Welcome to The Spot Writers.
This month’s
prompt: a story about artificial intelligence.
This week’s
story was written by Phil Yeats. In September, 2021, he published The Souring
Seas, the first volume in a precautionary tale about the
hazards of ignoring human-induced climate change. The second volume, Building
Houses of Cards, appeared in May 2022. He’s now published They All Come
Tumbling Down, the final volume in his The Road to Environmental
Armageddon trilogy. For information about these books, or his older soft-boiled
mysteries, visit his website https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com/
by Phil Yeats
She’d been studying for her creative writing degree
for six years and still had one to go. She was determined to be a writer, but
jobs for graduates with BAs were so scarce she was reluctant to incur student
debt. Her solution, struggle with low paid work intermixed with terms as a
full-time student.
Minimum wage retail jobs with occasional
short-term contract jobs on the periphery of the writing business had been her
lot, and she hadn’t foreseen anything changing.
Her only hope was the novel she’d been writing
in every spare moment. Would she finish it? Would she find a publisher? Would
it be successful enough to launch her dream career? Those questions were in her
mind as she entered the campus café where she’d meet Ian Banks, the son of
Jackson Banks, the owner of Valley Press, an important business in the hometown
she hadn’t visited for six years.
He placed two coffees and a plate of muffins
on the table she chose and shrugged a satchel from his shoulder. He extracted
three mass market paperbacks from the satchel and placed them and his business
card in front of her. She stared at the covers, typical examples of mysteries
set in English manor houses in the mid-twentieth century. She didn’t recognize
the author’s name, or when she turned one over, the name of the publishing
house.
“Very successful,” he said when she looked up.
“I could sell thousands of copies of similar titles, but I need help producing
them.”
“Help? Like what do you mean? A ghost writer
who generates pot boilers to a strict formula?”
He shook his head. “I need someone to devise
the plots and describe the characters and the storyline in sufficient detail to
help a computer produce a great read. Not great literature, but interesting
stories that grab the attention of devotees of the chosen genre.”
She pushed back her chair and half rose from
her seat. “You’re talking about books written by artificial intelligence,
aren’t you? That must be illegal.”
His expression remained passive. “Sit down and
I’ll explain. I have an offer you’ll find intriguing.”
Intriguing, she thought, as she slowly
returned to her seat. Intriguing, perhaps, but can it be appealing?
“Copyright for text or images produced by
artificial intelligence remains a grey area. No one can copyright text produced
by a machine, but the owner of copyrighted text may have a claim if his text is
used to train the machine. And the owner of the AI program could charge for his
product and try to restrict its use.” He paused, apparently trying to gauge her
reaction. “I’ve avoided both problems. First, I’m using an AI engine I
developed, and second, I trained it using books no longer covered by
copyright.”
She glanced at his business card. “So you’re
now a book publisher and a computer programmer.”
He shook his head. “High-powered open-source
software. Any computer-literate person could use it.”
“And you use out-of-copyright books from the
period you’re trying to mimic, which makes the book’s style perfect…”
“But with a twist,” he added, “my characters’
dialogue is up to date.”
“But that means modern sources, so you have a
copyright issue.”
He laughed before shaking his head. “Nope.
Lots of non-copyrighted dialogue I can use for training.”
She picked at her muffin. Constantly worrying
about money meant she was always hungry. A plate of muffins was a tempting
treat, but she just couldn’t enjoy them. “Okay. What you’re doing may be legal,
but is it ethical?”
He sighed. “That’s for you to decide. I’m
offering you a job developing plots for another series of books in my vintage
mystery genre, or some other genre, if you prefer. Only constraint is stories
that adhere to the style of the early to mid-twentieth century. You develop the
characters and describe the action in enough detail to guide the AI engine. You
review the output, adding instruction where you think the computer has gone
wrong. Don’t you see it? You’ll be doing the creative part of writing a novel.
The rest is just drudgery, work that’s best done by a computer.” He paused
while he tipped back the last of his coffee. “I’ll pay you a salary for the
summer, better I suspect than wages you’ve been working for most summers, and a
royalty on each copy of the book, or perhaps two books you produce this summer.
That could give you an ongoing income during your final school year. It could
rival or even exceed this summer’s monthly salary.” He paused again, stringing
his spiel like a huckster on late night television. “Finally, Valley Press will
give serious consideration to your novel, the one you’ve been working on for
years.”
He placed his job offer on the table before
nodding toward the door. “I’ll give you three days to consider it. Job’s yours,
starting May first if you want it. Mrs. Greeley, our old English teacher from
the regional high school, thinks you’d be perfect, and I agree.”
After he left, she devoured the two remaining
muffins. Would one medium coffee, she never splurged for more than a small, and
three of the four muffins he brought to the table, be all she gained from the
strange interview? Or should she accept the job? The salary was better than
she’d get elsewhere for the summer, and her expenses would be low if she lived
with her sister. She could reject the offer of royalties from the disreputable
book. The summer would be an excellent learning experience and publishing the
artificial-intelligence-generated book would be Ian’s responsibility, not hers.
Is that what Mrs. Greeley, her mentor from high school, would recommend? Or
would Mrs. Greeley surprise her by saying the world was always changing, and
she needed to adapt? She trudged from the café, weighed down by the decision
she had to make.
That evening, when she arrived in her dank and
dingy room in the basement of a rundown house, her thoughts were on her novel.
She had to finish the damn thing if she expected Valley Press to consider it.
*****
Val Muller: http://www.valmuller.com/blog/
Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com/wicker-chitter/
Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com/
Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.com/
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