Item — HN Reader

What I meant by not being sure about the point was not that he was not clear in what platitudes he was trying to convey, just that I was not sure about what he was trying to say which includes what questions he was trying to raise. It provides the reader with something to think about primarily through the messiness that you noticed instead of raising questions and ideas which work off of each other; the ending simply undercuts any nuance of the AI failing to get their frustration instead building on it or changing our perspective on it.

For example, if it had ended a few sentences earlier and used that potential bit of metafiction it would be suggesting that the story we just read was or at least could be the story written by the AI for the novelist and now the AI does understand their frustration but represented itself as not understanding it. That gives us a great deal to think about and builds in a second perspective on the entire piece, the perspective of the AI. But as written that only works well with the conversation part of the story and those last few lines make it really not work at all.

Edit: I think you could make the case that the meta is utilized just as I outlined above, it kind of works with the general pretentious ass that ChatGPT is in the story, things like the mace and the general lack of preparedness of the writers kind of works with those last few lines in that context. But that raises other issues and likely has some rather ugly/messy ramifications on the whole, I think. Probably will reread it when I get home but on a quick check of a few things, strongly suspect my initial view is the the more accurate one and I am just having fun with analysis at this point.

1 comments

That's fair! I guess I didn't feel the same frustration with the last few lines because they did raise further questions, at least for me. The AI in the story is so bitter and cruel that it makes me wonder whether it does possess the capacity for human experience/emotion that they claim it doesn't have, and therefore might actually have a shot at replacing them. Without that final zinger I don't know I would've felt the same way. (And I did think it was a funny jab at the novelist's own elitism, especially since it adds another dimension of pitting him against other humans in addition to pitting him against the AI.)

Like, I don't think it's an amazing ending, but it did leave me on a contemplative note in a way that a "the AI wrote this all along" ending wouldn't have, at least for me personally. Although I would've still preferred that to an "and then they did, in fact, behead Sam Altman" ending :P

And I definitely respect having fun with analysis, lol. If nothing else I think the story was successful on that front... I don't think the successfully-beheading-Sam-Altman ending would've sparked this kind of discussion!

The hierarchy of writers you previously mentioned really suggests archetypes of writers, how do you feel about that last jab in that context? What about in context of the pretentious ass of AI? These are some of the things which I had issue with and things which I felt contributed to the general messiness of the story, that the author never considered the piece as a whole. If I dig into it and look closely instead of look at the whole and notice things like the unrealized metafiction, I would end up hating it, it would make it impossible for me to see the author as anything but a pretentious ass or pandering. At least in context of this one short story and generally I do not judge writers on short stories unless they are exclusively writers of short stories, there is a pragmatism required for the novelist writing a short story.

Beheading Altman could be made to work quite well if it had used the metafiction.

Hmm, I guess I didn't see it as pandering, or I'm misunderstanding what you mean by pandering; if anything it I saw it as the opposite, since the author (a writer) is poking fun at writers. So instead of a story about a bunch of noble, intelligent, sexy writers who defeat the big bad AI, it's a story where these writers are regular, imperfect people with their own insecurities and selfish motivations. But even as imperfect people, their fears and goals are (to me!) sympathetic.

My perception here is probably colored by some of the circles I run in, too. I think a lot of writers and artists are concerned about AI, and will reassure themselves how their jobs are safe because AI can only produce crap, but then they'll also complain how a lot of popular human-produced art is also crap--which opens up a kind of dual insecurity of (1) why is that crap popular and not my own amazing, brilliant work and (2) if audiences already love crap then maybe AI really will take all of our jobs after all...

And I'm probably reading waaaaay deeper into the "I thought genre was beneath you" line than the author ever intended, but that's what it evokes to me. It makes the three writers in the story seem like jerks, which keeps the whole thing from feeling like a two-dimensional morality tale, but it also makes the AI really seem like a jerk for playing to their insecurities, which reminds me that I'm still rooting for those three jerks.