Claude AI is here. Are we ready?
"Have you met Claude? Oh, brace yourselves."
Welcome to our weekend conversation—late but not forgotten!
Dear ones. Apologies for getting this weekend discussion going later than usual. I’m down in Florida with heaps of life details to take care of. But, there is something I very much want to discuss with you all. It’s a thing that is absolutely wild.
Before we dig in, I first want to take time to thank each and every one of you—for your messages, your comments, your notes. I’m still making my way through it all, and I want you to know how much I cherish every single word. We’re all here at Lit Mag News for craft/business/creative/career-related things. But, every once in a while, it’s pretty amazing to be here for one another in other ways too. So, with so much appreciation, and from my heart to yours: thank you.
Okay. Now. Onto the madness!
So, I was hanging with my brother this past week. He knows a lot about AI. In fact, he tried to warn me about it nearly a decade ago. There are programs that can write exactly like Hemingway, he used to tell me. You should get to know them. Be prepared. Bah! I said. Who cares. That’s stupid. No one will ever be interested in programs like that.
Now, ten years later, looks like I have to take the little-sister L. (“L” stands for Loser, for anyone un-versed in such things.) Today, of course, AI writing is a major concern. It will likely take up several weekend discussions here, as there is so much to unpack and explore. How do editors identify AI writing from human writing? From the perspective of a reader, does it actually matter whether or not something was written by a computer or a human? As a writer, where is the line between using AI to assist you, and using AI to do the work for you? And why is that line actually important?
For some of us, it’s unthinkable to imagine using AI to write an entire project for us. I am in the camp of writers who actually loves to write for its own sake. Writing helps me know what to think about things. Writing helps me sort through my own ideas. If I sat down and said, “Mr. Bot, write a 5,000 word short story about a mother who takes her daughter out to lunch and discovers a life-changing secret,” and then sat back and let it do the work, I would feel I was missing out. I want to discover the secret myself. I want to figure out how to get there, in my own way. I want this story to uncork hidden experiences from my own life as I untangle the yarns of language and myself.
At least, this was what I thought. Then my brother introduced me to Claude.