A few months ago, I jotted down my thoughts about navigating Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a writer. As part of that exploration, I asked ChatGPT for guidance on using AI ethically.

Well, what if we took that one step further… which I did. I used NotebookLM, a new product from Google, to turn my post about navigating AI into a short podcast-style audio piece. So now we have AI “talking” about a piece I wrote on the topic of AI, which itself includes thoughts about AI from AI. Hell yeah.

Here’s what it came up with:

“And here’s where it get’s kind of meta,” the male AI podcast voice says at one point. “Martin actually asked ChatGPT to write a blog post about, get this, the danger of AI for writers.” Later, “he” continues, “If everyone is using AI to write, we just end up with a bunch of generic blog content.” As if this podcast itself is not as generic as possible. The female AI voice bemoans how using AI “loses that human touch.”

The best question of the podcast, from the male AI speaker: “What happens when we’re just flooded with content that’s you know technically fine, but is missing that spark?” The female AI podcaster calls this idea, “soulless.” They are talking about books, but the same principle applies to, say, podcasts.

This was fascinating. I mean seriously… the technology is incredible. It took the site about 3-5 minutes to create this audio file. That’s pretty amazing. And there is something darkly humorous about AI models speaking about the soulless-ness of AI.

Why am I doing this? In part because AI is here and we, as a writing community, must figure out how to deal with it. We can’t stick our heads in the sand. In the same way that artists and photographers had to figure out how to live and work as software like Photoshop flooded the marketplace, we must figure out how to live, work, and write in a world where AI is increasingly prevalent. That doesn’t mean we blindly embrace it; but neither should we blindly reject it.

I want to explore the new technology while still working through both the broader ethical points for society as well as where my personal ethics come into play. And I can’t do that sitting on the sidelines.

So I am exploring Artificial Intelligence stuff out there. I am experimenting with ChatGPT. I am trying to learn about new tools that are out there, which very well could have broad benefits for our society. Yet while I am doing so, I am also exploring the pitfalls and ethical quandaries associated with AI.

For instance, I still think it is unethical to create book covers using AI, because AI is trained on artwork stolen from artists. Perhaps one day there will be an “ethical AI” model where artists are compensated for the work used to train it. But I’m not aware of such a model yet.

And I still think that books need to be written by humans, like you and me. I’m still writing, working on a couple of manuscripts.

In the end, the world continues to move forward. Let’s figure out the hows together.