As a believer in labeling one’s biases and then letting rip, let us begin with mine:

I despise AI. There is nothing I like about it. I don’t like the data centers, I don’t like the plutocracy behind them, and I don’t like the pliant municipalities who just bend over and drop trou for plutocracy. Not even at bayonet point could you get me to use AI to write my words for me. I take delight in watching it display the mindless trends that are its tells, sneering at its never-life.

I’m a snob. I would rather read the tortured constructions and bad spelling of the world’s worst real writer than technically correct AI.

In the many cases in which AI use is simply laziness, what my mind says is: It was so much easier than using your actual mind, wasn’t it?Today, Konrad Kujau wouldn’t have to author a phony Hitler memoir ms; he’d just feed the question to an AI and out would come the Dolfiness.

AI is here to stay, unless (as I hope) the proliferation of AI-genned content becomes recursive in that its outputs get stupider and stupider as it is increasingly its own unvetted (except by itself!) source material. It already generates fictitious references. I do not see evidence that it employs discernment on its sourcing. I think if enough QAnuts published enough wackiness, and at least made some effort at originality while not labeling themselves openly, AI would refer to them as if they were Stephen Hawking, or E.F. Hutton (ask your grandparents).

With those understandings, let’s talk about where this phenomenon is. AI goes beyond what I’m describing, of course; it can do at least something that looks like editing. In time it will probably be capable of more, unless it worsens its trend of eating its own children.

It is not that new, as far as I can see; it’s just more interactive. In essence, it’s the modern evolution of Altavista (ask your parents) or Google. What is a search engine algorithm but a form of AI? Is a word processor’s grammar check and spell check not some form of AI? Some games pit the player against relatively decent AI, which computer game designers have been trying to improve for decades. In the old Steel Panthers days, we’d sometimes delegate a trial setup to computer control just to get its sense of the position. (Andy Gailey will never see this, but those words began as his, and so was the idea. And unlike ChatGPT, he’s a person.) What’s new is that one can get it to do the work of writers and editors, at least in some ways. It takes a pretty sophisticated reader to tell it apart, which eliminates the vast majority of the modern US public.

My theory about the impact on my profession is that it will have the greatest impact on the people who don’t hire someone like me, and the people that they do hire. Consider: One is a stereotypically lazy ‘nap-my-way-through-college’ student who takes one look at the concepts of research and composition and replies: “Oh hell no. That’s actual work. I’d rather get AI to do it for me, then I’ll go through and edit out some of it so the prof can’t tell.” After muddling though, the alumnus* learned almost nothing about writing. Except, perhaps, that which would be learned by reading a few syntactically correct history papers (which isn’t enough; try reading voraciously from ages 3 to 22 if you want it by osmosis and Kodak childhood memory). Now he’s stuck. Take away his AI and his literacy is spavined.

*I think women are less prone to let a dumb computer program supply their words, probably because on balance the evidence indicates they’re slightly brighter than we are, and because I believe they are less interested in letting a computer talk over them than they are even in letting men talk over them.

So Slacker Alum, living with his parents because getting jobs is hard and might even require him to leave the house, has always had some ideas for novels. He starts having AI write the story for him, and in the process he at least becomes better at using AI. His AI novel is no worse garbage than a fair percentage of the self-published material out there, and not a little of the trad-pubbed. Does he hire an editor? Not a real one; that would take money. If he had money, he wouldn’t be doing any of this. He either hires one of the self-anointed Starving English BA Editors who thinks s/he’s qualified, or he accepts the AI editing and congratulates himself on creating moneymaking content while maintaining his slacker image. Either way, he was never going to hire me. He’s not my market and I’m not his. The Starving English BA Editors are already doing it for almost nothing because of $250K in student loans, which means they must have the money. Their sad revenue streams are likely to take hits.

I’m not mocking the plight of today’s 20something, attempting to navigate a world in which their elders ate up the whole buffet. (I’ve been cussing those elders for it since our twenties during the Reagan administration. They ignored me. Still do.) I’m only mocking the lazy ones with low to no standards or pride, or who assert for themselves unreasonable qualifications. I am making the point that for those who want to loaf their way by, and who feel better about doing that and then playing Galaxy of Mortal Annihilationcraft: Total & Utter Eternal Damnation & Destruction all day, AI is not merely the crutch. It is more the self-driving vehicle.

Would I use AI to help me edit material people paid me to work on? You can guess that answer. I doubt that anyone who does would ever admit it, so you can believe me or not. Those who know me well have no trouble taking it at face value. But in case anyone needs to hear it, I would sooner make homebrew napalm and drop flaming globs of it on my body.

Would I reject working on a novel partly or wholly written by AI? It’s unlikely I will ever see one, because those who don’t want to write (but want the appearance of having done so) are unlikely to want to spend money. A part of me can see that. To them, what the AI wrote is grammatically okay, and isn’t that the only use for a damn editor anyway? I’m not going to pierce that perception and won’t try. It’s unlikely they understand the breadth of my work, but that’s okay; in most cases I think they’d be shocked to hear that it costs more than $300 to “put an edit on it.” (That could be one of the most unpalatable and ignorant turns of phrase I ever encounter. Take it from me: Anyone using it knows little about actual editing.) Thus, I’m not their target vendor and I’m not that vendor’s competition. You all have fun.

Is there a place for AI in the work of writers I respect? That depends on what they are writing about. In non-fiction, such as (stop laughing) business reporting, I can see at least reasons to think of letting it handle a first draft. I think this because business reporting is not a passion project, and the live workforce every year is demanded to do more–with less people, in less time, for less compensation. A first draft can also be edited, reviewed, and its odder fancies corrected by someone who could have written that were they given the time to do so. There is a canyon separating those who can’t actually do it themselves in a competent way, and those who could but for life circumstances (deadlines, kids, delusional boss) eroding their time and mindshare. Those who could have done it themselves can certainly spot and correct flawed material. I get it.

As for ‘lancers, the market that wants to write its own words and hire a real editor will continue to do so, because it values the journey and the education at least as much as it does the  outcome. Those are my market. Them I can help. They are why I keep doing this.

Am I concerned about AI? I wouldn’t need to be, except for the climate that made it acceptable. I am much more concerned about the decline of literacy, attention spans, and critical thinking in that climate than I am about AI itself.

After all, I obviously didn’t mind it when it was trying to give me stress trying not to get my experienced Panther crews blown to hell in Steel Panthers by US P-47Ds firing 5″ rockets, or when it was helping me look up why my stupid fitness watch wouldn’t pair. I only started taking a leak on it when it started moneylending in my temple. And when that came, it was time to get to work on scourging.