A Committee of Stochastic Parrots

I’m going to try to write something difficult. I don’t know if I’m going to pull it off, but that’s kind of the point. This is how writers improve: We tackle something we’re not sure we can do. Along the way, I am committing a minor sin in the world of writing — I am writing about writing.

But wait, don’t bail, here’s a topical tidbit to keep you engaged: I’m also going to write about AI, and who doesn’t want to hear more about that?! My prompt, as it were, is “Audience of One,” a post by Mario Gabriele, who writes the interesting and hyperbolic newsletter The Generalist. Gabriele’s optimistic prose focuses on venture, startups, tech, and tech culture. I find his work thought provoking and sometimes infuriating. “Audience of One” falls into the latter category.

So back to the topic at hand: Writing. In “Audience of One” Gabriele tenders an opinion on the future of narrative fiction. In short, he argues, the author will disappear, replaced by omniscient AI: “The logical narrative endpoint of artificial intelligence,” he declares, “is that every story will have an audience of one.”

Once AI gets good enough to write engaging, world-class stories — and he offers OpenAI’s recent publicity stunt as proof it’s getting close — Gabriele argues that all stories will inevitably be written by someone prompting an AI, because stories that are…