This week I am returning to a topic that was
discussed here recently, but I suspect will be returned to again and again: that of the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in book publishing.
I was fascinated to read a
column in
The Bookseller by Nadim Sadek, founder and CEO of Simmr AI, who argued AI could be used to bridge the creativity gap between those who have the craft skills to create something and those who do not.
He says: "Each human is creative. But not each human can craft, whether it’s with paintbrushes, words or filters on a social-media site."
"AI solves this," Sadek continues. "It’s not a Stradivarius. It’s not a Porsche. It’s not squirrel-hair brush. But it is a new expresser, a means of fashioning an artefact from a creative impulse without having to master the craft of expression."
In his reading of the potential of currently available tools, "so long as you can articulate your notion, AI can make a decent stab at producing an artefact to represent your creativity," he says, adding that it will "make music to your command," as well as write words or produce an image.
"Whatever you’re trying to conceive and give birth to, AI disintermediates the historic imperative of 'crafting'."
In reply, Jamie Fewery, an author, journalist and creative director with several novels to his name, says that he read the column with "equal amounts of interest and consternation, finding myself virulently disagreeing with the assertion that AI will open up industries like publishing to folk who have good ideas, but no ability to nurture them into being."
He believes that "there is a fundamental issue with the notion that anyone can prompt a large language model with a good idea and eventually produce a novel the industry will be clamouring to publish."
What Fewery means specifically is that tools such as ChatGPT do not have "discernment and taste." In other words: "good ideas sent in [to AI tools] aren’t enough to get good work sent back out," meaning that "craft matters, perhaps more than anything else."
Perhaps unsurprisingly in these days of online vitriol, the Sadek's column was met with a furious reaction, such that he felt compelled to clarify his stance.
In his
editor's letter, Philip Jones quotes him as saying: "In my column last week, I did not advocate for AI to write books. I never will. Nor did I say that the craft of writing should be considered superfluous and anachronistic. "
"My intention was to convey a philanthrophic excitement that the era of AI gives what I believe to be the mute majority of the world to have a means of exploring how to manifest their creativity."
For his part, Jones points out that AI is already being used widely in the publishing industry, but that we are at an inflexion point, with some publishers "making deals with the AI companies, others going to war."
"That we need to discuss what this future looks like, and what the rules of engagement should be, is clear," he adds.
What I find interesting is that neither Fewery nor Jones question Sedlak's assertion that a lack of craft is holding back creative people from expressing themselves. (Whether AI is the tool to help with that is moot.)
Personally, I disagree, as the assertion assumes that all people have an innate well of creativity, and that it is craft that needs to be learned, and to do so is a difficult and arduous journey.
As any parent will know, however, children are born with very little creativity and an equally small amount of craft. Being creative, and manipulating the tools prerequisite to expressing that creativity, require practise, similar to walking, talking, eating with a spoon and arguing that pizza can and should be eaten every day.
Creativity and craft need to be nurtured, along with those associated qualities of a lively mind, an ability to see things in the round and enough humility to learn from our mistakes.
More fundamentally, the act of learning a craft
is the act of learning to be creative within a given medium. We cannot express ourselves clearly and with imagination until we master the tools needed to do so, and the mastering of that craft is our way of understanding what we what to get across.
For those who wish to be creative, and believe they could be, the answer is not to reach for a tool that cuts out the process of learning a craft, but to knuckle down.
What to be a writer? Buy the cheapest exercise book you can and a pen or pencil and fill every page with words. Want to draw? Get a piece of paper, a pencil and starting drawing what is right in front of you. After all, the depiction of
furniture in a room can be a great work of art. Want to be a musician? Start banging out beats on the kitchen table with your knife and fork.
The means to create are all around us. What we need are encouragement, lots of it, and then we can achieve almost anything we want.