145/205 word pages revised. No, I don’t use Chat GPT for writing – it’s a deadly tool that will kill your whole style. Deep-l write is a much better tool for writers – it allows me to produce a very good kind of English, although even Deep-l write is far from always right. Editing is still a long process, even if you have a few more tools in the box these days.

But you already know this: the market will be flooded with books written by our robot friend, which will have an even more serious effect on the value of books.

When you see that so many people who can’t write aspire to be writers, and when you see that cutting corners is the norm these days – lethargy is the name of the disease – and when writing doesn’t produce energy but costs energy – in other words, if you don’t get a gigantic amount of pleasure out of it – and so you’re not a writer in my eyes – what effect will this lazy technology have in the long run?

I don’t know. I find Chat GPT quite useful, but as a kind of research tool. You shouldn’t use it to start writing your pieces, unless they’re boring and formal pieces that you don’t want to spend time on. In that sense, I think it is a liberator for a lot of people who have to tie up bullshit all day and now finally have a saviour.

But I am definitely not waiting for all those books written by a robot, although they are probably better written than those lazy human books, which is the irony.

But how will it feel for all those people who, on their deathbeds, have to admit that they didn’t even write their own books? And just think what will happen when quantum computers really start to roll off the assembly line. There are some very fascinating paradoxes.

If you have an artificial intelligence with almost infinite power, it will have no problem at all in creating a whole library of books that are completely superior to any library that man has created, and it can do it in a millisecond.

Books were considered valuable because they were very difficult to make. Take away that dimension and they will be considered worthless by the masses. On the other hand, a lot of time will be taken out of the hands of the slaves of nonsense, who can now have their bullshit typed by a machine.

Now, if someone just managed to find a magical formula to convince these people that instead of making a machine type their bullshit, the world doesnt need their bullshit in the first place.

Will they use this time to read real books? Quite unlikely. I think they will all fill books, following a modern gold rush that will never materialise.

At least not in the way they now imagine.

It could also turn into another dystopian nightmare. Did you notice that the impulse to ban artificial intelligence started in the same place as the Corona Theatre? In Italy.

Intelligence has never been the real problem of humanity. Artificial Intelligence is out of the box and I don’t think they will be able to stop or ban it, but they will certainly try. My advice to people in the A.I. industry is: use the financial impulses to throw the best lawyers you can find against the nonsense they will come up with as an excuse to stop the change. It’s utter nonsense to claim that you can’t train something using the work of existing artists: there would be no art if that were the case. Because that is exactly what every aspiring artist does: they train themselves by looking at the work of others.

To use that as some kind of ‘copyright argument’ is completely ridiculous.

Feeling threatened by A.I.

So, as a writer, do I feel threatened by these developments? No, not at all. That’s because I wrote seventeen impeccable books, and that feeling is very satisfying for me. I know that I did my best on each and every one of those, and no one can take that feeling away. If AI starts to mimic a ‘Martinus Benders’ I would advice it to think of a better piece of theatre to emulate.

And the book market was already a full dystopia when A.I. arrived at it, with a parasitical industry promoting mediocrity as the new normal. If that industry will collapse we might even have a chance at seeing real literature return. So no, I am happy with any sort of intelligence thrown at the mediocre Theatre of Bullshit. The Italians aren’t, because their Theatre of Bullshit which I have also dubbed The Order of Flimsy Essays and which some populists mistake as ‘science’ feels severely threatened by these developments.

But I ask for the magical formula once more: if all these people only understood that writing a Flimsy Essay does not make you an Ubermensch deserving a statue in the town square, but rather a mere participant in the ongoing cycle of mediocrity, then perhaps we could all take a step back and reassess the true value of authentic, well-crafted literature.

As AI begins to infiltrate and expose the weak foundations of this Theatre of Bullshit, writers and readers alike may find themselves returning to the roots of what makes literature so powerful: the ability to convey deep human emotions, experiences, and insights through masterful storytelling. This renaissance could encourage authors to push the boundaries of their creativity, inspiring them to produce works that not only stand the test of time, but also challenge the status quo.

In a world where AI can produce content with increasing efficiency, it is the responsibility of writers and readers alike to champion the art of literature, to seek out and support those who are genuinely contributing to the canon, and to ensure that the essence of human creativity and expression is preserved. The age of AI need not be seen as a threat, but rather as an opportunity to rediscover the true value of our artistic pursuits and reclaim the power of genuine literature from the clutches of mediocrity.

Martinus Benders, 17-04-2023