Know Jack #476 Oh, the Humanity

I was watching a baseball game, and saw that Major League Baseball is going to play around with automated balls and strikes and allowing players to challenge the umpire’s calls. How long will it be until people quit playing altogether and watch machines play their games for them?

I still haven’t fully accepted the use of designated hitters. I’m for players playing the complete game. It’s more than just clinging to tradition. It’s about the story every game tells. Stories in which there are errors, bad calls, and poor judgment. You know, human stories. Stories of success and failure, winning and losing.

Writing stories will always be a human endeavor. AI and writing programs crank out books without end, but that is not really writing, and those who use them are not really authors. Writers live and breathe writing. It is their purpose in life, whether or not anyone buys their books. Writers are never more alive, more human, than when they are writing.

It doesn’t matter if writers are in the zone, struggling to find the right word, or fuming at the blank page and the taunting cursor, they are living their best life. Someone may say the use of computers is yielding to machines. But the keyboard is not doing the thinking. It does not wake up in the middle of the night, suddenly inspired, and driven to capture the idea of the moment before it slips away.

AI isn’t moved to laughter or tears by its own words. It does not, as Hemingway said, open a vein and bleed a story. It has no life to give to the story. Only a human, creating a story and playing the entire game, can do that. Writers must step up to bat for themselves, field every ball in play, and pitch a complete game.

There will be no joy in Mudville when machines strike out the authors and end the game.