Nobody’s been asking for my opinion about the recent NaNoWriMo controversy. That’s less about not having anything useful to say, but more about no one knowing who I am. That’s fine. But…here we go.
I have never won a NaNoWriMo in all the years that I was a participant. I would create an account, try, try another time, try again. And then I would delete the account and later–in the interest of a ‘clean slate’– create a new one.
I’m not great at becoming part of a larger community (I know I have to work on this) so the other perks about being part of the NaNoWriMo world we’re not something that were part of my writing life.
There are lot of ways their AI statement could’ve gone and I think it’s interesting that they were able to pick the absolute worst way to go. The thing about being part of a community is understanding where the community is.
Now, there are loud voices in the writing community, particularly in the independent writing community, that are very AI-positive and while people can have their own takes on controversial topics, I do think that history will bear out that this is the wrong side. I felt this way when important voices in the independent community were very NFT-positive. NFTs aren’t all that popular anymore.
I have my own skepticism when it comes to AI, but the one thing I will never, ever, compromise on is the idea that creative endeavors are driven by the human mind.
Programming is creative but algorithms are not human, nor human-like. LLMS and AI are born of a human mind, but are not even remotely like a human mind.
Why? Cause we really have scant knowledge about how the human mind works. We have good schemata about how we build knowledge and language and culture, but those are only reflections of what the mind produces, not the actual creation of the mind.
But I had this discussion with someone else they said, “well, what about the calculator?” The calculator is reposonding to input is responding to process that the human can do, albeit slowly. The outcome of the calculation will be no different no matter who inputted the information. The machine uses the same function with identical input.
I wish I’d had that answer then. But I was less elegant.
What we see in ‘generative’ AI is mimicry. It is the imitation of creative choice. It bases its output on probable responses compared to what it has digested. You could argue that this is what the human mine does, but the human mind brings with it a conglomeration of stimuli and responses and baggage and emotions and feelings that all influence each choice.
We do not create a bubble.
We are constantly influenced by our environment and that influence isn’t mimicry. It’s aversion. It’s delight. It’s disgust. It’s misunderstanding. We are bound and defined by our mistakes just as much as our successes. If we created things based on a percentage of probability a likelihood of this combination occurring previously, then everything is derivative.
A ‘logical’ person would say that all things are derivative. That person is in denial of their emotional brain. They are in denial of the squirmy, squiggly, squeamish parts of us that influence all of our choices.
NaNoWriMo is a large organization with lots of influence in the writing community and therefore had an obligation. They had a goddamn obligation to prioritize the writer, the writer that made them who they are, the writer to whom they cater, and the writer that keeps them going.
If you no longer prioritize the human writers, you were no longer serving your community, and you deserve to be abandoned.
