To the book clubs: I'm sorry
Substacker @liamlamont (Charlatan) commented on my AI SHAME post:
I think part of the reason that your book club was so opposed to your use of AI was because it violates an inherent contract that is present in the consumption of all art. When a reader dedicates attention to a book, they are giving something to the author -- they are saying āI believe that the work you have done, these 90,000 words, are worth spending several days of my life on.ā And because they value their time, they are implicitly asking you to give something in return -- value in the creation of that work. By using AI, which is very widely considered a āshortcutā in art today, you are violating that agreement.
If this is true ā that I violated an implicit agreement ā Iād like to apologize.
Know that this was not my intention. But if you did feel that way, Iām sorry. When I started using AI for the novel in 2024, the discourse was limited to the more literary corners of Substack.
Liamās response is not the only reason Iām revisiting this. Iām currently in the middle of Pope Leoās Magnifica Humanitas, so this has been on my mind. But letās continue with Liamās comment:
When I read a book or an essay, or study a painting, I expect the author to have given to that work a piece of their soul. I expect them to have struggled through the darker parts of the narrative, to have allowed the work to change them, to have worked hard to get to the root of the plot and tease out something beautiful. It is this struggle that gives their work meaning. Without it, the output is irrelevant, because no heart has been put into it. And if I know that as I read, if I know that this writer shortcut their own suffering, then any meaning I derive from the narrative will be worthless, because it has not been tested against the weight of forcing it onto the page.
I can only say: I gave Rajah Versus Conquistador years of my life. I donāt like to speak about it in this way, as if it was a sacrifice. In the context of the Philippines, it is a privilege to spend years reading and writing, and working on something that will ultimately cost more money than it will make. Plus, Iām suspicious of this fetish for suffering in art. But the tradeoff was real. I chose to not do other things so RVC can be a reality. Everything that Liam describes above, Iāve experienced. It was strange and it was magical. I of course had to try to make sense of that experience through writing:
How it felt like to receive the story:
Why it felt so magical:
Many of you said that you enjoyed the story. Perhaps you questioned whether the experience was ārealā with my usage of AI. I have more at stake on the answer to this question. Did I just waste years of my life?
Every time I revisit the story, however, the answer I get is that RVC is one of the best things Iāve ever done. Iāve recently had the pleasure of listening to it, while working with voice actors for the audiobook, and its the same answer. I feel so lucky to be this storyās channel in this world.
Iām still figuring out AI in creative work. Perhaps you are as well. Writing has always been how I make sense of the world, so let me stop here before this balloons into another 4,000-word essay. Anyhow, Iāve written multiple times about how and why I used AI for RVC ā see below. Iām always game to answer questions you may have; this is what I do; just comment or send me a private message.
I continue to be grateful for how you supported RVC and what you do for the Philippine literary ecosystem. Even if we disagree on AI and tech, I hope our common love for books can still be a point of connection.
Cheers,
Kahlil
I think there is an implicit contract between author and reader. However, AI is being used as a proxy scapegoat for that contract, because we currently don't have other good ways of evaluating quality and coherence from afar.
It's completely possible to use AI to produce slopāin fact, that's the defaultāso writing off anything known to be written with AI seems to offer an easy heuristic for what to pay attention to/dismiss. But this is just artistic purism, which is tried anew every generation, and which always fails. Over time, people will learn to discern on other metrics, using other standards.