Is AI a Threat to Creative Writing?
A simple request of ChatGPT can immediately conjure a story to any specification. The use of the human imagination might not seem necessary when typing ,”Tell me a story about an orphan boy searching for the meaning of life in the middle of a pie-eating contest at the county fair” into a search bar can now invent a story in an instant. AI can generate any picture, poem, or knock-knock joke imaginable. Many wonder what this will mean for those in creative fields and for students with creative interests– especially in the field of writing. Is the future of creative writing destined to be a retelling of John Henry vs. the machine? Can AI truly pose a threat to human art? Does it really matter if our stories come from man or machine?
The short answer is yes. Of course it matters. Many often forget that computers need foundational material to complete their tasks. Though they might be able to splice together several interpretations of Romeo and Juliet from different existing articles on the internet, AI is unable to conjure its own. AI does an almost convincing impression of humanness, but it cannot copy the real thing because the stories it tells are puzzle pieces and snippets. The insights it conjures simply lack heart.
Whether a story “has heart” might sound trite at this point, but this term is worth consideration. What we mean when we describe a story as “having heart” is that a story communicates the concerns, values, and truths only known and felt by the heart. All the best stories share these common heart strings that AI cannot read, and therefore, cannot duplicate. There is a transcendental reality that AI simply cannot see, so the stories it creates mimic form, vocabulary, or character, but never measure up because it has no imagination.
Perhaps one of the most underrated of human faculties, the imagination, has the power to foster ordered desires and create the context in which we view and evaluate our surroundings. When used to guide us towards the transcendentals, Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, it can be called the Moral Imagination. In his essay, “The Moral Imagination”, Russell Kirk describes elements of stories that capture the human imagination and ignite the soul, deepening its hunger for the transcendentals. These elements are far more nuanced than the plot formulas or character archetypes that are easily recreated by algorithms. Just as Jesus is able to craft parables about sheep and wheat while subtly divulging the Truth to his listeners, many stories share this capacity to communicate deep universal Truths. Because AI sources from Wikipedia and Reddit, it has a wealth of information but cannot discern fact from fiction or Truth from fallacy, rendering its stories adequate on the surface, but ever lacking in substance.
Kirk does a very thorough job of defining the Moral Imagination. These are a few of its defining qualities:
- Stories of the Moral Imagination communicate a transcendent moral order. Rather than dipping into relativistic or existential views, it acknowledges the human ability to pursue the True, Good, and Beautiful— and the universal desire for these things.
- Stories of the Moral imagination are moral without being preachy. Nothing kills the imagination like a heavy handed lesson. The stories themselves contain glimpses of goodness and order that awaken the soul and foster a desire for more without being overt, campy, or dull.
- Stories of the Moral Imagination observe the dualities of human life: free will and divine providence, individual identity and the necessity of community, the physical and the metaphysical.
- Stories of the Moral Imagination affirm that humans are not most fully satisfied by pleasure or power. These stories show the greater ends (love, friendship, excellence, virtue, etc.) that we all desire– through admirable characters who choose to pursue them and less noble characters who fail to do so.
Ultimately, the stories that shape us, the ones that inspire, all recognize these tenets. In order to create a story that is reflective of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, one has to personally know the transcendentals beyond their dictionary definitions. One must have an experiential relationship with them– something that a program will never be able to do.
This deep knowing can even breathe life into otherwise dismal stories. For example, Flannery O’Connor’s brutal and jarring short stories could not be duplicated by AI. At best, AI could scan O’Connor’s work and then churn out something gruesome and strange– but it would lack O’Connor’s nuanced way of using darkness to emphasize light, disorder to acknowledge order, and sin to communicate the need for virtue. The trials detailed in the work of Dostoevsky or even the tragedies in Donna Tartt’s novels observe the realities of human suffering but orient their plots towards redemption by harnessing the Moral Imagination. If we want to encounter stories that will challenge us, and potentially even change us, we should seek out stories that communicate Truth that is overlooked by artificial intelligence. And furthermore, writers should take heart in the knowledge that human stories are only more valuable, if anything. It takes a human hand, a human heart, to see the world through the lens of the Moral Imagination and write a story that rings true in this world and points us towards the world to come.
To learn more about the craft of story and what makes it human, join Katie Lastowiecka for a semester of Creative Writing this fall. Enrollment is now open: https://kepler.education/t/katherine.lastowiecka/?tab=courses
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Katie Łastowiecka is a classical education advocate, presenter, and instructor specializing in upper level literature and drama. Currently, she is a freelance writer and has courses available at Kepler Education. She holds a masters in education and a bachelors in English. Twitter: @sourdohscholar
