- New laws on how ISPs can sell browsing data
- A sale at Lowes on GE Z-Wave switches (most likely gone thanks to people like yours truly).
Of course, there was also the usual horde of investor articles that seem to rehash the same points: security, cost savings (or not) and how it will affect jobs. I generally ignore most of those because they rarely say anything new and that bores me (and I write articles that are at least three times longer than the usual Buzzfeed crap, so I rank my attention span as better than the average internet goldfish).
But, as usual, something did catch my eye: another question on Reddit, in the /r/singularity section. "Will Artificial Intelligence Replace Content Writers in the Future?" Most of the comments are pro human: "Content for mindless dribble, 100% yes." And that's a sentiment with which I mostly agree. For ad copy and other boiler plate kinds of content (financial reports, etc), it may already have taken over. Which is great, because most of us humans don't like writing that stuff (though we'll cash the check for the work).
What about 'real' content: long form, creative writing? For the purposes of this article, we'll take 'creative' to mean fiction, opinion and in-depth reporting all of which require a creative use of language to keep the reader's attention. What some of the articles on AI writing start calling 'soul' or 'heart'. As someone who holds a BA in English, I want to dive into what that 'soul' is.
The current state of AI writing bots appear to be good at highly formulaic prose, hence the financial reports and legal briefs and other content that for whatever reason needs to stay within strict bounds. Anywhere that a dropped comma can cost a company millions needs something with a superhuman attention to detail and legal exposure. The current AI systems should be perfect for this.
However, to keep a reader's attention (and if you've made it this far, then I'm not too bad at it) requires not only following grammar rules, but also knowing when to break them. I have a Greek chorus of writing instructors that scream in my ear every time that I start a sentence with 'And'. And yet I do it often because it sounds 'right' to my inner ear.
In fact, most of us appreciate rule breaking in writing because it makes the writing more interesting. It has to be done carefully and with intent, but that is what second and third (and fourth) drafts are for. This is why it will be difficult for AI to 'own' content creation. All artistic disciplines have these rules and all of them reward those artists that break them with intent.
Ultimately, this is because successful formulas become boring with repetition. In our present pop culture zeitgeist, this is most obvious in summer tent pole blockbuster movies. The current reigning champ is Disney/Marvel with their MCU which is going on nine years of movies since Iron Man was released in 2008. Disney has also had success with family animation movies and princess movies and theme park rides. Much is because they do have a formula, The Hero's Journey. Yet, they do no slavishly follow all of its beats. They mix it up, eventually pitting hero against hero in order to make the formula feel fresh (keep in mind that Civil War is really a Captain America movie, so all of the other Avengers in the film are there to distract us from the formula of Cap's journey).
Will AI be able to break the rules with intent? No doubt some clever boffin will figure out the algorithm to make that happen. Then Michael Bay will only need to enter a brief and a few actors' names, press a button and have another Transformers movie. One that will make enough money to allow him to press the button again and again until the formula becomes old. And there's the point. New formulas require people to feed them into the AI. New rules to implement and then break.
At least, they will as long as the AIs are writing for humans. As soon as they start creating for themselves and their interests, then all of the rules are out the window.
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