Organic vs. AI-generated writing

You have never before heard such a nervous clattering in the discreet, carpeted corridors of the world’s great publishing houses. There is a palpable, unprecedented fear vibrating behind those closed doors. A growing sense of alarm is sweeping through the industry worldwide. Computer inboxes are no longer just full; they are heavily clogged with an impenetrable, thick traffic jam of manuscripts, and literary competitions are receiving more original submissions than ever before.Once upon a time, the repository of unsolicited manuscripts was simply known as “the slush pile.” It was a physical mountain of paper, a testament to the fact that few were actually brave enough, or persistent enough, to finish a book. Back then, a literary prize was occasionally left unawarded—deserted, simply because the usual suspects did not click with the jury’s sensibilities and the slush pile yielded no hidden gems. The gates were heavily guarded, and the gatekeepers slept soundly.Those were the days of the old-school writers. They started with a pencil and let the words flow like bourbon-driven fools, bleeding their raw, unpolished souls onto the page. They left the hard work to the typewriters first, and then to the editor—that unsung hero who would ruthlessly cut through the tangled manuscript. The goal was always singular: to distill the prose until the common reader could do what he does best, which is painting the author’s world with his own vivid colors.Then came the generation of writers who used the typewriter not just to transcribe, but to actively edit. They loved to waste paper, yanking half-finished thoughts from the carriage and tossing them into the overflowing bin under the desk. I sincerely miss those machines. In the beginning, they were massive and incredibly loud. Every keystroke was a physical commitment. Because of this machinery, society became convinced that typing fast—without looking down at the keys—was a vital life skill. I think my parents tried to instill this in me back in 1980, without any success. I simply did not like writing without thinking. What’s the point of moving your fingers faster than your brain can conjure meaning?So, I maintained a delicate balance between deliberate handwriting and measured typewriting, until the word processor arrived and changed the rhythm of thought entirely. It wasn’t aggressively loud like the typewriter, and in its infancy, the dot-matrix printer still spat out text with faint, shitty points. But progress was relentless. Soon came the internet, the crisp perfection of laser printers, and bigger monitors that glowed late into the night.This digital revolution began tearing down the old walls, flooding the carefully cultivated gardens of the gatekeepers. Magazines and newspapers had to adapt, and eventually, books had to adapt too. It is true that the proportion of writers had already grown in a frankly insulting manner in recent years, expanding at a much faster rate than the population of readers. But that phenomenon must be seen as part of a broader explanation. Thanks to technological conveniences, people discovered a long time ago that it is much more fun to be an author than a reader, or a tweeter than a newspaper buyer. It is a novelty, I insist, that is purely technical: it has been known since Eve that talking is much more fun than listening.Added to this structural surge is the recent, explosive development of artificial intelligence. It was not until the covid pandemic, when the world ground to a halt, that tech moguls went a step further. What could they sell now? Their answer was AI in all its forms.Now, editors are utterly convinced that this algorithm-driven output is the sole reason for the massive spike in manuscripts. When it comes to literary prizes, the alarm has reached hysterical levels. The prospect of accidentally awarding a prestigious prize to a text written by an AI won’t let them sleep or live in peace.But regarding the books that an artificial intelligence might write, the only thing I hold as an absolute certainty is that they will be fundamentally better than their “organic” counterparts. Make no mistake: if an idiot sets out to write a book using an AI, the final product will undoubtedly still be an idiotic book—but it will be vastly improved compared to the sheer volume of idiotic books written up to this point in history.You only have to look at the daily newspapers for proof. Ever since the advent of automatic spellcheckers and digital layout assembly, we have never seen such impeccably clean nonsense. The grammar is flawless, even when the substance is entirely vacant. And the future—which is already here!—heralds an era of magnificent splendor as the machine gradually assumes total command of the newsrooms and keyboards.Where the great naturalist Buffon famously declared that “the style is the man himself,” we must now amend the record to add that the machine is the man. This exact sentiment was already expressed when tractors revolutionized the fields; now, it must be ruthlessly applied to the subject and the predicate. The mechanics of human labor have simply shifted from the soil to the syntax.Although, if we are being completely honest, the underlying concern of these editors is quite different. The real terror is that they are actually starting to have to thoroughly read the manuscripts they publish and award.If an editor publishes a book he has genuinely read, is completely convinced of its value, and can passionately defend it, the possibility that an AI wrote it should be entirely irrelevant. It will still be a good book, and its true author will simply be the person who set the machine in motion. The modern author is the one who crafted the initial prompts, who meticulously guided the flow of the writing, and who choses how to improve the successive drafts.In the past, editors were perfectly satisfied with a somewhat superficial skimming and a reader’s report done by someone else—and heaven knows under what conditions that was done. Let us drop the illusion of pristine human perfection. Of course books—even by great authors—have been published without the editor so much as raising an eyebrow at numerous pages of dull writing, endless verbiage, stylistic immaturity, embarrassing syntax, and even flagrant plot inconsistencies.I truly do understand the grave problem facing today’s gatekeepers. And I know, of course, that they could easily lighten their crushing workload by giving these towering stacks of manuscripts to the machine to evaluate. After all, at this point, the machine reads much better than it writes.But let me think there is a light at the end of this tunnel. Even with AI handling the initial slush pile, and sifting through everything that absolutely must be cribbed and sifted, there will inevitably come that final, quiet night right before the big literary prize is awarded. On that night, there are no shortcuts. The editor will have no choice but to sit hunched under the warm glow of a desk lamp and read, and read, and read. It is a wonderful, solitary exercise, yielding a profound intellectual pleasure that no known machine can inject.Although, we shall see. Get full access to Don't You Dare To Think Out Loud! at javiertruben.substack.com/subscribe