This letter to the editor published in the Ottawa Citizen on September 19th, 2024 is in response to an op-ed by high school teacher Jodi Nathanson on AI in creative writing and in the classroom.
High school English teacher Jodi Nathanson writes of “humanizing” her classes as education and creative writing face extraordinary challenges posed by Artificial Intelligence.
What is a teacher, an editor or a publisher to do when a handful of brief prompts can be enough for AI to generate a detective story, a romance or a psychological thriller that is more than merely serviceable, but seems quite polished?
To a limited degree, we have been here before. Mass-produced and soulless acrylic paintings, for instance, were fairly prevalent a few decades ago. They were more affordable and an easier way to decorate the walls of a new home. Paintings of picture-perfect sunsets or those depicting fall scenes with every bright leaf perfectly positioned may have been produced using the correct techniques, but they were too polished, and therefore mindless and soulless.
That’s what I often see today when I come across AI-generated pictures, and it’s possible to detect the same thing in AI-generated writing, too. The human experience isn’t polished; it’s complicated, unexpected and topsy-turvy. These are exactly the characteristics that make for authentic stories — ones that will continue to engage readers for generations to come.
Christopher Adam, Ottawa