I completed a marathon yesterday, in my fastest time ever. It was so easy, in fact, that I might do another one today.

The best part? Unlike my previous marathon experiences, this one didn’t require 20+ weeks of training and hundreds of miles of preparation. Hydration, blisters, fatigue? No longer concerns. Race fees and competitive registration lotteries? Nah. All I had to do was utilize an amazing feat of engineering: my car. I can’t believe I used to spend hours and hours on something that now takes me less than thirty minutes!

Unfortunately, people haven’t been as supportive as I’d hoped about the launch of my professional running career. No one has rushed to celebrate my new world record. Nike hasn’t offered me a sponsorship deal. Runner’s World has yet to answer my emails—even though I’m clearly completing marathons faster than Eliud Kipchoge.

If I’m being honest, I suppose what chafes the most (figuratively—physical chafing is also something I’ve left in the past) are the responses from the very people I thought would be most supportive. Some of my old running friends now claim I’m not actually a runner, but simply a ‘driver.’ To those people, I say: cars are here to stay. Get in, or get left behind. (I know some of you saw me go past yesterday. I’d apologize for my exhaust fumes and that tiny collision with Mark, but if you’d just get in a car you wouldn’t have to worry about any of that!)

If you must know, I did try the 1.0 version of ‘running’ this morning after my doctor gave me a long lecture about cardiovascular health, muscle atrophy, blah blah blah. It was even harder than I remembered! I’ll never understand why anyone would put themselves through this type of torture when cars. Are. Right. There.

Anyway, I don’t think I can ever go back to the old way of running. Let me know when you want to get out of the dark ages and join me. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to complete my first ultramarathon.

….

This post was inspired by Coral Hart, who sparked headlines in February when she told The New York Times, “If I can generate a book in a day, and you need six months to write a book, who’s going to win the race?” (For a thoughtful response to this article, I recommend reading Kathleen Schmidt’s post.)

It was also inspired by Andy Weir. In a recent interview, the bestselling author of The Martian and Project Hail Mary said, “I might be among the last generation of human authors. It’s only a matter of time before AI is able to write more entertaining, compelling, and exciting stories than any human. . . .Given this, I think the industry is going to shift away from collective entertainment to a personal form. You’ll have an AI that knows you. It knows your interests, just like Google knows you. And you’ll be able to say to the AI ‘Make a book that I will enjoy,’ and it’ll make a book specifically tailored to you.”

I could write a several posts about why I think Weir’s prediction is a horrifying dystopian hellscape in which humans sacrifice community, curiosity, connection, and personal choice for a word prediction and surveillance machine, but I’d instead point to the many great novels (written by human authors!) that have already explored these themes, from 1984 to Ready Player One to The School for Good Mothers to Klara and the Sun.

I could also write a post about:

how disappointing it is for a successful author to effectively tell aspiring writers, “Sorry, I got the last spot”
how others have reported that it’s time-consuming and mentally exhausting to attempt to revise AI’s beautifully-worded-yet-meaningless regurgitations
how Weir’s prediction ignores that the biggest driver of book sales is still word of mouth, aligning with the fact that most humans don’t want to simply consume entertainment in a vacuum
how the reactions to Coral Hart’s output and the Shy Girl accusations show how deeply readers care about AI use in art.

However, I wanted to write this post for authors who see comments by Andy Weir or Coral Hart and feel disheartened and demoralized; who worry about being left behind; who wonder if it’s worth even continuing to try to write. While in the short term, AI-assisted authors may promote a newfound ease in their process, I firmly believe these authors will see diminishing returns. While their writing may not immediately regress, the creative muscles they surrender to AI will gradually atrophy. The more someone relies on AI’s perspective and voice, the harder it will be to remember their own. The writing process that may seem so much easier today will seem harder a year from now, when they are trying to generate new ideas or feel stuck choosing which direction to go.

So to those authors: the creative muscles you are building in your writing practice are not worthless or replaceable. Your unique lived experiences and human perspective—the inner voice that tells you which choice a character should make, or which plot point to explore further, or which story you’re excited about—cannot be replaced by generative AI. Your roughest of rough drafts have more soul and purpose than any impeccably-phrased AI production.

Ultimately, I have faith that humans will continue to resist generative AI’s siren song, and that human creativity and human art will prevail. I hope you will join me.

Your Editor Friend,

Julie

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