Artificial fiction
Things seem to be moving very fast. In the field of AI, the devastating impact of technology on employment is becoming increasingly apparent, especially among the tech companies' own workers. It's within the companies that are driving AI development that AI itself is usurping the jobs of programmers, who realize that what they were helping to create was a competitor that would do the same thing they do, but much faster, better, and cheaper. I don't know what might happen to these professionals, although we know that certain technical profiles are highly sought after within tech companies. But all the experts are predicting it, some apocalyptic, others fully integrated into a system they now lament not knowing how to rein in: AI will be a revolution that will turn everything upside down.
What about the field of literary creativity? The publishing sector is already preparing, according to experts: proofreading and editing work previously done by people (mostly women, who seem poised to receive more of it) will soon be possible for AI to do. While it may not eliminate all these jobs, AI will allow a single professional to accomplish the same tasks as two or three, in half the time. Perhaps the translator will only need to supervise the AI to ensure it completes its work correctly, and what used to take months could now be done in a matter of days. But what about the creators? Will novelists write novels with AI? Or will AI write their novels directly? And will people be willing to buy them, read them, discuss them, and place them on some kind of scale of artistic merit? What awaits us may be frightening, but also encouraging. Will we be willing to read fiction created by AI? Beyond the initial novelty and the merit of having created a tool capable of genuine writing, will what it can conceive be of interest? What are we looking for when we buy a novel by an author we like? Beyond the writing itself—and the pleasure we derive from an author's prose—aren't we also buying into a human narrative, that is, into the vision that a specific person has of things?
The machine can simulate whatever it wants or whatever it's programmed to do, but if we're not being deceived, we'll always know it was written by a machine. And I have no doubt that the machine could do it with great skill, and with accuracy, and even with considerable literary merit, or even with formal innovation compared to a particular tradition… But: will we read it? Will there be a market for excellent, non-human literature, at a time when there's no longer a market for excellent, human literature?
Beyond the surprise or novelty of a debut novel being judged 'excellent' by human critics – something we haven't yet seen – what might happen next? There's a Roald Dahl story about machines capable of writing the next best-selling novel by the world's most popular authors, but the business model consists of selling it to them so they don't have to work.