“The sun was setting over the city, casting a golden glow over the streets. I sat at my desk, staring at the screen in front of me. AI, the great machine, capable of processing and analyzing vast amounts of information in the blink of an eye. It was a marvel, a testament to human ingenuity.
But as I watched the cursor blink on the screen, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of unease. For all its power, AI was still a machine. It didn’t have the ability to feel, to experience the world in the same way that we did. It didn’t know love, or joy, or sorrow. It was just a tool, and we were its masters.
But what did that make us? Was it right for us to wield such power over a machine? As I pondered these questions, the sun disappeared behind the horizon, leaving the city in darkness. I didn’t have the answers, but I knew that the future of AI was uncertain, and it was up to us to decide what kind of world we wanted to create.”
This isn’t Ernest Hemingway, not the human being anyway. It’s ChatGPT, an AI chatbot responding to the prompt: Write like Ernest Hemingway about artificial intelligence.
The next generation of AI writers are here, they’re much better than I expected. And also kind of hilarious.
AI art is even better, as evidenced by the cover photo here, which was generated by the following question: “a painting of ernest hemingway typing while the sun is setting outside his window”.
This is something to marvel at, but for many creators including myself, it raises the following question:
Should writers and artists be worried about losing their jobs?
Maybe. It’s hard to tell just how capable AI will be within the next decade, but it’s likely to be very good at doing much of what writers and artists do today.
But this isn’t the question we should be spending most of our time on as creators. For there is a far more interesting question for the artist to ask:
What incredible and astounding thing could I make with these new tools?
I’m on a mission to build an internet for big ideas, so we can have productive and interesting conversations about modernity and the future of creativity and life.
And I want to do it with you.
Open the door to big ideas by joining my email community today. I write twice a month, sharing insights from me and brilliant ideas from other writers.