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2.66 AVERAGE
2.66 AVERAGE
adventurous
inspiring
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
It’s . . . interesting. A prominent Canadian author is murdered. There’s no gun, no witnesses. A scholar of her work is invited to her invitation-only funeral, questioned by the police, harassed by a reporter, and accused of murdering the writer. And someone impersonating him has been emailing the writer for months. This novella about creative AI was 95% AI written. (Aidan Marchine is an AI-generated pen name for the combined efforts of Stephen Marche and his several AI co-writers.) More interesting than the plot is Marche’s short essay on how he created this novella and his thoughts on creative AI technology. So it’s worth reading for both the mystery story (spoiler: the ending is not quite satisfying) and for the afterward.
informative
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
mysterious
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
This wasn‘t a book as much as it was an argument. By producing this book with AI, Stephen Marche is responding to contemporary fears about the dangers posed by generative AI to creative work. In his afterword, he does explicitly discuss some specific issues, bringing into question the concept of originality in literature itself, what constitutes plagiarism and literary ownership, etc, but even without that afterword, it’s a pretty clear case: AI will never have something we crucially do — a soul. The novelty of this novella is a good enough hook, and picking at the metanarrative is entertaining enough for at most half an hour, but once your initial interest wanes, you come to realize… it’s mid 🤷♀️ I’m just glad this was just 2.5 hours. I think it works. It’s a decent enough story. I don’t know what I expected. It’s AI. I don’t know. I’m not particularly threatened by machines, at least not at the moment. I think in terms of making literature, it will never ever be humanlike enough to surpass man-made content. At least I hope it never will.