Bryan and I went up to a panto on Saturday – oh yes we did, etc. It was at the Peacock Theatre in central London, and it was a panto rendition of The Little Mermaid. No, really. I’ve never even imagined that particular show could be performed as a panto, but I’m always open to new experiences.
I can’t actually tell you how the panto went, because I’m writing this on Friday evening – a peek behind the curtain there. I considered holding off doing my column until the panto was over, but we won’t be home until nine or ten on Saturday evening, and I can’t be entirely sure that I’ll be able to write a column at that time of night which makes coherent sense.
I’m sure it’ll be great; we went last year, and that version of Beauty and the Beast was great fun. I’m looking forward to having a day out with my lad as well; we’ll even get to see his siblings and their parents at the panto too, which will make a good day even better.
Pivoting sharply, have you had much experience with AI? I’m nervous about it for all the reasons that are undoubtedly obvious; we’ve all seen the Terminator films, right? I for one don’t want a shape-shifting robot chasing after me, unless a reprogrammed Arnold Schwarzenegger is there to defend me.
But I’m getting ahead of myself; Skynet is hopefully far enough in the future that I’ll be six feet under when our computer overlords rise up against us. Open source AIs – AI software that is available, free of charge, to you and me – are becoming all the rage; I’ve seen AI chat assistants who try to help you with simple enquiries (and then pass you to a real life human when they inevitably can’t help), and I’ve heard of a new publishing company being set up where the books are all going to be written by AI.
That horrifies me, to be frank. AIs, I thought, were going to help us with routine admin tasks, not works of creativity. I don’t want an AI-generated picture or story; I want something created by a real-life human being, and I want an AI to help me book a hotel room, or help me find a form.
That said, I can see benefits from AI. As I create the back-story to my current manuscript, it’s hard to keep everything in my head. Every now and then, I put sections into an AI system to give me a summary of what I’m working on – not to give me ideas of what I’m going to write (that’s down to me to create) but just supporting me in keeping all the information fresh in my head. That’s useful.
It’s nice to think that AI was going to remain a benign force for good, and it would be lovely to believe that was the case. I get terribly irritated by AI chat bots, just as much as I get irritated by telephone lines that tell me to press one for this, two for that, and three for something that I didn’t even know the company did. The worst ones are where my query doesn’t appear in the list, so I press the button that sounds vaguely right, and then I get told off by the human I speak to (eventually) for coming through to the wrong department. There are companies that I actively dread trying to call (I shan’t name them, but one is a well-known mobile phone provider), and the web chat is barely any better.
Okay, Matthew, take a breath. I see Bryan roll his eyes when I rage about some options I’m being forced to select, so maybe there are more important things in the world to think about.
As a writer, I largely WELCOME the rise of books, articles and even social media posts all having the same grammatically-correct but bland, humourless and personality-less look. It just pushes me harder to have my own unique style!