AI is becoming more and more integrated into our daily lives, and its usage in literature, reading comprehension, and writing is increasingly widespread.
This video was amazingly good, and I really appreciated how you pulled no punches. I deleted the AI apps Perplexity and DeepSeek from my phone about half way through. I follow you on YouTube but didn't know you were here too. Subscribed.
I first found you through "This is Why We Never Got Another Lord of the Rings" which was fascinating. It explained so much about the bad books I read as a teenager in the '80s, lol.
Here on Substack my chosen beat is the environment, so I've been critiquing AI from that standpoint. But as a lifelong writer of both fiction and non-fiction, I found your case here incredibly compelling because it rang true with so much of my own experience. No, it's not supposed to be easy, and that's what makes it good when it's good. It's so important to make exactly that point. I will be sharing it with others.
Love the video. I've had a lot of the same ideas myself. There are so many ways AI could end the world. Most people think having an AI that does everything for us, better than we can, so all we gotta' do is play around is the ideal situation, and that blows my mind. Even people who think philosophically haven't even considered how we'd turn out if that "ideal" situation happened, and we gradually lost our bodies and brains to it as lethargy and bad weather make just plugging in look appealing, and with it doing everything......we'd evolve to be less and less until we're gone.
But I've subscribed to your Youtube channel and I don't miss a video. Love it all....I love the creative process, used to want to write, but gave up. I need a teacher like you.....constructive criticism, projects and inspiration to attempt things.............when I saw your video on plot twists I ate that up. I LOVE twists......but I can't seem to make them, myself. Maybe what I really need is inspiration and direction.
Anyway.........I haven't read any of your books yet, but I plan to. I love all of your videos and I'm really drawn to reasoned analysis.....especially about writing.
I don’t think AI has to be an all or nothing proposition. I agree that we can become lazy, complacent and incompetent when everything is done for us. But, historically having a competent assistant has often been extremely valuable.
Some possible advantages to AI that I see are: its ability to pull information from multiple sources and compile it while retaining links back to the original; assess drafts against authoritative information to assess compliance; and teach new skills while coaching and providing pros/cons to variations from the standard.
Why have an assistant that does less, when you can have one that does more? After thousands of years of spending our lives growing food, preparing ingredients, cooking, eating and cleaning up afterward, we now have automation that can do all this for us. It didn't come all at once, but in innovation after innovation, years apart. ....and yet, here we are. What our ancestors would consider par for the course, we think of a needless work. Why walk when you have a car? Why read when you can watch TV?
See......it's the direction and how quick we can get there from here that's the threat. When astronauts are able to avoid gravity in space, their bones suffer. It's said that our teeth are shrinking as our food has become softer. As AI assistants, complete with robotics, can do more for us, we're eventually going to start succumbing to the path of least resistance, and when they can be more creative, logical, analytical and reason better than we can why even risk doing things ourselves? We'll be doing less and less........and the only reason we exist in the first place is to act; stop acting and the things we need to act with, fade until they're gone.
This might sound like sci-fi, but we've been breading plants and animals for ages. This is a very slow process that only makes changes one step at a time, so the equilibrium of ecosystems have time to readjust. Just recently though we've figured out how to change the genes in specific plants and we're doing this without accounting for these ecosystems. One result is that GMO crops can behave like invasive species, killing off native species. We still have no idea what it's doing to less obvious plants and animals in the areas that these crops are being planted.
THIS is what AI is. It's a quick, sudden change. And this is why it's not like other similar new tech that's radically changed things in the past. AI won't simply change the way we live, it'll change our ability to exist.
What you're talking about, a world where AI can help us without going overboard, is VERY short term. Yes, there'll be a time when we're moving from a human dominant world to an AI dominant world, and provided that we don't cause ourselves grief due to politics, war, and other things, AI might be helpful and even a pleasant experience, but the threat is in how drastic the change will be and in how quickly that'll happen. So regardless of the short gradual transition that you're pointing to, the end of the way we define humanity will be coming relatively soon, as long as we keep developing AI........to say nothing about AGI, which could bring the inevitable on even faster. The only two ways to avoid this "best case scenario" where we're all entertained to death, is die off in another way, or to stop developing and bringing AI into everything we do.
I agree that AI is a massive change in human existence. My point was it doesn’t HAVE to be a negative thing.
Humans have free will. We can choose to let automation overtake us or we can benefit from the advantages while mitigating the disadvantages and bad side effects.
Part of the challenge is ensuring that people are informed and commercial interests are incentivized to work for humanity’s benefit and not its detriment.
You're not paying attention, my point was that there is no choice. Reread what I wrote.
But also, you're not being honest with yourself. When Global Warming came around people would commonly say something like "It'll all turn out well." or "We'll invent tech that can address the problem." This is optimistic bias that ignores what the possibilities actually are and how people actually behave.
Free will means nothing. If our priorities change, our "free will" goes with those priorities. That's free will LIMITED BY circumstance. Reread what I wrote.
You just carelessly glossed over that I put your claim in "the short term." Evolution is a slow process that comes incrementally, EXCEPT NOW, where AI can push things along, but it's not going to happen tomorrow or in 20 or 30 years.....Normal human evolution can take tens of thousands of years to barely make a shift. AI evolution will take a small fraction of that. Maybe 10, maybe 30, maybe 100, maybe 200. The result being the same, the systemic AND individual reliance on AI to do everything we want done. If an AI can do something better than we can the pressure is on to use the AI because it would be foolish not to use it. And as more and more people give in to AI, the pressure to keep up with the rest of the world becomes more and more intense.
Do you own a smartphone? Why? IIIIIII don't own a smartphone. Never have. I wouldn't know how to use one. But it's ASSUMED by doctor's offices and businesses that everyone has one and life gets really difficult unless you have a way to get access to one. Why wouldn't AI, MUCH MORE USEFUL than a smartphone, NOT be that way? It might not turn out that way tomorrow, sure, but it's EVENTUALLY......probably within the next ten years, going to be that way......and even if it isn't ten or twenty years before AI is required and we're unable to live without it.........this IS going to happen as SOME point, and once it does, there's no going back. TV in front of the couch is VERY unhealthy for you. It contributes to obesity and heart disease. And yet, there's a very good likelihood that you have BOTH and use them quite regularly.
Free will comes with conditions that AI changes, and thereby free will will follow.
I have already watched many of your videos on YouTube, and now I have found this audio post on Substack. First of all, when I watch your video series or listen to your podcasts, I find a common thread that runs through your “stories” like a plot by an author. Perhaps it's an author's affliction, but many of your posts don't stand alone; they are connected to several topics (you refer to this specifically in the video), which I find extraordinary because it's rare to find people who can so clearly piece together the mosaic tiles to form a complete picture. When I watched your videos on The Lord of the Rings (and its non-existent sequel), literacy and Romantasy, and then this post, I got the idea that they were always parts of a greater whole.
I really like what you say about plotting. I don't want to say that you are born a writer. But I suspect that all writers know the feeling from childhood of making up stories. Perhaps, in retrospect, we were lucky to be bored enough to appreciate such moments – boredom today is something that has to be fought ‘from the outside’, not ‘from the inside’. Yet these daydreams and fantasies are exactly what later become what we have professionalised through the craft of ‘plotting’. I think we are like sculptors who see the block of marble but already have the figure in our minds. Of course, we don't know all the details of the finished statue – we discover many things along the way because we can never consider everything.
But for me, the most beautiful moments as an author are precisely those of ‘brainstorming’, because the idea really has to convince me, captivate me and occupy me for days, weeks and perhaps months, otherwise I won't put it on paper – it has to prove itself, otherwise it can't be that good. To be willing to give up this creative process, which – as you quite rightly say – demands ‘heart, mind and soul’, is in fact not only an escape from work or creativity, but an escape from being human.
This video was amazingly good, and I really appreciated how you pulled no punches. I deleted the AI apps Perplexity and DeepSeek from my phone about half way through. I follow you on YouTube but didn't know you were here too. Subscribed.
I’m happy you found me! And I’m glad you enjoyed the video.
I first found you through "This is Why We Never Got Another Lord of the Rings" which was fascinating. It explained so much about the bad books I read as a teenager in the '80s, lol.
Here on Substack my chosen beat is the environment, so I've been critiquing AI from that standpoint. But as a lifelong writer of both fiction and non-fiction, I found your case here incredibly compelling because it rang true with so much of my own experience. No, it's not supposed to be easy, and that's what makes it good when it's good. It's so important to make exactly that point. I will be sharing it with others.
Love the video. I've had a lot of the same ideas myself. There are so many ways AI could end the world. Most people think having an AI that does everything for us, better than we can, so all we gotta' do is play around is the ideal situation, and that blows my mind. Even people who think philosophically haven't even considered how we'd turn out if that "ideal" situation happened, and we gradually lost our bodies and brains to it as lethargy and bad weather make just plugging in look appealing, and with it doing everything......we'd evolve to be less and less until we're gone.
But I've subscribed to your Youtube channel and I don't miss a video. Love it all....I love the creative process, used to want to write, but gave up. I need a teacher like you.....constructive criticism, projects and inspiration to attempt things.............when I saw your video on plot twists I ate that up. I LOVE twists......but I can't seem to make them, myself. Maybe what I really need is inspiration and direction.
Anyway.........I haven't read any of your books yet, but I plan to. I love all of your videos and I'm really drawn to reasoned analysis.....especially about writing.
Thanks for that.
I don’t think AI has to be an all or nothing proposition. I agree that we can become lazy, complacent and incompetent when everything is done for us. But, historically having a competent assistant has often been extremely valuable.
Some possible advantages to AI that I see are: its ability to pull information from multiple sources and compile it while retaining links back to the original; assess drafts against authoritative information to assess compliance; and teach new skills while coaching and providing pros/cons to variations from the standard.
Why have an assistant that does less, when you can have one that does more? After thousands of years of spending our lives growing food, preparing ingredients, cooking, eating and cleaning up afterward, we now have automation that can do all this for us. It didn't come all at once, but in innovation after innovation, years apart. ....and yet, here we are. What our ancestors would consider par for the course, we think of a needless work. Why walk when you have a car? Why read when you can watch TV?
See......it's the direction and how quick we can get there from here that's the threat. When astronauts are able to avoid gravity in space, their bones suffer. It's said that our teeth are shrinking as our food has become softer. As AI assistants, complete with robotics, can do more for us, we're eventually going to start succumbing to the path of least resistance, and when they can be more creative, logical, analytical and reason better than we can why even risk doing things ourselves? We'll be doing less and less........and the only reason we exist in the first place is to act; stop acting and the things we need to act with, fade until they're gone.
This might sound like sci-fi, but we've been breading plants and animals for ages. This is a very slow process that only makes changes one step at a time, so the equilibrium of ecosystems have time to readjust. Just recently though we've figured out how to change the genes in specific plants and we're doing this without accounting for these ecosystems. One result is that GMO crops can behave like invasive species, killing off native species. We still have no idea what it's doing to less obvious plants and animals in the areas that these crops are being planted.
THIS is what AI is. It's a quick, sudden change. And this is why it's not like other similar new tech that's radically changed things in the past. AI won't simply change the way we live, it'll change our ability to exist.
What you're talking about, a world where AI can help us without going overboard, is VERY short term. Yes, there'll be a time when we're moving from a human dominant world to an AI dominant world, and provided that we don't cause ourselves grief due to politics, war, and other things, AI might be helpful and even a pleasant experience, but the threat is in how drastic the change will be and in how quickly that'll happen. So regardless of the short gradual transition that you're pointing to, the end of the way we define humanity will be coming relatively soon, as long as we keep developing AI........to say nothing about AGI, which could bring the inevitable on even faster. The only two ways to avoid this "best case scenario" where we're all entertained to death, is die off in another way, or to stop developing and bringing AI into everything we do.
I agree that AI is a massive change in human existence. My point was it doesn’t HAVE to be a negative thing.
Humans have free will. We can choose to let automation overtake us or we can benefit from the advantages while mitigating the disadvantages and bad side effects.
Part of the challenge is ensuring that people are informed and commercial interests are incentivized to work for humanity’s benefit and not its detriment.
You're not paying attention, my point was that there is no choice. Reread what I wrote.
But also, you're not being honest with yourself. When Global Warming came around people would commonly say something like "It'll all turn out well." or "We'll invent tech that can address the problem." This is optimistic bias that ignores what the possibilities actually are and how people actually behave.
Free will means nothing. If our priorities change, our "free will" goes with those priorities. That's free will LIMITED BY circumstance. Reread what I wrote.
You just carelessly glossed over that I put your claim in "the short term." Evolution is a slow process that comes incrementally, EXCEPT NOW, where AI can push things along, but it's not going to happen tomorrow or in 20 or 30 years.....Normal human evolution can take tens of thousands of years to barely make a shift. AI evolution will take a small fraction of that. Maybe 10, maybe 30, maybe 100, maybe 200. The result being the same, the systemic AND individual reliance on AI to do everything we want done. If an AI can do something better than we can the pressure is on to use the AI because it would be foolish not to use it. And as more and more people give in to AI, the pressure to keep up with the rest of the world becomes more and more intense.
Do you own a smartphone? Why? IIIIIII don't own a smartphone. Never have. I wouldn't know how to use one. But it's ASSUMED by doctor's offices and businesses that everyone has one and life gets really difficult unless you have a way to get access to one. Why wouldn't AI, MUCH MORE USEFUL than a smartphone, NOT be that way? It might not turn out that way tomorrow, sure, but it's EVENTUALLY......probably within the next ten years, going to be that way......and even if it isn't ten or twenty years before AI is required and we're unable to live without it.........this IS going to happen as SOME point, and once it does, there's no going back. TV in front of the couch is VERY unhealthy for you. It contributes to obesity and heart disease. And yet, there's a very good likelihood that you have BOTH and use them quite regularly.
Free will comes with conditions that AI changes, and thereby free will will follow.
I’m absolutely paying attention. I simply don’t share the doom and gloom worldview.
Anyone who believes AI is 100% bad isn't interested in having a good faith discussion about it.
I have already watched many of your videos on YouTube, and now I have found this audio post on Substack. First of all, when I watch your video series or listen to your podcasts, I find a common thread that runs through your “stories” like a plot by an author. Perhaps it's an author's affliction, but many of your posts don't stand alone; they are connected to several topics (you refer to this specifically in the video), which I find extraordinary because it's rare to find people who can so clearly piece together the mosaic tiles to form a complete picture. When I watched your videos on The Lord of the Rings (and its non-existent sequel), literacy and Romantasy, and then this post, I got the idea that they were always parts of a greater whole.
I really like what you say about plotting. I don't want to say that you are born a writer. But I suspect that all writers know the feeling from childhood of making up stories. Perhaps, in retrospect, we were lucky to be bored enough to appreciate such moments – boredom today is something that has to be fought ‘from the outside’, not ‘from the inside’. Yet these daydreams and fantasies are exactly what later become what we have professionalised through the craft of ‘plotting’. I think we are like sculptors who see the block of marble but already have the figure in our minds. Of course, we don't know all the details of the finished statue – we discover many things along the way because we can never consider everything.
But for me, the most beautiful moments as an author are precisely those of ‘brainstorming’, because the idea really has to convince me, captivate me and occupy me for days, weeks and perhaps months, otherwise I won't put it on paper – it has to prove itself, otherwise it can't be that good. To be willing to give up this creative process, which – as you quite rightly say – demands ‘heart, mind and soul’, is in fact not only an escape from work or creativity, but an escape from being human.
Thank you very much for this feature!