I continue to talk to people online and offline about machine learning and the current zeal for AI doing creative work and one of the writers, Chuck Wendig, who I linked to last month (and who, unsurprisingly, does not find AI-authored writing as a wave of the future to be surfed).
One of his posts from last week drills down to one of the reasons I find the AI creativity craze so annoying: the fact that these algorithms are focused on ideas over process. If you’re a writer or other creator, you may find yourself nodding as you get deeper into the post. Almost every writer I know has some version of a person telling said writer that they have the best idea, but “just need someone to write it up.” And this person resolutely believes that simply having the idea is the equivalent of actually writing the script or the novel or the article or what-have-you. In fact, the idea alone might be better than all that objectionable actual writing nonsense, a skill they do not have, but which they find an inconsequential skill… that they desperately need you to exercise so their idea can spring to life.
Now those deluded people have an algorithm.
The whole piece is worth a read and is definitely written by a pesky human.