In the Glow

I will tell you a story about what I want from writing. ChatGPT taught me its ending. It all began because I am generally amused by the bot and its ilk, and I do see their utility. I just wish all those technologists had found a way to train their machines without resorting to data banditry, without sending out their little masked robot thieves, daggers in their mouths, to steal the souls of writers from their throats.

For now, let’s pretend that there’s nothing wrong with the whole enterprise, nothing grasping and vicious about its motives, nothing shameful about a service that knows cheating is one of its primary uses, that is building itself on an assumption that no one will regulate its runaway energy use. Let’s pretend that generative AI is just a new tool, like a dishwasher or a fortune cookie maker, for the generation of useful results like student assignments and stories. Yay!

Let’s assess those stories. I’ve read more of them than I’d like and...