It’s funny to see reactions to the emergence of ChatGPT and other AI happenings. An increasing number of writers– especially on the low end– have embraced it as a way to get more “product” out there. Doesn’t matter to them if they can generate a novel in a day, or if it’s not at all any good. If it qualifies in their mind as a novel, that’s enough. Some–like the editors at New Pop Lit— are opposing the gathering onslaught. Meanwhile, a large number of writers, particularly those in or connected to the literary establishment, are ignoring it.

One can liken them to the French army in 1940. At war with Nazi Germany, yet believing they were safe behind a supposedly impregnable series of forts known as the Maginot Line. The forts were a psychological barrier more than anything– false security which enabled the French not to have to think about that which awaited just outside the gates, so to speak– and which swiftly with the roar of dive bombers and tanks came racing through the Ardennes Forest to spread terror and mayhem.

Similarly, literary people don’t want to think about AI chatbots. They believe they’re safe, and can wish the devices and the change they bring away. An illusory dream– writers are nothing if not dreamers.

Most out-of-touch of all are literary critics– those you’d assume would be most on top of things. Instead, they’ve tricked themselves into believing they represent a Golden Age of American literary criticism (I’m not making this up). A Golden Age nobody’s heard of, consisting of writers nobody knows. The height of insularity and arrogance. It’d be like the Essenes– authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls– circa 30 AD designating their inscrutable writings and themselves as a Golden Age.

The reality? I think of auto exec Bob Lutz’s remark about the General Motors car business before it went bankrupt: “brilliantly executed mediocrity.”

It’ll take way more than that to stem the coming tide of AI.

(The Save the Writer petition.)

-K.W.