Hugh Howey has thoughts on how AI is going to change writing and publishing.
He sees AI books becoming a significant chunk of the book market.
Basically, if the writing is good, it’s good, and people won’t care who (or what) wrote it. They’ll get sucked into the narrative and that will be that.
He points to James Patterson books, which aren’t written by James Patterson, but by (largely) nameless wannabes who are getting a chance to write a book under his guidance, and get access to his multi-million audience.
There are a lot of people who are hardline anti-AI, but I hear a lot of ordinary people talking about how wonderful AI is.
That may change as more jobs are impacted by AI.
I am not sure which way its going to go: either AI will replace tens of millions of jobs, and earn back the trillions investors have poured into it, or it won’t, the AI bubble will collapse, and AI will only fill niche areas of the economy where it makes actual economic sense.
Remember, ChatGPT subscriptions hide the true cost of AI; OpenAI is absorbing the loss until we become dependent on it. Eventually our skills will deteriorate, and we will be unable to live without AI help.
Remember Wall-E?
Remember the Eloi and the Morlocks?
Granted, a LOT of this depends on how good AI gets.
Note that advertising and propaganda has gotten increasingly sophisticated and effective over the last one hundred years.
Today, with almost limitless information on every single individual in high tech societies, advertising is more targeted and refined than ever. AI will allow advertisers to target individuals according to their personal vulnerabilities, personal history, traumas, and psychological triggers.
If AI gets smart enough, and has enough information, it will be able to craft irresistible narratives, and get us to do whatever the heck it wants.
With limitless computing power and information, it could craft novels (or, heck, full fledge virtual reality experiences) that tap into our primal drives and individual weaknesses, making even the smartest and strongest willed eager puppets.
AI narratives will be more compelling, more customized, and inconceivably (for a human) effective compared to anything written by a human.
Think of the banana split sundae: the sundae is a technological hack of our primal desire for sweets. In nature, best we’re going to have is, say, a some berries off a raspberry bush.
Now, people have been collecting, concentrating and even fermenting fruits for thousands of years, to feed that craving (and get drunk, another hack).
The banana split sundae is the apex of this: a bajillion calorie confection that our taste buds find irresistible.
The AI will essentially be able to craft the memetic equivalent: ads, infectious memes and stories that humans have no defence to.
Because once the AI knows someone right down to the genetic level, and all their history, you can virtually hack their consciousness, slip past their reason, their emotional safeguards, and manipulate them like, well, puppets.
Neurolinguistic programming BS is nothing compared to what is coming.
And that, I suspect, is where publishing will wind up, eventually.
On the plus side(?), by that point, it will be the least of our problems.
Far greater will be the irresistible psychological manipulation by malign actors on an international, national, religious, racial and ethnic level, which will pose an existential threat to human-centred society.
It will be used by our trillionaire class to turn us against each other, to divide and conquer, and keep themselves on top in perpetuity.
