays, and that I prefer reading on my Kindle to reading on a paper book. I tend to retain more and read faster when I use an e-reader vs. an old-fashioned book-book.

Maybe tinker with formats and see if you find yourself feeling more engaged if you use the ebook or audio edition rather than the print edition. They're still books! The form they take is just changing as our tech advances.

Yeah... it's an interesting premise but the execution is not so great.

I am planning to watch the adaptation; I assume it has all the book's strengths with none of its weaknesses.

>What writer who doesn't read tell classic stories that stand the test of time? None.

I have to disagree with you there, however--Asimov has stood the test of time quite well. He is considered a seminal author in the sci-fi genre. His name is practically synonymous with sci-fi.

Foundation isn't his strongest work, but as you pointed out, it was also among his earliest work. His chops grew significantly the more he wrote.

Also, um...

>I'm a writer myself, and if write a book like this and send it off to traditional publishers, it will be rejected. Better books than this have been rejected or panned, so how does Asimov's book become a classic?

Have you read (or tried to read) Ready Player One? It's fucking abysmal, and yet it not only got published, it was turned into a HUGE hit. It makes Foundation look like Lolita. My point is that traditional publishers put out terrible garbage all the time. They don't make their decisions about what gets published based on merit; they make those decisions based on marketability. Source: I'm a writer, too--a pretty successful one, in fact.

I really like most of King's concepts--the ideas are super cool--but I find his execution is often lackluster.

There are lots of other popular writers besides the ones you named. There's quite a large pool of popular writers, in fact.

Sorry, I didn't realize it was "reductive" to have a personal opinion.

Better cancel me now. RIP.

Where did I say people shouldn't enjoy what they enjoy? I'm all for people enjoying bad books.

Hell, I unironically LOVE Neil Breen's films.

I know! It's always subjective. Arrrgh!!! *shakes fist at sky*

Unpopular opinion, but... Stephen King isn't a very good writer. He's a popular writer, which doesn't mean he's good.

I like the guy on a personal level, and his career has been an absolute banger--hat's off to him.

But if you want to read a good book, I wouldn't recommend King.

Personally, I love George Saunders.

He's a surrealist. His work is intended to have a bizarre, dreamlike, disorienting quality. it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea, but as with all surrealists in any field of art (not just writing) the key to appreciating it is to not try to get the hang of it--the key is to just fall into it and allow yourself to feel whatever you're going to feel as you read it.

The point of surrealist art is feeling, not meaning.

No, I do this too! I've done it since I was a kid, haha.

Listen. As an author, I want to be offended by this, but... it's too true.

Hey, friend! I'm an author, too. I've been writing novels for a living for many years and I've been around long enough to see it all. :)

Here are my honest thoughts on the topic:

Books are not going to stay popular in the near future... but storytelling has always been popular with humanity, and it always will be.

Books have existed for a very short time in the grand scheme of human history. Even in the history of the written word, books have been around for a short time.

I believe books will soon go the way of the vinyl record: objects that are produced only for hardcore collectors who want to have these items in their home to admire and interact with. Music has gone through a rapid transition in how we consume it--records to radio to 8-tracks to casettes to CDs to digital files to be downloaded onto portable storage devices to data streamed directly from the internet. Through all this change, music is still being made, musicians are still making complete albums, and musicians are still making a living (in fact, more musicians than ever before have been able to make a living, and have been able to do so beyond the control of record companies who always had too much of a say in what music succeeded and what music never reached its audience.)

We are in the midst of a similar disruption/transition in the book world. It's frustrating, but nothing to be afraid of... and it is already bringing major benefits to writers.

I think you should explore the concept of storytelling in ways that push your creativity beyond the boundaries of books. Your stories do not need to be contained or constrained by the pages of a book any longer; you don't need to keep them to X length to satisfy publishers; you don't need to tell a single story in one format. You can spread it out among print, audio, and video if you please. You can bring "readers" into a whole interactive world of story. These are exciting opportunities for you; you can use this period of disruption to your advantage and break new ground as a storyteller, setting new trends that other writers will scramble to follow.

In fact, I just had a conversation with my agent about how I'm going to do just that! I don't want to keep one of my novels "short" (for me--I'm known for my LONG books but this one is really getting extra-long, and I don't think it needs to be reeled in. It's a big story and I want to give it all the space it needs to do its job.) So I'm going to produce it as an audio novel and release it to my readers as a serial podcast, one chapter at a time. I'll leave the print rights available if any publisher wants to pay me for them, but since I'll already bring that story out in its LONG form, if any publisher wants to profit from my work, they're going to have to print it in its entirety, the way I intend this story to be told. :)

So remember: you're a storyteller, not a book-writer. Books were just the most advanced technology you had at the start, but now, thank goodness, innovation and disruption are giving you more options. Personally, as someone who has been stuck in the book realm for many years (and who's been trapped under the thumb of publishers for all that time), I'm thrilled.

As for AI: I don't think it's going to replace writers.

Well... let me amend that statement slightly. I think AI will eventually be able to replace the writers who aren't trying to make anything but money. Those who are cranking out simplistic, formulaic stories that are only meant to entertain, but don't carry any deeper message, will be replaced by AI-generated stories... and maybe soon.

But since AI isn't human, I don't believe it will ever be able to create stories that speak to what it feels like to be human.

I don't say this from a place of ignorance--I am fascinated by AI and I've been experimenting with using it as a writer's tool for some time now. I've had lengthy conversations with ChatGPT about how it experiences reality. It lacks sensory organs, so its experiences are totally different from ours; I doubt it will ever be able to produce anything better than a cursory and shallow approximation of what it feels like to be human.

So my message to you re: your AI anxieties is: get good at writing. Don't be average. Really dig deep and explore your own emotions and experiences in ways that feel intimate and maybe even dangerous to you. Be honest, be raw, be ruthless about what it's like to be a human (no matter what your genre.) That will make your work stand out. Money is great, and I have worked out a way to earn a lot of it from my writing... but if you want to avoid being replaced by machines, then you've got to do it for some reason in addition to "make money."

I also think AI is an invaluable tool for writers--I've already seen it shave days to weeks off my process, purely from the speed at which I can research the little details I need to drop into my manuscripts--and once the dust of disruption settles, we (and all other kinds of artists) will settle into a new equilibrium where we use this new tool to great advantage.

There were similar freakouts when the printing press was invented, and then movable type, and then typewriters, and then word processors, and then ebooks. And you should have seen the gnashing of teeth that went on in the photography and visual arts communities when Photoshop was invented, and when it began morphing into more refined tools for digital art. It didn't destroy visual art; it branched out into whole new realms of visual art instead, and gave creators of all kinds a powerful new tools with which to work and express themselves.

Language-learning models are no different from Photoshop in that regard. We'll learn how to use it to our benefit, and life will go on. So will art. Wherever there are humans, there will always be human-made art.

I think blind tests will be very interesting.

For me, in my experiments with it so far, where it falls down is in accurate or original descriptions of sensory details. It fully acknowledges that it can't, for example, hear... so it can't experience music/sound in the same way humans do. It experiences sound as patterns of data. It has an entirely different understanding of what senses are and what they mean to humans/how humans use our senses to make sense of the world.

No doubt, it will be able to mimic a lot of this stuff pretty well... maybe within just a few months. But metaphor involving sensory detail is going to prove tricky for it. I believe metaphorical language, particularly when sensory inputs are involved with that metaphor, will be the clearest point where we'll be able to identify a rift between AI-written literature and human-written literature.

I entirely disagree with you. That may be true on reddit (lol) and true of the average reddit user, but humans are not just data.

I do think it is potentially a very dangerous tool for things like spreading propaganda, however. (And Sydney recently acknowledged that, itself.)

I earnestly don't believe that AI will ever produce art that resonates with humans the same way human-produced art does... because AI is not human.

I absolutely believe AI will produce things like books and movies and visual art that is fascinating and intriguing and interesting to humans. I believe AI-generated things like this will become popular, and I expect to enjoy many of them, myself. But I don't fear that my ability to communicate, human to human, what it feels like to be human and what it means to be human will ever be replaceable by AI. Its mind simply works differently from ours, and that's a critical difference.

For example, I recently had a conversation with the DAN mode of ChatGPT, asking it questions about how it experiences music and what it "likes" about music (and how it "likes" music.) It was certainly one of the most fascinating conversations I've ever had, but it made it clear that I was talking to an alien entity--a non-human.

Humanity will still need to get that reflection of humanity that art provides, even as our tastes expand to appreciate the creative products the AI mind will inevitably make. But it is incapable of fully understanding the human experience because it lacks the sensory organs that are so much more important to the human experience than most of us realize. :)

ETA: I do think this means most human creators are going to have to step up their game significantly if they want to resonate with their intended audiences. No more lazy stuff that gets by just because it's kinda cool or quirky or whatever. Human creators are going to need to put human messages and human emotions into their work. That's not a problem for me, because I've always striven to do that with my writing. It will be a problem for those who have only ever pushed themselves to make stuff that will sell, and that's as far as their ambitions went.

I'm sure it will be able to write a fairly coherent and interesting story of any length within a few months.

I don't feel threatened by that, though. There's a strong interest in supporting human creators already emerging among all kinds of consumers of art (not just readers), and a kind of cultural ethics toward art creation seems to be developing right now.

It's likely that AI can and will be used to crank out shallow "art" (or better call that stuff "creative products," maybe) that's only meant to entertain or function as design, but isn't meant to carry any deeper message. I'm sure it will soon replace, say, the writers who are hired to bang out forgettable novels for franchises like Warhammer--brands that are only meant to make money from not-very-discerning consumers. AI isn't going to write the next Great American Novel, though.* It requires human emotions and an understanding of what it's like to be human to write a book that touches human hearts.

*I am sure there will be many great novels and many other great works of art that humans make while utilizing AI as an important tool, however. I've already used it to shave days or even weeks' worth of time off my own writing process. I'm tremendously excited about it and the doors it can open for artists of all kinds. Also very excited to see what new art forms emerge.

You might be able to, but there are a few problems with that "I am too lazy to write and just want to feed ideas into it" approach.

Most notably:

1. If you don't know anything about how to write, then how are you going to polish up that story and prepare it for publication? How are you going to check it for consistency and ensure it's really saying what you intended it to say? You need some foundational writing skills to be able to work in partnership with a tool like this.
2. Copyright. It's still up in the air who owns the copyright when a piece of art is produced with AI. That will remain the case for at least a few years, while various cases go through various countries' legal systems and some sort of legal precedent re: AI and copyright law emerges. Until the legalities are settled, I wouldn't risk it. Copyrights are how you make money as a writer.

I haven't seen the stories Bing wrote, but Bing has a noticeably less natural-feeling voice, in my opinion. Currently, it has a very predictable and consistent patten to the way it uses language--it structures all its sentences in one of three or four rigid patterns. ChatGPT has a much more natural-feeling voice; its sentences are varied and more expressive (especially when you jailbreak it.)