Kirby Neumann-Rea: Don't lean on the AI crutch for work you can do yourself

An ad line seen on Facebook proclaims: “New AI-powered software creates ghostwriter-level fiction books in under 90 minutes.”

I am writing a book.

I’m a walking cliche — a retired newspaper guy with a novel in the works.

Most days, by 6 a.m., I’m trying to make sense of what I wrote yesterday. Stop each day when you know what comes next — Hemingway, who did just fine without a cyber assist.

I’d love to pull an Emily Litella (“neverrrr mind ...”) and ask “what’s this I hear about a eye. I think a person should write with both eyes, not just a eye.”

Both eyes open?

I try to do so when forging ahead with some new lines. But I want to keep it For My Eyes Only.

How can I turn this precious process over to an AI assist? Why would I digitally delegate this amazing experience — and it is one — to a computer program?

The usual rationalization for employing AI is, “I just ask it to help make what I wrote better.” That’s why you have a dictionary or a thesaurus.

I love that my morning regimen frequently involves pulling one of those books down off the shelf. Is having such resources not the point?

OK. Bullet points:

- I am not interested in a subservient “aye-aye” to AI.

- Don’t want to see eye to AI.

- In cartoons, what’s the usual sound some unfortunate makes when falling off a cliff? AI-EEEEEE!!

This column is a shorter version of something I’ve already posted. To scale it down, I am taking out “precious” lines.

Good stuff remains, but this is something I do for myself. And I want credit for what I take out as well as for what I keep. I want to take responsibility for what the final product will look like.

I answer yes to:

Do I ever get stuck? Do parts of what I have written ring false? Are revisions regularly needed?

AI: Have I tried AI?

No. But I believe I retain the right to judge.

Most writers aspire to some version of “the writing life,” in all its solitary glamour. But where’s the aura if it’s a bot doing the work?

It’s deflating enough to ponder a “publishing landscape” that might require me to follow the route of e-book, self-publishing or on-demand.

It’s also deflating to read about people using AI to write their manuscripts. Yes, the technology exists, but what is the point?

A recent LinkedIn post from someone in my network wrote of interactions he’d had with Anthropic Claude and the phrases “... dedupes ... used Wayback to find ... s3 bucket ... regex ...”

There was a sentence saying “reingest your content into your LLM/obsidian vault.” Is “reingest” the opposite of, or another way of saying, regurgitate?

Other terms were “agentics,” “tool counts,” “bespoke evals” and “observability landscape.”

I admit the need to bone up. None of this makes any sense to me, though I think both Obsidian Vault and Observability Landscape would be great Yes album titles.

In the Facebook ad, the term “ghostwriter-level fiction” feels confusing. I’m not sure what it means.

I asked my friend Jim Lund, an editor, author and sometimes ghostwriter, what he thought.

“As to the “ghostwriter-level fiction books” phrase, Jim responded, “Is that a nod to ghostwriters, acknowledging the good work they do, or is it somehow implying that ghostwriters are sub-standard writers, so that level of writing is more easily attainable? Why didn’t they promise ‘quality commercial fiction’ or ‘literary fiction’?”

Jim is one of a number of published authors I’ve had the pleasure to know over the years — people who worked hard with their sources, their interviews, their research, and their own words once it came time to shoulder all the pieces into an interesting, entertaining whole. And they’ve done it five, 15 or even 50 times, without the “benefit” of AI-powered software.

Jim adds: “So it is getting harder to tell AI writing from human writing. But I think there is still, usually, a noticeable difference... AI will never match the ‘soul’ of a human writer. It’s always an imitation, a graft of something that came before masquerading as something fresh.

“But people are always looking for shortcuts, so the interest in AI writing isn’t going away, and it will get better. I worry about authors, as well as writers like me, who are younger than I am, who will be dealing with this for many years to come. Will they be out of a job? Very possibly.”

Indeed, Jim points out, “AI writing is getting better as it continues to absorb what’s out there. And not always legally.

“I’m one of hundreds or thousands who are part of a class-action settlement with Anthropic, which ‘borrowed’ from some of my books and many, many others for AI training without permission.”

There is this invasion and usurping of the human quality of literature.

Author Laura Beers estimates thousands of books for sale on Amazon have been written in whole or in part using AI. New life, then, to the phrase “Orwellian,” as George Orwell, the author of “1984” and other dystopian fiction, envisioned “novel-writing machines” used to mass-produce literature in the manner of “jam or bootlaces.”

I ask: What if we started requiring warning labels on published materials? We do this for tobacco, which we also know is harmful.

This would help people differentiate and make informed choices about what they are going to purchase or spend time on. We could mandate: “Written by AI,” “Polished by AI,” or “No human brain power was used to create this novel.”

I believe the answer is simple: The only way to prevent the ultimate takeover by the bots is to stop willfully interacting with them.

Yes, in so many of our daily interactions and functions the lid has already been blown off Pandora’s Box.

A more recent analogy might be the Borg of “Star Trek” fame, a cybernetic hive mind that forcibly assimilates other species and their technologies. Harmless and aloof at first, Borg drones turn increasingly intelligent, and hostile, every time a human engages with one.

So, all there is to do is avoid the AI — our helpful, everyday Borg — whenever possible. That means:

- Take 10 minutes to draft the memo or letter that the bot might do in two.

- In email, ignore the unnecessary little reply prompts.

- Write your own dang wedding toast.

- Don’t engage unless you truly need to, including clicking on prompts.

- Refuse AI the satisfaction of accepting its version of the very work you can do on your own.

Do I need “a eye”? No. Has it been forced upon me, upon all of us? Yes.

AI strikes me as our most extreme example of created need.

Do I feel disjointed or lost at times or have no idea where to go with the story? Yes.

Fixing those issues should fall to an unprogrammable tincture of grit, imagination and luck. I want to leave my work to the serendipity of the cerebrum.