I have a lot to say about AI.

And maybe I will start posting here about my thoughts. Maybe I won’t. I am tired of the division and inability to have a coherent conversation without shock and hysteria on all sides.

But I do have one biggie to share.

Earlier this year I proposed running a writers workshop where we explored the use of AI as a kind of muse, to help us get to draft one much faster.

I received a public flogging for this.

I was a heretic and actual threats were made.

I took down the course.

Leaving aside the very troubling issue of some people shutting down all possibilities because their ideology does not align with someone elses, I wanted to understand why some people had this visceral reaction to what on the surface, seemed a logical extension of successful courses we had already run.

If you don’t work in creative industries, your experience may be different. It seems in other industries, people are nervous of AI because quite rightly, they can sense job insecurity. But most people just can’t be bothered or wilfully ignore it. It’s just another problem on a long list of issues to deal with. And then there are the benefits, which many seem to embrace. Not all and not always of course.

But in the creative industries, the reaction to AI can be extreme.

I refer to the public flogging I received. The messages from close friends that I received, of their utter disappointment that I would use or endorse AI.

I also got just as many messages from close friends, expressing their utter disappointment at people they considered friends, who were attacking me publicly so verbally violently.

To be clear, there is a large group of creative people who are silently using and mastering it too. They are just not admitting it and not poking the bear.

I am not attempting to get into any argument here. But for clarity, my position is that I would rather AI have never been invented. I would rather it had not been trained the way it has. But that is the past. And I can do nothing about what has happened, only what might happen.

I would also rather social media was never invented. And that experiment is not going too well either.

I personally don’t use AI much. With the exception of imagery, I tend to use it just as a curiosity. I wonder what it will do with a ‘problem’ and find myself amused or astonished at what it can do.

But underneath all of it, I have bias.

That not being human made, makes it ‘less than’.

I am AI-ist, if that’s even a word. Again, with the exception of imagery.

Having run Twisted50 for the last few months, I suddenly wondered, ‘what feedback could ChatGPT offer?’ on the short stories that were submitted?

I googled some prompts and settled on this…

As a horror book editor of short stories, please review the following story for both strengths and areas for improvement. On a scale of 1–10, how would you rate it? Be candid and objective in your feedback.

Then I added the story.

The feedback it gave was detailed, almost always pretty good, and if I am honest, as good as the human feedback offered on the site. Maybe even better.

But there is a problem. And this is where my AI-ism comes in.

It was not written by a human, and that, in my mind and soul, makes it ‘less than’.

That’s when it hit me like a lightning bolt.

As creative people, one of the things we crave most is human connection. We create in order to connect. We consume, in order to connect.

We go to watch bands live to experience something ancient and profound. Something deep in our DNA. It unleashes and we feel complete again.  

We love to hear from readers, and readers love to message authors, BECAUSE we are fuelled by human connection.

We love to sit at the back of a cinema and watch a film  that we made with an audience, to feel that connection.

Even negative  reviews and internet hate come from the same place, albeit an inverted and often distorted place.

So is it that simple?

AI is not so much an existential threat.

It’s just because we know that it is not human created. 

And it follows, we don’t receive it in the same way?