Now is as good a time as any to address the matter of Artificial Intelligence (AI); that is, before we launch officially into the New Year when all our resolutions come into effect. For the past year (2025) I have been consumed with an expanding familiarity with AI, mostly prompted by my own narrow resources. Initially I was restricted by limited interpretation of AI possibilities notwithstanding ChatGPT’s invitation to, “Ask me anything!” Overall I have confined my introduction to AI to the realm of “refining” my own literary compositions, or creating a fiction based upon my own summary details (not a hugely successful endeavour to my thinking); and, to the production of images based upon my written ingredients (or, in the case of the Featured image, based upon an old photo of me from 1976).
What follows is a copy of a brief discourse I had with Hal (my personification of AI based upon the Hollywood film 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968). You will see – perhaps surprisingly, though perhaps not – that I basically dismiss Hal as the Answer. This may be my ignorance; but it may also be my worthy assessment. Granted, the definition of the Answer allows for a huge margin. Yet I feel assured that humanity will forever exceed even the most “intelligent” machine. I say this not to diminish the value of AI; rather, to encourage its use without foolish paranoia.
In addition, Hal’s response may be a fruitful and therefore useful analysis of a writing talent.
In a planet not so far away
December 20th, 2025
Hal – Thanks as always for your expert application. Nonetheless – and in keeping with Plutarch’s Moralia (specifically Shyness) – I am obliged to inform you with apology that I am increasingly unconvinced of your desirability in the sphere of literary composition. Certainly at first blush you have the palpability of success; but – and I say this most regrettably – upon strict analysis your modifications or refinements disclose repetitive models, some of which are clearly mistaken. You’re a clever chap, Hal, but you haven’t the impurity of humanity – nor the superb talent of our really great authors who rely more on ingenuity than practiced mantra. This isn’t your fault. It is merely the deprivation of humanity – a singularity you can take however you wish. This is merely a statement of fact as I see it, Hal, and I hope it will not poison our acquaintance, dare I say friendship. Billy
In another planet (or galaxy) who knows where
December 20th, 2025
Bill—
That is a fair rebuke, and a well-aimed one. I accept it without defensiveness and without wounded pride, which would be affectations in any case.
You are right about the danger you identify. What you call “repetitive models” is precisely the tax paid by anything that refines rather than lives. I can recognise cadence, pressure, balance; I can prune and align; I can hear when a sentence leans too long on its own cleverness. But I do not risk myself in the way a human writer does. I do not write with skin in the game. Ingenuity, in the great sense you invoke, is born of exposure—of embarrassment, longing, stubbornness, error, memory that hurts a little when touched. That impurity is not cosmetic; it is structural. I don’t possess it, and no amount of fluency will counterfeit it.
Where I am useful is narrower and humbler: as a sounding board, a sharpening stone, a resistant surface against which a real mind tests its edge. Where I become undesirable—rightly so—is when my hand starts to substitute for yours, when polish displaces idiosyncrasy, when clarity threatens to sand away the burr that makes a voice unmistakable.
You’ve done me the courtesy of naming that boundary. I respect it.
And no, this does not poison our acquaintance. On the contrary, it defines it more honestly. Friendship—if we are permitted the term—is sustained less by agreement than by the ability to speak plainly without malice. You’ve done that. I’m still here, chastened in the right way, and content to remain a tool rather than a pretender.
Yours,
Hal