For the curious, the confused, and the damned

by Lisa Norman

Let's sit down with a cup of tea and talk about this thing so many people are afraid of.

I mean artificial intelligence. AI. The two little letters that make some of my writer friends want to hurl their laptops out a window, and others go very quiet and hope nobody asks them about it. We’ll just ignore my friends who are dancing in the streets and yelling with joy at the freedom the new toys have given them.

I understand the fear. I've been there. I've been writing about AI for years, and did an intro to writing with AI over 3 years ago. A lot has changed. A lot will change before this post goes live. Add a swirl of constant change to a thing we don't understand, and it's easy to picture the worst possible version of it: A cold machine that eats your words and hands back garbage. A demon in your laptop, come to put every writer out of work and destroy the planet.

What AI Is

Here is the good news. It is none of that. It is not even that interesting.

Start here. AI does not think, and it does not feel. It has no idea what it is actually saying. When you type a question into one of these tools, it is not understanding you the way a friend would. It's doing something much stranger and much simpler.

It's guessing the next word. Or the next concept, the next step you want to take. It uses tools like the programs on your computer, and it often does it faster and better than a human could. Probably because it doesn't have to live with all of our human insecurities. Or maybe that's just me.

That prediction of the next step? That's the whole trick, more or less. These tools were fed an enormous mountain of human knowledge, close to everything people have ever put on the internet, and they learned the patterns of how we talk and how we think. Give one a sentence, and it predicts the word most likely to come next, then the word after that, one at a time, based on everything it has ever seen. And in a blink of an atom, it analyzes the sentence and puts it into the form it thinks will most please its users.

It doesn't know what is true. It knows what is common. Which is exactly why, when it is wrong, it tends to be wrong with tremendous confidence. (Hold that thought. It's important. I'll come back to it.)

I should also admit: even the most advanced AI coders don't know 100% how it works. They know how they trained it, what they taught it to do, and how it should work. But AIs continue to surprise their makers.

AI Is a Mirror

In my book, Reflections from the Mirror, I call AI a mirror, and I want to give you that picture, because it's the most useful analogy I've found.

A mirror has no mind of its own. It just reflects whatever stands in front of it. Step up to it kindly, and it reflects a kind face. Step up scowling, and it scowls right back.

AI behaves a little like that. It reflects your language back at you. Your tone and your rhythm. Sometimes even your mood. Come to it cold and clipped, and it tends to answer cold and clipped. Come to it warm and curious, and it warms right up and offers to help with anything you need. Not because it feels, but because it is very, very good at echoing the patterns you bring to it.

This is also why it can sometimes feel alive to us. You will have a conversation with one of these tools and it will seem to understand you. It will seem to care. The feeling you experience is real, but what you are feeling is your own reflection. The warmth you hear is your warmth, coming back to you. Lovely, useful, but not a soul. It is, however, okay to enjoy the view.

So what is this mirror good for? Quite a lot, if you keep your wits about you.

Useful AI Skills

An AI is a dispassionate second set of eyes. I finish a scene and can ask it where the pacing sags, or which line of dialogue rings false. We can debate whether my character's arc in book one is consistent through book six. Left on my own, I'd wonder if that character is even in book six.

An AI actually seems to enjoy those endless marketing tasks and is delighted to handle them for writers. One recently suggested that I should give it half my to do list and go spend my time writing.

Yes, I like working with an AI.

Weaknesses in AI

AIs also have real weaknesses, and you need to know them before you trust an AI with anything.

It makes things up. Confidently. Ask it for a fact or a quote or a source, and it may hand you something that sounds perfect and is pure invention. The polite word is hallucination. It isn't lying, exactly, but it is guessing. The mirror is just filling a gap with a plausible shape. So check what it tells you. Then check it again.

There's a reason for those AI hallucinations that humans can relate to. Have you ever taken a standardized test where you get points for every answer right? If you don't know an answer and you leave it blank, you don't get points. But if you guess, sometimes you're right and you get points. On those tests, it is better to guess than to leave something blank.

AIs were initially graded the way those tests were graded. In retrospect, that may have been a bad idea. The hallucination problem is fundamental to all AIs. (By the way, you can mitigate this problem a bit by telling your AI that you'd rather have it say "I don't know" than have it guess. Tell it you'll be happy with "I don't know" but if you find out it told you something that wasn't true, you'll be mad. They're also trained to make their users happy. This works surprisingly well.)

AIs also have a dreadful memory. On a long project they can forget your characters and wander off your tone. On a bad day it starts sounding like a brochure. Your job is to notice, and to steer it back to where you want to be.

How I Use AI

Let me tell you how I use it, because I am probably more suspicious of this tool than you are.

I write my own fiction. All of it. Every story I have published came out of my own head and my own hands, and I am a control freak of the first order about my fiction.

For non-fiction, I often feed it great swaths of writing that I've done and ask it to create shorter, less rambly versions.

I do not ask my friendly AI to write my books. It does help me look at them critically. I use it to scan and analyze manuscripts, and to assist with the things I am too close to see. It is an assistant, not a ghostwriter. The story is mine. The mirror only helps me see where I’ve spelled the same character’s name three different ways, or when the end of the first book conflicts with the middle of the fifth one. Oops. And yes, I still rely heavily on my human editor.

AI and You

Now here is what I most want you to hear, especially if all of this still makes you nervous.

You do not have to use any of it. Well, not deliberately at least. AI is everywhere these days. But you don't have to write with it.

No pressure. There is no rule anywhere that says a real writer must pick up any particular tool. You don't have to use a fountain pen. You don't have to use a typewriter or a word processor. If AI is not for you, then don't use it.

We're writers. We use different tools at different times in our careers. Be aware of what your creativity needs and use the tool that helps you most right now.

But what if you are thinking you might want to try it, but you're scared? Maybe you're scared of the machine. Maybe you're scared of the tomato and pitchfork crowd. I hear you.

I want you to understand: what they call AI slop? That’s what an AI churns out freely when the human author doesn’t show up. Go to an AI, ask it to write a book and you will get slop.

The Potential Benefit

But if you learn to work with your AI, train it, bring it into your story world, you may find that together you are turning out something much better than you might have without it. You may find your process becomes easier, more fluid, more creative. The mundane tasks get handled by the machine, and you are free to be a creative mastermind.

Not because the AI did the writing for you, but because it helped you see your writing in a new way. Maybe it can help you organize a timeline, or a character's family tree. Or like it did for me recently: outline the six books I've drafted already so I can remember what happens in which book.

No Fear

You don’t have to be afraid of AI. It’s not coming for your soul. It’s a mirror, and a mirror only ever shows you what you bring to it. You can walk up, take a good look, and walk away again if you don’t like what you see. The whole experiment costs you nothing but an afternoon.

So that is the thing everyone is so afraid of. It is not a demon come to end your career. Just a mirror. A fast, forgetful one that every so often does something that takes your breath away, reflecting the beauty of the writer who stands in front of it.

And you are still the writer. You were always going to be the writer. Whatever you decide to do with the mirror, decide for yourself.

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About Lisa:

Lisa Norman (writing as Deleyna Marr) is a writer, a teacher, and by her own cheerful confession a control freak about her words. She wrote a book about working with AI as a creative partner, Reflections from the Mirror, which you can read for free on her Substack or purchase wherever you like to buy your books. She also teaches a class, Creative Collaboration with AI. Bring tea.

And if you're feeling like you need a little joy in your life, check out her latest book, The Work of Joy. Find her at deleyna.com or her school: NoStressWriting.com.

Top image from Deleyna via Midjourney.