AI Has No Gut

Part of my sixtieth birthday celebration was at the Ambassade Hotel in Amsterdam. Just me, early in the morning, in their library. The child on the cover of Donna Tartt’s The Little Friend looked at me expectantly. I took a minute to think of Donna sitting somewhere quiet, working on her craft as she wrote, and I felt a surge of connection to the other writers who were guests at this hotel.

Sometimes, I get jealous that their work came before AI. In depressed moments, I think: What chance do I have to write anything anyone will want to read when AI spits out books mirroring the exact fears, adrenaline rushes, joys, and awe-inspiring moments that the reader craves?

AI gives readers exactly what they want without the awkward feeling of being pushed out of a comfort zone. AI is the townspeople praising the nude emperor in his new clothes. They’re the “yes” men and women cheering readers on as they slip further and further into comfy conformity.

But this was not a depressed moment in the Ambassade library. This was a moment of connection with all the people whose work surrounded me.

Like them, I am a writer. I reach down into my gut, pull something up, question it, investigate it from all sides, and then use my executive function to plop it down into a story. It’s the universally unique experience of novel writing.

And though Donna Tartt does it with much more polish, we share the writer’s gut connection. Readers can agree with the message or not. Other writers can scoff at the attempt or not. It doesn’t matter. It is the writer’s authentic truth revealed first and foremost in the gut and then expressed in story form.

Authenticity takes place in the gut: the tossing of ideas, the melding of cultural flavors, contradictory truths boiling into one awareness, and creative intelligence expanding limiting beliefs.

God, I love a good story.

AI will try to take over the literary world. but AI has no gut to guide it.