How AI Is Impacting Fiction Writing: An Interview with Michael Woudenberg

In this interview, I speak to author and engineer Michael Woudenberg on the potential implication Artificial Intelligence could possibly have on Fiction Writing. We speak about his new book, AI-written books, and how AI can potentially alter the creative process of every writer.

Edem: Hey Michael, it’s incredible to have you! Could you share more about yourself, your professional qualifications, and such

Michael: Hi, it’s wonderful to be part of the Tech Writer’s Stack, and I’ve loved the incredible network and collaboration that Substack is allowing us to build, which I found largely absent from other blog spaces.  My background is a menagerie of experiences across multiple domains and disciplines.  I call myself an aspiring Polymath; a jack of all trades and master of none, but more often better than a master of one.

My core background is in systems engineering, but it’s more like systems thinking.  I like to say that Systems Thinking is more than just engineering and consists of three things:

1. First, insatiable curiosity.

2. Second, the humility to accept we just don’t know that much.

3. Third is intentional reframing of a problem or idea to see if we really do understand it.

   
   

I’ve got a Master's Degree in Systems Engineering from Johns Hopkins and a diverse background in advanced technologies such as autonomy, artificial intelligence, blockchain, cyber, aerospace, national security, and weapon systems across a variety of companies from tech startups to Fortune 150 companies.

I also recently founded Polymathic Disciplines, which provides Systems Innovation to unlock the full potential across multiple domains and disciplines.  As mentioned earlier, I am also the author on Substack of Polymathic Being, which provides counterintuitive insights from technology, innovation, philosophy, psychology, and more.

Edem: You recently announced your new book titled Paradox, Could tell us about it?

Michael: Paradox is a science fiction novel that explores AI and dives into what it means to be human.  The tagline is: In the battle over Advanced AI, will we lose our humanity or learn what truly makes us human?

It really explores the paradox of being human and what it would take to actually achieve a sentient artificial intelligence, along with all the challenges and potential consequences. My goal is that I want people to wonder which side they’d take in the end because I’m still not sure myself. Here’s a fun video trailer that gives a nice summary.

Edem: For the sake of Completion, could you define what fiction means?

Michael: Fiction is the art of narrative that is not purely grounded in fact. Paradox, though, is where science fiction meets science fact. The book idea started about five years ago when I was trying to figure out how to take the psychology, sociology, and theology of being human and make it more interesting to read.

AI makes a great plot device to work with because the goal, or the worry, is if we achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI), humanity as we know it is in trouble. AGI simply means that AI is as good or better than humans.  But to do that, you need to learn a lot about what it means to be human, and we are a lot more complex than we fully understand.  AI can only handle the logical right now, and humans are built on top of an emotional brain, which is also connected to a hormonal or gut brain.  Let’s just say there’s a lot to explore there.

Edem: I’m sure you get asked this a lot, but did you make use of AI to write it?

Michael: I did use AI to help write it.  But then again, any author who is using a computer with a word processor and a search engine is using AI to write.  What is slightly different is that ChatGPT 4.0 helped me to kick it off.  I had already crafted the entire outline, the ideas, and everything.  I just asked GPT to put together a narrative on a few topics.

But the truth is that AI is a terrible author! It takes so much time and effort to craft the prompts right for any results.  Anything it created, I ripped apart and rewrote completely.  But, it helped me get off the blank page problem that so many authors are blocked by. It was a terrible writer, but it got me started.

I used AI with Grammarly and WordTune, as well as Bing with GPT, to help me do editing and research. It was useful for coming up with names for characters and organizations.  For example, Hyperion Defense, one of the key organizations defending humanity, was recommended by ChatGPT due to the connection to the Greek myth of the Titan Hyperion, known for his watchfulness and protection.

Edem: Let’s talk about the potential of AI in fiction. How do you envision AI could change the fiction writing landscape?

Michael: Right now, AI is a terrible author.  It’s okay with simple descriptions, research, character definition, etc. It really can’t do longer form narrative well. It’s something that is explored in Paradox in Chapter 3, which is titled Almost Intelligent.  What the characters find is that AI is good at mimicry; it just isn’t very good at creativity.

A more painful conversation is that those who are worried about AI replacing them probably have a point.  The key to not being replaceable is to have a skillset or, more specifically, an understanding of what makes humans unique that can’t be algorithmized away.\

I do worry that a lot of weak writers will start using the LLMs to crank out bad content.  We saw this recently with a book someone published literally two days after the Maui fire about how the fire was indicative of climate change.  When you got into the text, it was not just bad; it was horrible. I’m not even sure the fellow took the time to read it before he pushed it to Amazon.

Edem: If you were to rewrite your book, how would you use Text models to facilitate your creative process?

Michael: Well, I wouldn’t rewrite this book, but I am about to kick off book two.  It’s titled Integration and explores the AI arc after the calamity of Paradox. It’s going to be exploring a lot of concepts more broadly, like race, gender, and nationality, among others, but back to your question, I don’t think I’m going to change much.

I’ll use AIs like ChatGPT, WordTune, and Bing to help me with my research, scene descriptions, and similar, but these tools are just not at a place where they can write to the level I need them to.

Edem: Is it possible for Large Language Models to ever be capable of creating Literary masterpieces like Harry Potter and Irobot?

Michael: LLMs will be able to mimic those masterpieces.  But it will clearly be a mimic. I can’t see them being able to create something new and unique. Not without pretty heavy human involvement.

Another thing to consider is that, right now, AI can’t learn. It can be trained, but once the training is done, it’s static again. Humans never stop learning though and social learning is one of our superpowers where we build off of one another. Humans learn and create through social connections.

Moreso, what I found in the book that limited AI was that it was purely logical and could only fake emotion. Humans are smart because we are emotional, not so much that we are logical. That’s the piece that had to fall into place in Paradox to actually achieve AGI, but that’s just not something we are anywhere close to. So, no, AI is nowhere near capable of creating masterpieces. At least not to the trained eye

Edem: Let’s take a look at ethics. If hypothetically, a book is co-authored with the aid of AI, who should take credit for the work and why?

Michael: I’ll ask the question back a different way. If I went to a library and a librarian helped me do research, edited some of my ideas, etc., how much credit should they get?  The thing with AI like ChatGPT is that they are only responding with mathematically structured algorithms returning statistically predictive textual completion.

They aren’t creating per se.  They certainly aren’t being creative. I will acknowledge AI was a useful tool, among many others, but there’s a ton of human input to the book, which just goes back to the idea from earlier on how we are social learners. I can honestly say there is nothing in my book that isn’t first mine and then aided by people and tools.

Edem: What are your thoughts on a future where AI systems can efficiently imitate the literary technique of popular authors and potentially extend their literary legacy?

Michael: I mean, we are doing that in some ways already.  They did that with Carrie Fisher in the 9th Star Wars film. But I think even if they could imitate, would we, as humans, appreciate it as much?

I think of J.R.R. Tolkien. He has hundreds of manuscripts and world-building concepts he never wrote into books.  That’s why the Silmarillion is so clunky. It was never formed and polished.  Could AI help us with a better version of that?

But do we want a better version of that? Or is his true legacy that he nearly wholesale invented the fantasy literary world as we know it?  Thousands of new authors are imitating the worlds he created, using his concepts of elves, dwarves, knights, and wizards to this day.  His legacy is seen in all the authors who were moved to build on it.  AI can only copy; it could never do what those human authors did with Tolkien’s legacy.

Edem: Collaboration with AI seems inevitable. How best can writers incorporate AI into their creative process without outsourcing their potential creativity?

Michael: I’d say that if you outsource your creativity, you’re not really creative. But AI can be incredibly helpful, as I mentioned earlier. You can even use it to provide counter-arguments or recommend new phrasing.  In drafting my second book, I’ve been asking ChatGPT to recommend changes to dialog to make my antagonist more antagonizing in a sneering, condescending way.  That helps get my brain juices flowing and I then craft it in my own way.

But this isn’t any different in some ways from bringing up a personal experience and trying to express it.  AI just helps the process flow a bit faster. It still requires me to feed very specific prompts to get focused answers that are usable.  Without my creative input, its output is rubbish.

Edem: Looking forward to the distant future. What parts of the entire writing process (writing, publishing, editing, marketing, and publishing) do you think AI tools could be most useful?\Michael: It’s good as an admin, an editor, and an idea generator in the writing process. In publishing AI, behind distributors like Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, it actually gives me the ability to write, design, publish, and fulfill orders in ways that didn’t exist 15 years ago.

AI in marketing through places like Meta’s ad space makes writing ads and finding eyes and clicks so easy it’s incredible. AI has literally democratized publishing to where anybody can do it without the archaic and nepotistic publishers and without paying many thousands of dollars.  All in, thus far, I’ve probably invested $2,000 to write and publish my book, including some marketing and more.  Twenty years ago, that wouldn’t have been possible.

Edem: What advice would you give to a budding writer looking to write and publish their work in the current state of AI?

Michael: Don’t let AI replace your writing. You have to be creative, unique, and thought-provoking.  If you’re writing isn’t any better than an AI, I’d look hard at improving your craft and finding out where you can be unique. AI also offers writers a unique opportunity to step out and above the average by understanding and leveraging the unique capabilities that humans can leverage over machine AI.

AI is an enabler, not a replacement, for good writing. Those who use it to do the work for them will never compete with those who use it to make their work better.

Edem: Well, that’s a wrap, Michael! Do you have any closing words?

Michael: A lot of people are worried about AI.  My biggest worry isn’t AI but how we react to AI. That’s the thread I pulled in Paradox that unleashed the most destruction.  I didn’t need to have AI kill people; I just had the AI in the story unlock the fears and ignorance so that it triggered a human societal auto-immune response, and the humans did all the dirty work.

But that’s not how it has to be, and that’s the true underlying lesson in the book.  Because it really does come down to that tagline: In the battle over Advanced AI, will we lose our humanity or learn what truly makes us human?

If you are interested in more of these topics, please subscribe at PolymathicBeing.com 

You can find the book on Amazon. You can also watch a short video (2-½ minutes) on AI as a co-author below on YouTube, which you can share with others.