Who’s afraid of the AI wolf?
Paul Dornan and Andreas Loizou
AI is here and it’s already making big changes. But is it really something to be feared? As part of this year’s Write Up programme, Bookie founder Andreas Loizou and Sunday Times No 1 bestselling author Paul Dornan will lead a workshop on creativity and humanity in the AI age.
In the session, they will show you when to use it as a sounding board, script editor and a live help to build your story’s structure. And they’ll also cover when to avoid it.
Ahead of that, we caught up with Paul to find out more about why he’s optimistic about human creativity in an AI world.
You two talk to lots of writers about using AI. What do people think?
These are strange and unsettling times. The vast alien spaceship of generative AI hovers over our world, leaving us to wonder: has it come to save us or destroy us?
So far, most people are using AI for donkey work in the office. Repetitive tasks like filing and document review. But AI is refining itself and skilling itself up all the time. We can’t compete with it on the level of speed, process, efficiency and width… and we’d be fools to try. And it will change how we create. It’s affecting writing, communication, research and design.
Which leaves us with a huge, existential question that might daunt even Jean-Paul Sartre at his most philosophical: if AI and its magic algorithms master creating… what else have we humans got?
What is the point of us anymore?
When it comes to writing - especially original writing - that’s its weak spot. We think we know. The point is still US.
What reactions do you get to this question?
We see everything from absolute fear to complete joy. People express awe, wonder, joy, anxiety, puzzlement, anxiety, indifference, terror. Many people see it as the end of creativity: others see it as a hugely exciting opportunity that will change the world for the better. Many are deeply fearful, worried that it’s coming for their jobs, their creativity, their whole futures. More sit somewhere between, sometimes changing their mind on the same day.
We’ve learned that it’s OK to change your mind about AI. Sometimes on an hourly basis. The alien spaceship is landing and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Life may well be better in lots of unexpected ways. It may be worse. All we know is Everything Is Going To Change.
How can writers develop a positive mindset when they feel threatened?
The new cliche we keep hearing is that AI is a tool, not a master. That’s useful, up to a point. A tool is only of use once you know how to use it. You can master a hammer in a couple of minutes, but AI is more complex… and fallible. It has weaknesses and gaps and things it can’t do, though it’s created to hide those from you and give you a big beaming answer anyway.
We’re all working out how to work with it, how to get the best out of it, how to stay true to ourselves and our creativity using it.
All we can say for sure, it won’t be by getting it to do all our writing for us.
But don’t the tech companies say that’s what’s coming – super-intelligent AIs that can write novels, short stories and screenplays better than humans?
No! LLMs like ChatGPT are pretty hopeless at genuinely original writing. Of course they are. Because writing springs from experience, feelings, triumphs and disasters. It springs from life and AIs don’t exist in the real world and never have.
They have no experiences, feelings or memories. They have no parents, annoying brothers and sisters, odd friends at school, mad teachers. It’s never had terrible jobs gutting fish in a factory or been fired for being too funny at company meetings. It’s never fallen in love, got engaged or been turned down on the dance floor in front of everybody. It’s never swum with dolphins or accidentally lost its daughter at Malaga airport. It’s never broken its leg playing hockey or cheered up an auntie in hospital. It’s never lost someone it loves or been chased down the road by muggers with a best friend on a birthday night out. It’s never seen a rainbow or tickled a fish. It's never kissed anyone or cried when it got chucked. It's never LIVED.
How the hell can it write?
But being a story engineer or critical voice… that needs distance, objectivity, process. AI has it spades. This is where a creative writer can use it to help with their writing.
What do you have planned for your Write Up session?
During our session we’ll show people how to use AI to generate ideas, play with structures, characters, settings, narrative arcs. It knows all the story rules and all about mid-points, reversals and joke-structures. It can help you organise and brainstorm a story, suggesting possible moves that you can change and build on. It knows game-play and how to test characters with challenges.
It's good at pointing at potential pitfalls and showing you similar stories or ideas written by others.
It can be your script editor, your ideas wall, your encouraging friend. But it can never be your co-writer. Unless your piece is about someone co-writing with an AI. Because then it wouldn’t be you. And writing has to be uniquely yours or it’s nothing.
Getting AI to actually write the words of your novel really misses the point of writing your novel. Creativity is about the struggle, the mis-turns, the mistakes, the knowledge and skills you pick up along the way. You can set AI to churn out tons of output, but that’s not going to make you grow as a writer or a human. It’s just… stuff. Not writing.
Why and how did you get into this?
Andreas and I don’t have a techie bone in our body and have no real interest in the technology of AI.
We met years ago as a result of taking the Write A Novel course at the Faber Academy. I’m a screenwriter, dramatist and novelist who also teaches about making great human speeches. Andreas teaches great human business writing and founded the Bookie. We’re friends who realised that, when AI came along, we both didn’t want to give into despair and think that it marks the end of creativity as we know it. Far from it. AI means that truly individual, deeply human work will only become more vital, more needed, more sought-after.
Rather than the worst of times, these could soon be the best of times for real writers. Because even this early on, people are tired of glossy AI slop that sounds OK, but has no depth, no resonance, no truth.
We believe writers need to double down on the skills and talents no machine can ever have - charisma, rapport, history, imagination, good taste, friends, enemies, stories, laughter. Human skills. A machine can imitate them, but it can't feel them. We really are better at this than any machine ever can be.
Paul and Andreas will deliver their Writing in the Age of AI workshop at The Margate School on Sunday, 5 October. Book tickets.