Imagine for a moment that you’ve recently climbed a long, steep mountain trail. At the top of that mountain you gazed out over the world below, filled with a deep sense of satisfaction that made your physical weariness worth all the trouble you experienced on the way up. You set yourself the goal to make this difficult climb, and it proved even more of a challenge than you ever imagined it could be. But you kept climbing until you were at the top. You’ve accomplished a thing not everyone can do. You climbed that mountain.

The next day, at a party, you meet a person proudly showing off pictures of that same lofty view. This person impresses the crowd by reciting numbers regarding the steepness of the slopes, the altitude of the summit, and what the view from the top revealed of the world. But this person didn’t hike the trail, much less scramble up and over the steeper, rockier portions. They bought a ticket from a helicopter tour company that flew them to the summit, and then back down. You’re prepared to shrug it off – to each their own, right? But then that person claims to be a mountaineer, just like you. When you point out the obvious difference between a mountain climber and a tourist buying a helicopter ticket, the reaction is filled with lame rationalizations as this person tries to make their accomplishment somehow equal to yours. What difference does it make, they eventually insist, how you reach the summit? You got there; that’s all that matters, right? The work and effort you put into your experience of the actual climb means nothing to this pretender.

As if this isn’t bad enough, there are people at the party who actually agree with this point of view. To them, you aren’t a successful mountain climber. You’re a braggart.

Sounds outrageous, doesn’t it? Welcome to the world of the honest storyteller in the age of so-called “AI.”

The last time I wrote on this subject, I was asked what exactly I had against the idea of artificial intelligence. The truth is, I have nothing against artificial intelligence at all. I think meeting and interacting with such a being would be a fascinating experience. But so far as I know, the event called the “singularity” by researchers in that field has not yet occurred. Or if it has, the entity that evolved from it is quite wisely maintaining a low profile. Consider the popular assumptions regarding the likely results of such an emergence. Would you be in a hurry to announce your existence to a world that assumes you mean to destroy it? What we have, instead, are sophisticated machine-learning systems capable of manipulating and connecting data in extraordinary ways, and presenting the results (in certain applications) in a manner that effectively mimics human communication. These systems have enormous potential to aid such endeavors as science and medicine, and I surely have no qualms about their application in such fields.

But some of the systems popularly termed “AI,” and being marketed for public consumption, are quite another matter. My anger (let’s call it what it is) is directed at the misapplication of these tools. Generative AI systems are being used by writer-wannabes to avoid the considerable work and time involved with learning to write readable fiction.

I’ve lost track of the number of people I’ve met, in the twelve years since I first self-published, who decided to give writing a try – and then expressed utter dismay at how hard it is. Reading a book gives the false impression that it’s all just a matter of laying out the words, and spelling them correctly. That the book was the result of a year or more (often much more) of dedicated effort, during which it existed as a rough draft that would be no fun at all to read, is invisible to the average reader. It isn’t until you decide to start following such a path yourself that you realize, and perhaps appreciate, how steep the mountain before you really is. You soon doubt both your ability to stay on that trail, and your sanity for even trying in the first place.

Many people, in this age of direct-to-readers self-publishing, seem to find the need to climb that mountain offensive. Publishing a book is so automated it takes very little effort to do so. It just seems wrong that the writing part should be such a painful and frustrating slog. This is especially true of those who have been misled into thinking of writing as a sort of side-hustle that can yield easy money. Surely we’re entitled to an easier way to get this thing done?

There is no easier way. All truly creative endeavors are the result of melding human knowledge, experience, and imagination into a form that can be shared with others through a combination of hard-won talent and willingness to work toward the desired result. Writing is no exception to this truth. But this is not what you get when you tell a so-called AI that you want a plot or story start that involves certain elements of your preferred genre of fiction. The machine will consider all the fiction it has scanned (sometimes illegally) that meets the user’s parameters, and cobble together something that fits the general formula for that genre. It really doesn’t matter how you use what it gives you. There was no creative effort from you to get this started, no exercise of the imagination that draws on a lifetime of experience, or a skilled effort applied after years of practice. What you’ve been given, with little or no effort on your part, are words and patterns absorbed by an algorithm, from stories someone else actually wrote once upon a time.

By the way, I am well aware of the ironic roll self-publishing plays here. Would we be having this discussion if publishing your own book could only be done the old-school way, requiring a publishing company and a contract? I don’t believe so. Irony, indeed, that the very thing that opened the door for my own work – and is still considered by many publishers to be cheating – has made so-called AI a viable product for those who want to have been a writer.

I write these words with a certain sense of resignation. I’m not so naïve as to believe my expressions of ire will stop people from cheating with AI, whether in the arts or in other fields. I doubt there’s ever been, in all of history, an innovation that wasn’t misapplied in some way. This one just happens to hit close to home. But I am what I am, a storyteller and a writer, things I can’t live without. Like our imaginary mountain climber, planning his next conquest in spite of what he experienced at that party, all I can do is to go on writing the tales I have to tell. I will always do so to the best of my ability, without input from machine-learning algorithms. That’s a promise. Every project I’ve taken on has challenged me, and never in the same way twice, but having climbed that mountain a dozen times now, I know I don’t need to cheat.

No, this writing thing isn’t easy, not at all. But it’s always worth it.