Work in Progress #27: That's All You Had to Say

Every year as November approaches, writers far and wide prepare themselves for NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, where people try their hardest to devote themselves to the craft of writing and power through the Herculean feat of writing 50,000 words of a first draft.  The last couple of years, however, have left a bad taste in many participants’ mouths as the organization behind NaNoWriMo has been at the center of scandals and controversies of their own making.  Last year’s debacle was bad on multiple levels, and it’s been reported that the situation was handled poorly at best.  This year, it seems that the organization is intent to see how much of its foot can fit in its proverbial mouth.

Read this article real quick if you aren’t familiar with this year’s issue.

Now, a thing to understand is that the organization is in no way equipped to answer the question about AI technology.  From what I understand about how it works (I’ve never actually completed the challenge, so fact check me if I’m wrong), when you complete 50,000 words, you submit to a word count verifier, which doesn’t read your work, merely checks the punctuation and spaces between words to guess a ballpark count.  Importantly, it’s not read for quality or originality—or plagiarism—just for word count.  As such, they rely on the honor system for people to take the challenge and the other participants seriously.  You are trusted not to game the system, partly because the challenge is the point, but also because the prizes are a virtual banner, a completed draft, and the opportunity to buy a t-shirt.  No promises of a contract or fame and fortune.  There’s no real value.  Yeah, you could theoretically alternate writing, “this is a dumb challenge,” and “everyone here is an idiot” 5,000 times and hit the 50K target.  But, y’know, don’t.  Because that’s a pointless dick move.

NaNoWriMo could have very easily given an answer like this: “We at NaNoWriMo must say that the challenge and the website does not have the functionality to identify whether or not a work that hits the target word count is written wholly or in part using generative AI technologies like ChatGPT, and therefore cannot say for certain whether that work would or could be disqualified.  Programs like ChatGPT take bits and pieces of millions of published works to generate content, and there is currently no law that states you can’t do that.  However, since we rely on the honor system so heavily, we leave it to our participants to police themselves via their individual and collective conscience.”  That statement avoids the wishy-washy tone of the statement they actually gave and avoids making enemies of the participants.  Acknowledge your shortcomings.   There’s no harm in saying that you can’t tell the difference.  That’s honest.  Instead, we got the response we got.

Now, here comes the harder part: we need to talk about AI in the creative space.

I won’t pretend like I understand completely how generative AI works.  I think I have the basics: the AI will take a prompt, scan through billions of bits of published data adjacent to that prompt, be it pictures, novels, short stories, or whatever, and compile a patchwork of that data to the level of complexity and specificity demanded by the user (Am I missing anything?  Let me know in the comments).  If that’s the case, then the work is certainly unoriginal, but not in the way that writers are influenced by the media we consume, filtered through our unique life experiences.  That’s the best-case scenario; the worst case is that it’s simple plagiarism.  But is there a space to use this same technology to refine something you created?  People use AutoCrit and SudoWrite all the time while working on a project.  Hell, even Grammarly can be considered similar in some ways.  On the one hand, there is some benefit to the writer who may not have the capital to pour into hiring an actual editor for several rounds of fixing, before querying agents or publishers, or before self-publishing.  Then again, a post I saw on a friend’s Instagram said this: AI grants the wealthy access to the skill while preventing the skilled access to wealth.”  And that’s a thought to consider.  I think my position falls to this: I can see the nuanced point that there may be some room for AI assistance at some point of a writer’s journey in a project, but I don’t think the robots should write it for you.

I have decided against doing NaNoWriMo this year.  I stopped last year when that scandal was brought to my attention.  And while the organization clarified their positions on some things and changed the way other things are done, I’m still going to pass.  I will keep an eye on the news surrounding the organization to see if I’ll ever feel right participating in it ever again.  But I learned that when you’re not tied to doing this in November, you can do it any time.

I am interested in hearing your positions about this, so please, let’s discuss!