AI, Authorship and Me: an attempt to wrestle out my position on AI.

I hesitated writing this post. I mean, why add more words to a topic that seems to be bouncing around the internet like a high speed pinball. Opinions, enthusiasm, suspicion, outrage. It’s all there.
So why add my thoughts to the noise? Well, I knew I needed to wrestle out my position on AI - as an author, but also as a person. I also knew that I'm probably not the only one. So I share my thoughts here. My AI WIP (wrestlings-in-progress)... 

AI is a feature of our everyday lives now. Butting in on conversations, tapping us on the shoulder with unsolicited suggestions, underlining our narratives with improvements or promises of time-saving eloquence. But the use of AI also brings with it a myriad of questions and conversations. For me - someone who calls herself an ‘author’ - some of these conversations are concerning. For example, the use of pirated authors’ work to train Large Language Models of AI. 
When the writers' body I belong to suggested I check to see if my work had been used, I dutifully typed my author names into the searches box. Sure enough, one of my books had been used; scanned without my permission or payment. I wasn’t outraged (there was an odd irony that my novel about trafficking that had been used), but I feel somehow connected now to these models who have used my work, even if in a minuscule way, to structure the style, content and advice they now offer.
AI, whether we like it or not, is part of our lives and most, if not all, of us have used it in one form or another. But I’ve found myself wondering how exactly should I use it? 

What are the values I want to hold onto as AI dependency creeps into the world in which I live, work and create?

I am generally wary of the human tendency to jump on the bandwagon of ‘progress’ without counting the cost of that decision, whether for ourselves or those who might be hurt along the way. We live in a consumer driven culture where our first thought is encouraged to be for our own advancement, ease or success. We are trained to ignore whatever may go on behind the scenes, whether that’s environmental damage, theft, exploitation, slavery or human erasure. If I carefully choose my tea and chocolate, or how I engage with fashion and big corporations, should I not bring the same awareness to my engagement with technology? For myself as a creator, but also as a person?

​As I adjust and adapt to a world in which AI tools exist, I want to remain faithful and kind to those I see, but also those I don’t.

 I need wisdom for this, wisdom to know when a tool can extend and bring growth to the skills I already have, and when I will choose to go the hard way - stretching my own brain rather than relying on a ‘solution’ that contradicts my values.
I know my position on AI will morph and change, even as the tools themselves and those that deliver them, morph and change. But for now, for those who are interested, here are my current, wrestled thoughts on the use of AI in my own creative practice:

How am I already using AI? 
Like most people, my interaction with AI has been a gradual awareness of systems and programs that have slipped into my everyday. AI suggests how I word text messages, predicts what should come next in an email (which I always ignore), and highlights my spelling and grammar issues. Forms of AI are happily at work behind the surface of many non-writing-specific apps that I use. 
I sometimes ask an AI program (I won’t name names because I don’t feel like giving them credit) to check my use of commas or semi-colons. Occasionally, when I have to shift into marketing mode and my brain is tired, I might plonk a whole bunch of text into an AI program and ask it to show me how to write that text in ‘marketing speak’. I found this helpful when I needed to rephrase some of the marketing paragraphs for my website home-page. I generally don't use the suggested text word for word, but adapt it to how I want to speak.

What I won’t use AI for…
I won’t use AI to generate images. I have an illustrator for a son, and several as friends. I know it takes years to be as good as they are. I know AI has been trained skimming artists’ work off the internet. I believe in art as human expression. I believe in sustaining that possibility by paying human artists to continue to create. Other authors may feel differently, that’s up to them. But this is where I stand.
I also won’t use AI to create my social media posts (any comments, images or photos I put there will be my own), my blog posts (everything I write here will be AI free) or emails (I promise to be really me, not the shiny/polished version AI could help me produce). 
When I write, whether it’s academic or creative, an article, book, short story or picture book, all of this work will be mine (apart from the above mentioned spelling/grammar support). At this stage, I will not ask AI to help me brainstorm, to offer plot ideas, narrative structures or character images (even for my own use). I may ask AI to suggest some research directions for fiction, but I’ll do the actual research (and check any suggestions given) myself. 

​Further questions to wonder about? 
The unseen, ethical costs of large AI tools continue to bother me, especially those that require ever expanding resources (whether they are environmental, human or otherwise). But I think it’s okay and even important for us to wrestle with these kinds of issues. Here are some of the questions I am continuing to mull over:

• Should I financially contribute to large tech company for a product that has been built off the creative backs of other writers/illustrators/artists? 
• If AI continues to improve the productivity and professionalism of humans, will I be left behind if I choose not to implement it in my creative practice?
• If it takes 10 000 hours to become an expert in something, what will we end up with if everything is quicker and faster but we don’t take the time to learn enough about ourselves, or our craft, to create beautiful work? 
• How can we interact with AI in a way that neither exploits nor justifies the erasure of human contributions in creativity?
• Will we create, as one of my good friends suggested, a new ‘slow-writing/art’ movement driven by ethical concerns and an appreciation of human creativity?

I don't know the answers. Maybe I never will. But for now, I'll continue to wrestle and I will continue to write. Doing my best to honour my reader, and myself - as an author and a human - in a world now equipped with AI.  

Image credit: Me! (I sketched this on my reMarkable in defiance of AI generated art.)