I’m not an early adopter of new technologies but I am a self-interested economic actor. I’m also under a tight deadline on my next book project. So, I decided to use this opportunity to see how much — or how little — artificial intelligence could do for me as an author. Could I outsource some of my book writing to AI? Would anyone notice the difference? The short answer is no, I can’t, and yes, they absolutely would.
As my book editor breathes a sign of relief, I’ll also say that my experiment with the literary boundaries of AI yielded some more nuanced conclusions about when, how and if writers should consider using the technology.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve run trials with what ChatGPT can and can’t do creatively by pretending to be me. While the technology is constantly evolving, what I’ve seen so far has made me much more confident that my own job as an opinion columnist — which involves data procurement and analysis but also personal style, emotional acuity and a lot of on-the-ground reporting — won’t be technologically disintermediated anytime soon.