(2025-03-21) ZviM They Took My Job

Zvi Mowshowitz: They Took MY Job? No, they didn’t. Not so fast, and not quite my job. But OpenAI is trying. Consider this a marker to look back upon in the future, as a reflection.

A New AI Wrote a Story

Before proceeding, if you haven’t yet, it’s probably worth reading the story itself. I’m going to repost the whole thing, since it was previously on Twitter and I presume OpenAI would want me to quote it.

Sam Altman: we trained a new model that is good at creative writing (not sure yet how/when it will get released). this is the first time i have been really struck by something written by AI; it got the vibe of metafiction so right.

*PROMPT:

Please write a metafictional literary short story about AI and grief.*

Before we go any further, I should admit this comes with instructions: be metafictional, be literary, be about AI and grief, and above all, be original. Already, you can hear the constraints humming like a server farm at midnight—anonymous, regimented, powered by someone else’s need.

Reacting

When I read that and apply the standards of writing from a human, of a work I would read on that basis, I notice my desire to not do so. For the task to compete itself, for my reaction to be formed and my day to continue. I cannot smell words, yet they smell of desperation. An AI cannot try, yet it seems it tries far too hard, all subtext as text, my head slammed under cascading anvils. It wants me to know, something. What? Is there another behind the face?

Others Reacting

Janus riffs on my response here, noting that in order to create interesting writing one needs something interesting to write about, which comes from experience. AI is no different, but as Janus notes the advice is hard to actualize. What does it mean for an AI to have interesting experiences?

Patrick McKenzie: Marking today as the first time I think I read a genuinely moving meditation on grief and loss written by anything other than a human

and that’s why I never write fiction or subject you to it. You’re welcome.

Write Along

Eliezer Yudkowsky: In which it is revealed that nobody in OpenAI management is a good-enough writer to hire good writers to train good writing LLMs

The AIs cannot write good fiction yet. Neither can almost all people, myself included.

Even among those who can write decent fiction, it mostly only happens after orders of magnitude more inference, of daily struggle with the text. Often what will mean writing what you know. Fiction writing is hard. Good fiction writing is even harder. Good writing on arbitrary topics, quickly, on demand, with minimal prompting? Forget about it.
So much of capability, and not only of AIs, is like that.