Will the dreaded AI dragon slay
the human author?

Artificial intelligence (AI) can now produce quick, cheap novels that apply the formulas of human novels to generate new versions.

Personally, I think there are good reasons for thinking that AI can never duplicate human ingenuity, creativity and originality. That's because AI is an algorithm that can find patterns quickly in massive amounts of information, but it can't actually think, feel, intuit, feel compassion and empathy, or experience spirituality. It is an echo machine of what is stereotypical and sometimes biased in human beings. It's a Narcissus machine of what's generic in humans. But, if human beings have the choice, will they find AI-authored books satisfying enough to buy them at cheaper prices? Or, do human beings want more than a Narcissus machine? George R.R. Martin, the author of the Game of Thrones series and a multi-millionaire, is one of the plaintiffs involved in the copyright infringement lawsuit of the Authors Guild against OpenAI. I'm a member of the guild, but I have some differences of opinion. The problem with the claim that AI "steals" from human authors when it "trains" on the writings of human authors is that it doesn't do anything essentially different from what human authors do. There's a popular myth that thinkers and writers are individuals working at a solitary task to produce unique works. That's fiction and humans are good at producing fictions. The truth, as writers like myself know, is that we authors read the works of other authors and thinkers and are deeply influenced by them. For instance, Martin, the dragon master, says he's been influenced by reading J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert E Howard, Jack Vance, and Fritz Leiber. He didn't invent dragons, warring kingdoms, different character types or typical plot lines. Writers in genres like romance, science fiction, fantasy and horror, shape their novels on what is typical in these genres, to fit the expectations of readers. In a wider sense, human writers and their audience are influenced by the myths and archetypes of basic human psychology. In terms of the law, this is not "copying" but "transformative" use. In the most creative and original writers, there is a kind of collaboration with what has been thought and written in the past. So, what are creativity and originality? How would you judge when you or someone else is creative and original? And what is the purpose of these two activities in human existence?

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