London, United Kingdom Mar 5, 2023 (Issuewire.com) - Barely two months after OpenAI, an American-based artificial intelligence research laboratory, launched ChatGPT (version GPT-3) on 30 November 2022, industry analysts estimated that it had already reached 100 million users eager to test its ability in a range of fields from writing advertising copy to computer code, and from student essays to blog posts.
In the fiction field, book retailers and short story magazines have been overwhelmed with AI-generated content. But what are AI’s capabilities as a fiction creator, and what are the moral implications of using technology in this way?
‘Synthetic Stories and Machine Musings’ presents a wide-ranging investigation of these questions. In each chapter, an AI-generated story provides the starting point for a human-AI dialogue exploring the software’s strengths and weaknesses within particular areas, variously formal and ethical, and the associated implications for human authors and readers alike.
The first part of the book examines ChatGPT’s capacity to assume varying voices and perspectives in order to generate emotional resonance for different target readerships; the extent of its ability to employ such narrational devices as irony and metaphor; and the level of sophistication with which it can interpret and adapt established characters. It also addresses the potential for AI-generated plagiarism and asks what steps might be taken to guard against this. The final chapter explores the current barriers to the production of long-form fiction without significant human intervention.
The second part of the book delves further into the ethical underpinnings of the stories ChatGPT generates. The fact that it has already attained a fluency that can make its text difficult to differentiate from human-generated text has escalated the urgency of evaluating and monitoring the ‘moral compass’ of AI rhetoric. Scrutinizing its ability to negotiate complex moral dilemmas and its capacity to variously reinforce or redress cultural biases and stereotypes forms the basis of the initial chapters in this section, which is completed by an exploration of GPT’s assessment of the potential benefits and pitfalls of escalating levels of AI sophistication and of human dependency on this technology.
‘Synthetic Stories and Machine Musings’ is essential reading for fiction writers and for anyone wishing to join the conversation about the opportunities and potential consequences of AI’s growing reach as a culturally significant voice.
Released by Pilea Publications in February 2023, the book is available in paperback and ebook formats, with an introductory ebook price of just 99 cents.
www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV8MK5PL
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