As befits one of my generation (age 76), I am highly suspicious and generally antagonistic to the notion of what AI can already do and the damage it may inflict upon writers. However, I see a marvelous potential (still, alas, probably decades off in the future).
We know that Shakespeare wrote a number of "histories," but that Henry II was not among them. Given such a marvelous work as THE LION IN WINTER, might it be possible to feed the AI every word Shakespeare wrote, then add the history of Henry II (as known during the appropriate time span -- e.g., 1592-1607), and hope to have it produce a "Shakespearean" play about that monarch?
More ambitious still: Giuseppi Verdi, the Italian operatic giant, wrote three plays based on Shakespeare's works (OTELLO, MACBETH, and FALSTAFF). He wanted and indeed worked on an operatic setting of KING LEAR, but the project aborted. Again: might a technological device absorb all the compositions of Verdi, then focus on his treatment of Shakespeare's texts in the three operas above, and ultimately produce the "Verdian" opera the composer never wrote? Just curious.
*****
Finally: as for draft2digital: Their printing costs are indeed higher and the royalties are thus compromised. However, their royalties for digital books are arguably comparable, since they seem to offer a better return on lower-priced (i.e., sub-$2.99) books. Good luck with them, though. [I don't wish to sell books from my website, but if you find someone who might be interested in 600 copies of a small paperback (on an obscure tragedy of the American Revolutionary War), please let me know!]
Yes, I'm torn too. Isn't everyone fearful of being replaced by a computer in every field? Yet, it does offer an opportunity for writers too, as suspicious of it as we may and should be. I wonder how that book you mention would do on a platform like Ebay or Etsy, a different platform? Have no idea, just throwing it out there.
I am curious about your thoughts about the veracity of ChatGPT. What does OpenAI say about how much we can rely on the research we ask its software to do?
Thank you for asking such a great question. It is always good to pull from various sources, especially when attempting to round out your story. When I used to teach, my students used to say, but I found it on Google, thinking if it was on Google, it must be gold. But some things are academic sources, and other things aren't. "According to OpenAI, even ChatGPT-4 still isn't entirely reliable as it "hallucinates facts and makes reasoning errors." The company also admits that GPT-4 poses risks such as generating harmful advice, buggy code, or inaccurate information." Luckily, we are writing fiction books, and people's lives are not dependent on what we write; if you are world-building and want everything to be spot-on, it would make sense for AI to be a starting point for your research, not an end one.
As befits one of my generation (age 76), I am highly suspicious and generally antagonistic to the notion of what AI can already do and the damage it may inflict upon writers. However, I see a marvelous potential (still, alas, probably decades off in the future).
We know that Shakespeare wrote a number of "histories," but that Henry II was not among them. Given such a marvelous work as THE LION IN WINTER, might it be possible to feed the AI every word Shakespeare wrote, then add the history of Henry II (as known during the appropriate time span -- e.g., 1592-1607), and hope to have it produce a "Shakespearean" play about that monarch?
More ambitious still: Giuseppi Verdi, the Italian operatic giant, wrote three plays based on Shakespeare's works (OTELLO, MACBETH, and FALSTAFF). He wanted and indeed worked on an operatic setting of KING LEAR, but the project aborted. Again: might a technological device absorb all the compositions of Verdi, then focus on his treatment of Shakespeare's texts in the three operas above, and ultimately produce the "Verdian" opera the composer never wrote? Just curious.
*****
Finally: as for draft2digital: Their printing costs are indeed higher and the royalties are thus compromised. However, their royalties for digital books are arguably comparable, since they seem to offer a better return on lower-priced (i.e., sub-$2.99) books. Good luck with them, though. [I don't wish to sell books from my website, but if you find someone who might be interested in 600 copies of a small paperback (on an obscure tragedy of the American Revolutionary War), please let me know!]
Yes, I'm torn too. Isn't everyone fearful of being replaced by a computer in every field? Yet, it does offer an opportunity for writers too, as suspicious of it as we may and should be. I wonder how that book you mention would do on a platform like Ebay or Etsy, a different platform? Have no idea, just throwing it out there.
I am curious about your thoughts about the veracity of ChatGPT. What does OpenAI say about how much we can rely on the research we ask its software to do?
Thank you for asking such a great question. It is always good to pull from various sources, especially when attempting to round out your story. When I used to teach, my students used to say, but I found it on Google, thinking if it was on Google, it must be gold. But some things are academic sources, and other things aren't. "According to OpenAI, even ChatGPT-4 still isn't entirely reliable as it "hallucinates facts and makes reasoning errors." The company also admits that GPT-4 poses risks such as generating harmful advice, buggy code, or inaccurate information." Luckily, we are writing fiction books, and people's lives are not dependent on what we write; if you are world-building and want everything to be spot-on, it would make sense for AI to be a starting point for your research, not an end one.