Our AI discussion continues this week with responses from award-winning author Miriam Hastings…
What is AI?
For this blog post, Chantelle Atkins at Chasing Driftwood sent me some very interesting questions about AI, however, lacking any IT expertise rather than answering them directly I have used them as a jumping off point for my own rambling thoughts.
As a disabled writer the first question that occurs to me is a simple one: What Is AI? Also, what are the uses and abuses of AI and how do they affect creatives generally?
A popular meme that has been going round social media recently on a great many author sites (including my own!) states that we need AI to do the boring tasks that prevent us writing, but leave the creative and imaginative work to us. As a disabled writer I find this particularly telling and true.
But there is another question, very relevant to creative work, especially in the history of fiction and mythology: How does creating AI differ from the centuries-old human obsession with creating intelligent beings in our own image; beings that we can control?
There seems some confusion about it so I tried investigating AI and also the distinction between AI and robots. Various articles on the internet assure me that a robot is not AI because it interacts with the physical world and will be programmed to complete only one task, e.g. a robot vacuum cleaner – something very useful but, it is argued, that cannot develop while AI, I’m told, can learn and develop.
But if this is so, surely my voice recognition software must be AI since over the last 25 years it has increasingly learnt my vocabulary and my writing style as well as my voice. As a disabled writer I could not survive without this programme, nor without my dictaphone. But is it truly AI?
Another very useful device which helps me as a disabled person, I discovered only this week. I had to go to hospital about my increasing inner ear and balance problems. These are congenital so have always been a problem but they’re definitely deteriorating now. I was interested to find that these days there are hearing aids with AI, specifically designed for problems such as mine, which are not necessarily to do with age-related hearing loss but to my chronic health problems.
This tells me that AI can help me to write, in spite of my disabilities, but I’m less sure that it will ever fulfil the tasks I would really value and find useful. Just imagine if we had AI that could market and promote our work, leaving us free to devote ourselves to the creative act of writing? That would be really helpful!
Sadly, I suspect that the spread of its use will see an increasing deterioration of original, quality writing and more and more formulaic, limited and repetitive fiction, with boring and unimaginative use of language.
Besides the deterioration of culture, there is the problem of job loss in the creative (and especially the performing) arts. From digital replicas potentially replacing actors to AI-driven personalised content and immersive viewing experiences, AI is reshaping Hollywood by changing how films are both made and experienced. While pushing creative boundaries, it also raises concerns about job security and authenticity, prompting the industry to balance innovation with protecting human creativity.
The use of AI to replace background actors or extras was brought into the spotlight in the summer of 2023 when SAG-AFTRA went on strike to fight for better pay and workers’ rights. Reports started to circulate that background actors on sets were being required to report to trailers that had hundreds of cameras inside, all there to take 3D body scans. From there, digital replicas were created and could be used in other films or scenes without the actor’s consent, or potentially without additional pay. In some cases, if the extra declined the request, they were sent home without pay. This abuse of AI is clearly unacceptable but how easily can it be prevented?
To sum up these concerns, it seems that AI, like so many other things in modern life, might be used in helpful ways but can be abused in even more damaging ones.
Our Desire for Creatures We Can Control.
What most human beings seem afraid of (or seem to desire) is the robot or the hybrid android that looks human as well as having AI. It can learn and develop and so becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish from other humans around us.
There are an increasing number of films and novels exploring this relationship and its subsequent dilemma. However, in the genre of science fantasy they have existed for a very long time – even for decades; think about the stories of Ray Bradbury, or earlier still in other science-fiction writers. Frankenstein is basically about an intelligent, feeling, but fundamentally inhuman creature, made and given “life” by a scientist. More recently we have the experiences of Klara, the doll/robot in Klara and the Sun, a book by Kazuo Ishiguru.
Such mechanised, intelligent inventions can also be found in films, such as the Hollywood movie, AI, made in 2001 by Stephen Spielberg but first conceived back in the 1990s by Stanley Kubrick, about a little “boy” created to replace a lost child.
This idea of the machine that is also human, that has human emotions, needs and desires, is something that has always fascinated us – and particularly it is in the concept of the feeling machine, as well as the thinking machine, that offers the greatest scope for our imaginations.
What the human wants in all these stories, is a creature made in our own image that reflects back to the human being an image of ourselves that flatters our humanity, thus both the little boy in AI and Klara, in Klara and the Sun, long to be human and part of a human family.
Thank you so much to Miriam for this thought provoking and heartfelt piece. Part 2 will be published next week!
Miriam’s links:
Chasing Driftwood Books 