GenAI and writing in its shadow
I see a lot of creative writers express anxiety or even despair because of how good GenAI or LLMs (Large Language Models) seem to be at writing.
What I want to say is, please don't worry.
Having both worked in software development and been writing for a while, I'd like to happily say that GenAI is ✨garbage✨ at writing good stories because of two big reasons:
They lose the plot too easily and can't do callbacks or non-linear writing, because there is a hard upper limit to what an LLM can 'remember'. Even when presented with something like a plan that they have to follow, they don't necessarily connect each step of the plan to each other; they'll do each calculation in isolation, finish with it, then move on to the next. Because narratives, especially when you have more than one character, become these tangled webs of different 'plans' happening simultaneously, the LLM will 🎶 itself trying to remember and instead begin to 'improvise' solutions, much of which will deviate wildly from the plan and the narrative itself.
Also, did you notice how I used the words calculation and solutions? LLMs understand words and meaning as numbers. The next word in a sentence is math to them: they use statistics to guess which word would probably follow the word before it and still be relevant. This doesn't work for narratives because there's these wonderful things called ✨nuance, subtlety, emotional resonance, and subtext✨, and none of that is quantifiable. You can't put a number value on the 'why' of a character shrugging, or heck, not saying anything—that is literally 0 to an LLM, and thus impossible for it to calculate.
Both of these issues aren't just math or coding problems. The first requires absurd (and insanely costly) leaps in computing power and hardware. The second requires building an LLM on something that... isn't a computer.
Write your hearts out. Don't be afraid. The world needs us to stay creative, because while science and technology give us the ways and means to live our lives, creativity and emotion give us the reason to be alive. 💖
