I wrote a novel with AI. Writers must embrace artificial intelligence – but we are as valuable as ever | Stephen Marche

I I recently heard an exchange on a playground that may worry AI company executives more than any analyst’s prediction of a bubble. A boy and a girl, maybe 10 years old, were fighting. “This is AI! This is AI!” The girl screamed. What she meant was that the boy was indulging in a new and special kind of nonsense: language that sounds meaningful but has no connection to reality. The children quickly became familiar with the new world.

Artificial intelligence will remain, neither as an apocalypse nor as a solution to all life’s problems, but as a disruptive tool. The recent scandal surrounding Shy Girl, Mia Ballard’s novel, was doubly revealing. Hachette canceled the publication, saying it relied on AI generation (Ballard said that an acquaintance who edited the self-published version used AI, not her). But the book was originally self-published. Apparently readers and editors didn’t mind until the use of AI was pointed out to them.