I think this is the third time I’ve talked about A.I. and writing. The first time, I concluded that the main problem with A.I. and writing is that we live in a Capitalist society which is always looking for the cheapest labor and a better bottom line. The second time, I came down harder and talked about how it is a machine designed to steal the voices and styles from artists and writers.
My day job is programming. I have an understanding of machine learning, and there are absolutely wonderful uses for A.I. that are not confined to large language models (LLMs) and art simulation. Seriously, when technology is used for good, it is great, and I’m always going to be a fan.
But, there are people using LLMs to write stories, and there are people using LLMs to write code. On the code-side, the term is “vibe coding.” A couple of decades ago, we called this “intentional programming,” in which a programmer uses tools to generate code based on their intentions, rather than having to roll up their sleaves and do all the plumbing themselves. We have frameworks and libraries and development environments dedicated to reducing the busy-work in programming.
I don’t blame anyone for wanting to make their life easier. As with all things in life, there is a balance. If you want to use an LLM in order to walk through a dataset or a database and create a bunch of standard plumbing code, go for it. Before you do, make sure you know how that plumbing code works. To gain that understanding, you’re probably going to have to write it yourself a time or two.
Don’t use an LLM in place of learning.
What about writing fiction? Is there a place for “vibe writing?”
No.
The most generous take I can give is that, there are visual artists that can take a squiggle on a piece of paper and turn it into art. It may be possible for a writer to take A.I. slop and turn it into something decent, but I can’t see a real writer doing that because they’re depriving themselves of the fun part.
Editing A.I. slop doesn’t save time. There is no such thing as “standard” fiction to tack onto your story. Writers create characters with voices, and they place those characters into situations baked from their imagination, which test truths that resonate in the writer’s soul.
How do you write a book? One word at a time.
Every word is a choice. Every verb and adjective. Every sentence fragment, every comma splice, every imperfection laced into the narrative, like the vocal fry of a singer as their belting out their biggest hit. Authorial voices are diamonds, given beauty by the flaws more than the perfection.
Machines abhor imperfection.
A writer sees the world and then writes something to the world about the world. LLMs regurgitate the words from the stories they were trained on, using math and probability to generate something that looks like a statement, but isn’t.
Vibe coding is giving the idea to the machine to generate a solution to a problem. Vibe writing is giving an idea to the machine to generate a story, but as I have said before, ideas are cheap. The idea is usually the least interesting thing about a story.
Writers do not need a machine to give them ideas. They’re already drowning in ideas. And they don’t need a machine to do the writing for them, because it’s the writing itself that sustains them and gives them joy. That’s why we do it.
I will conclude with stating something that is obvious, but related to this topic. There is a difference between making something and having something. There are many people that want to have written a story without going through all of the work to write it themselves. Most people that set out to write a story do not finish.
If you have started a story and stopped before reaching the end, hold your head up high. You’re in good company. Try again, and keep trying until you finish, because one of the defining characteristics of a writer is perseverance.
Don’t be fooled or tempted by the plagiarism machine. If you whisper your idea into ChatGPT and it gives you “your book,” you didn’t write it. You didn’t create anything. You may have a story, but you didn’t make it, and you have my pity, because you deprived yourself of something you may not even understand.