How To Remain Relevant During A Robot Takeover

Or, An Argument For Why We Need To Create From A Place Deep Within

Photo by Cristobal Baeza on Unsplash

I, for one, do not welcome our robot overlords. A quick google search for “AI screenplay generator” will show you why. Here are just a few of the sites that pop up and claim that they will write a script for you in seconds:

Sudowrite, Squibler, Boords, ToolBaz, DeepStory, Taskade, Simplified

I know, I know, the scripts they write are probably terrible. But that’s now. AI is moving at lightning speed and it won’t be long at all before it can write a Law & Order: SVU episode that would fool even the most dedicated fan. Once that’s possible, why would a studio pay a ton of money and wait for weeks/months for something that they can now generate on their own instantly for free?

It’s impossible to separate art and commerce in our world. Creators need money to create the things they do (and also just to, you know, eat). Before now, the relationship between an artist and a company was somewhat symbiotic - the artist creates something cool and sells it to a company and then the company makes a profit off of whatever it is they bought. Although the company usually ends up with much more money than the artist does, the artist at least can support themselves and their work enough to create again. But what if the company can now generate it’s own product? For free? Why would they ever choose to pay an artist? I mean, considering that the sole purpose of a business is to make money, they would have to be the worst business people in the world.

While I’m not saying we’re staring down the barrel of The Terminator (well, we might be, that’s not the point I’m trying to make at the moment), I am saying that things aren’t looking so great for artists in a space where AI can write and produce a pop song, spit out a fully finished film (yes, even with actors), or create a photograph with no need for a location or a camera.¹

Will what AI makes be good? I don’t know. But, will it be good enough? Probably.

I often hear the argument that there is no way AI can replicate the depth of human art, but I’m really not so sure. Film, literature, photography… These industries employ all kinds of creative people - yes, a few geniuses, but mostly just people who love what they do and are pretty good at it. Think about the majority of work you see going out into the world, how much of it is completely unique, never seen that before, resonating deep within your soul, kind of good? There are the auteurs and then there are the rest of us. The auteurs might be safe from AI, but I don’t know about me.

I have been obsessing about all of this for quite awhile now and at some point I figured rather than spiral into a deep hole of despair, maybe there was a way I could try and get ahead of this thing. I love problem solving, so I attacked it like a SAT question. First I thought, okay, what is it that the visionaries have that the rest of us struggle with? Well, a lot. They have talent and are amazing at everything and… hmm, this isn’t helpful. Like, even if I notice that one of the things that made Michael Jordan great was that he dunked basketballs, the answer for me to be great isn’t dunking basketballs because, I PHYSICALLY WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO DUNK BASKETBALLS. Some people just have innate gifts that the rest of us don’t. Better to focus on things we all have the ability to do. Alright, so back to the geniuses. What else makes their work irreplaceable? That’s when I realized the answer.

The work comes from them. They bring themselves. It goes back to the previous essay I wrote about the whole ‘finding your voice’ thing. They have voices and they use them. This gives me hope because that’s something we all can do. We have to create things that are so… US… that no one, even the world’s smartest computer could ever duplicate it.

So, here’s something I’ve been doing to get used to putting ‘me’ on the page.

EXERCISE: Stream of Consciousness Writing

A lot of you have probably done this before, maybe some of you already do this regularly. It can be similar to journalling or ‘writing pages’. If you haven’t done it because it sounds too woo-woo, I suggest you give it a shot anyway because I find it extremely helpful. It’s an especially great thing to do just before you start your writing session to help get in the right headspace.

• Find your prompt. Either pick something at random or choose something related to the story you’re working on. Something random might be: What is a scene in a movie that resonated with me recently and why do I think it did? Something story specific might be: Who does my main character remind me of and why?

• Do some grounding. Get settled somewhere quiet where you can focus uninterrupted. Put on some music if you like to write to music or take some deep breaths.

• Set a timer. I usually do 10 minutes. You can start with 5 if that’s too long.

• Write down everything. Imagine you have been hired to transcribe every single word that a person says - that person just happens to be your brain. Write every thought as it comes into your head and try to capture it as accurately as possible. If you get distracted by a bird chirping and wonder where it is, then write down “A bird is chirping and I wonder where it is.” You want to separate yourself from your thoughts and be an observer of them rather than an active participant.

• Review. How did it go?  What percentage of thoughts do you think you managed to record?  What did it feel like?  How did it feel different than how you normally approach something?  Did your mind try to interject?  Did it want to change what you wrote down or how you wrote it? Don’t worry if there isn’t anything groundbreaking or interesting. The point is to practice channeling thoughts, ideas and feelings without editing - without questioning. This is you learning how to put ‘you’ on the page so that you eventually do it automatically when you are working on something.

• Do it again. The goal is to train yourself to recognize the feeling of when you are writing from a deeper place and when your mind has taken over instead.  Once you can identify this better, you will know when it’s time to stop writing because it’s switched over to a place that isn’t as real.  Being able to feel the difference will come with practice.

1. Yes, AI has been fed lots and lots of copyrighted material to reach this capability, but the moment to put legal guardrails in place to protect these artists has long passed. The cat’s out of the bag. And I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to put a cat into ANYTHING but if it doesn’t want to go, then good luck, my friend.