You don’t need yet another rant about AI (except, maybe take a look at Pope Leo’s), specifically generative AI, but I’m going to write one anyway. For my own protection and survival as a creative person. As a writer. Because the day will come when I might be accused of using AI in my writing and have no way to prove otherwise.

I noticed when preparing my last post, that WordPress is now loaded with AI options. So here’s my stand on so-called “artificial intelligence.”

No. Just no. I don’t and won’t use it for writing, for brainstorming, for outlining, for grammar, for polishing, for f**king anything. There. You can stop reading now if you like.

But if you like, I’ll explain why I don’t use it.

News flash: I like writing. Yeah, I hate that first draft with the heat of a thousand suns, but I love everything up to that part and after that part. I love imagining what I might write about. I love getting to know my characters. I love creating the world they will live in. I love research! Learning new things. Cool things I can add to my story. I build up enthusiasm to the point where I have to put it down in words. Then, that first draft kills my soul and makes me rethink why I ever wanted to write or thought I could write.

But once that virtual page is no longer blank, I’ll have something I can work with. I’ll have something I can rewrite, add to, be inspired by, and, best of all, eventually, like years from now, I’ll have said what I wanted to say. Why on earth would I want to take a shortcut to get there?

I’m just glad I’m not a young writer starting out. I earned my cred writing marketing material, news writeups, membership acquisition campaigns, and fill in the blank for a host of conservation nonprofits. I dread to think how tempting it will be for poor nonprofits to source that work over to genAI. I don’t even write for the money. If I did, if I had to, well, I wouldn’t but I could see why some might think it necessary to use AI.

I don’t have to worry about AI coming for my job or making my college degree useless—I did that the old-fashioned way by getting a B.S. in biology and having no interest in or talent for grad school. (It did come in handy for my conservation writing, and I still get a kick out of putting as much biology into my stories as I can.)

The signs of AI writing that critics look for change over time, probably because as more AIs get trained on more writing, some by AI itself, patterns change and generative AI is all about patterns. Here are just some from Wikipedia that I am guilty of:

Em dashes—I use them in place of periods or semicolons or to break up a sentence when commas don’t seem loud enough.

The “rule of three,” such as: “screens displayed four different camera views of the ocean floor, multiple graphs, and sonar images” or “Thruster jets dotted the sausage-shaped hull, hemispherical viewports popped out at the front and on top, and a main hatch opened at the back.” Overuse is the thing, though, and I don’t see that I do that. Or at least I haven’t been called out for it by my editor.

I always thought the rule of three was a signature Kennedy construction—both John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy (senior!) used them in their speeches. This is classic JFK, from his 1961 address to the UN: “It is no longer to be a goal without means of achieving it, without means of verifying its progress, without means of keeping the peace.”

His speechwriters also loved the em dash: “For disarmament without checks is but a shadow–and a community without law is but a shell. Already the United Nations has become both the measure and the vehicle of man’s most generous impulses. Already it has provided–in the Middle East, in Asia, in Africa this year in the Congo–a means of holding man’s violence within bounds.”

I’m no JFK, as is obvious from the examples given. His speeches were pure gold. My rule of three is more limited to series, where he used the repetition of words and phrases to add emphasis and rhythm.

Then there’s the “not X, but Y” construction. Here’s JFK again, from his inaugural, “My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.” For my example, “Not octopuses, but if green men, not little either.” Sigh. Guilty, but, again, not overused. And not JFK.

My collection of drafts should help make my case. For my most recent WIP (which won’t be “in progress” much longer—stay tuned!), I have six folders of drafts starting in October 2023. If you count the sub-drafts, it comes to 25 before I submitted it to my publisher (I add, for example, v2.1, 2.2, etc. because who wants to admit they really go through that many drafts?).

For the record, my creative process from initial brainstorming through outlining, writing, rewriting, and editing is entirely me. If an AI summary pops up in my search (I don’t use Google), I ignore it and then change the browser setting to turn it off. I write using Microsoft Word with Copilot disabled.

I’ve registered three of my novels with the Authors Guild’s Human Authored program (the other is old enough to be pre-AI). It’s the honor system so lacks full credibility given the AI detection programs are flawed and use, you know, AI. But going to the trouble matters. To me, at least.

I have many reasons for abhorring generative AI (there are other forms of artificial intelligence that have been around for decades and are useful for data analysis and in scientific research). The large language models (LLMs) of genAI became large because they were fed existing writing, including mine, without permission or compensation.

The computing power needed for these systems is ginormous! MIT Technology Review published an analysis last May. It’s not so much the energy used per query, it’s when you multiply that out by the billions of queries and the fact that AI is running in the background all the time. And, significantly, the AI companies don’t want you to know what it really takes. I expect that article is already outdated.

Because since then, a Utah county’s commissioners approved a data center that, if it goes through against the will of the people, will be more than twice the size of Manhattan. More than 40,000 acres, or 62 square miles, at three sites. The waste heat generated could raise the temperature in the valley by 2 to 8 degrees F. It would also use twice the entire state’s current electricity use. To get around that, the company plans to run it by burning natural gas, a fossil fuel, in its own power plant.

So the next time you ask ChatGPT for ideas on what to title your short story, think about that. Then don’t. Just don’t. Use your brain, because if it doesn’t come from your brain, it is not creative, it is not writing, it is not ethical. And, congratulations, it will mean imposter syndrome is real for you.

For more:

The MIT Technology Review article: We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard

From the Guardian: ‘Irresponsible’: backlash as Utah approves datacenter twice the size of Manhattan

Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical, MAGNIFICA HUMANITAS: ON SAFEGUARDING THE HUMAN PERSON IN THE TIME OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE