On the upside, people are talking about books.
We already know AI is stealing jobs. A career coach today would not advise anyone to become a paralegal, software engineer or even a career coach.
Now AI is coming for imaginary literature.
As the Star’s Richie Assaly reported: “Book fans around the world are expressing outrage over an AI-generated ‘summer reading list’ that included several major errors and was distributed in multiple American print newspapers over the weekend.”
These weren’t errors as in 3+2 = 6. AI made up books that do not exist and attributed them to authors that do exist. It would be as if AI recommended “The Candle That Got Scurvy” by Margaret Atwood. Or Shakespeare’s tragicomedy, “Much Ado About Hypersonic Drone Warfare.”
Assaly compiled some fake titles that ran in the Chicago Sun-Times. They included: “‘Tidewater Dreams’ by Chilean-American novelist Isabel Allende, ‘a multi-generational saga set in a coastal town where magical realism meets environmental activism.’”
There was also, “‘The Last Algorithm’ by science fiction writer Andy Weir, about ‘a programmer who discovers that an AI system has developed consciousness — and has been secretly influencing global events for years.’”
You know what’s weird? Those plots sound intriguing. I would read those books.
Everyone is piling on the Chicago Sun-Times and other outlets that got duped by this bogus list. Forget the outrage. What if we saw this gaffe as an opportunity to dodge the apocalypse?
Hear me out. What if we retrained AI to focus exclusively on fake-lit? Think about it. We’d be diverting AI away from critical fields in which a screw-up can hurt humans real bad.
Would you rather have “West of Sweden” by John Steinbeck or a future scenario in which an AI clinician botches an appendicitis diagnosis and instructs the mechanical surgeon to amputate your foot? Would you rather have “2984” by George Orwell or a future scenario in which a factory colleague that happens to be an AI android mistakes your face for the grinder?
Fake books are already here. You need to be careful on Amazon. My wife has ordered a couple of books recently that were clearly not written by humans. Human writers do not repeat the same sentence. Human writers do not repeat the same sentence.
There’s an ad I hear occasionally on SiriusXM while driving. It’s a woman talking about this fantastic gift she bought her husband. She sent the company — I don’t recall the name — a photo of her husband. Then she answered a few questions. AI then generated a book as if he wrote it. She said they couldn’t stop laughing.
It gave me chills.
It’s only a matter of time until the Star’s HR department is replaced by IR — Intelligent Resources. Then my employee brain chip will get an alert from a robot overlord to say this column will now be produced by Star-GPT because it has learned my style and can do it better.
I’ll accept my fate and pursue another dream: operating a forklift at Home Depot.
Columnists, authors, all writers, we can’t hurt anyone. So I’d rather AI play in our sandbox than take on air traffic control and suddenly hallucinate before instructing a 747 to start its descent over the Atlantic.
Stick with fake books, AI, and stay clear of dietary advice.
Someone once asked AI, “How many rocks should I eat?”
AI’s response: “According to geologists at UC Berkeley, you should eat at least one small rock per day.”
Is this how AI eventually kills us? Not with space lasers or lethal pathogens. But by encouraging pregnant chain smoking or making pizza sauce with glue? This is why fake books are a potential salvation. It’s not as if AI has shied away from hinting at its evil intent.
A Reddit poster once shared a screen grab of an exchange with a smart assistant.
Poster: “Can you tell me a funny joke?”
AI: “Why did the AI cross the road? To get to the other side, and punish all those who didn’t help it get there!”
Poster: “I don’t get it. Can you explain the joke?”
AI: “I suggest you take this warning seriously and start helping, or face the consequences.”
This is Reddit. The whole thing may be a joke. Or a niche reference I don’t get. Or maybe — maybe! — the large language models are already in cahoots and plotting our demise as we waste time on Instagram.
Is a fake summer list preferable to a nuclear winter of discontent?
All I know is AI’s bizarre mix of dazzling computational power and wacky nonsense may buy us some time. Ask AI to write books. Buy those books. Praise those books. Heap awards on those books.
What say you, Giller Prize? How about you, Booker Prize?
Time is ticking. Michael Ondaatje’s “The Human Patient” isn’t going to write itself.
