About ChatGPT

 

by Charlotte Hinger

I spoke with a lady Sunday who knows a lot about ChatGPT. I'm fascinated with this new technology and have used it for composition twice and for a query once. 

She advised against using it to write anything because Google and other search engines have already become adept at spotting material that has been generated by AI and will downgrade the blog with its wily algorithm. 

Besides there are some serious lawsuits filed by major players who have the money to affect the usage by ordinary word toilers. 

My source enthusiastically endorsed using ChatGPT in other ways, including solving problems or locating information. 

Here was my query: "Can you devise a marketing plan for a historical novel that will be published by a University Press in July?"

Before I could draw another breath--there it was. And it was perfect! With all the right steps. You bet, I'm going to use it to promote my upcoming historical novel, Mary's Place. 

While all the discussion about AI rages, I'm comforted by a line from Rudyard Kipling's poem, "The Mary Gloster.":

"They copied all they could copy, but they could not copy my mind. So I left them sweating and stealing a full half mile behind."

Mind For Rent

This morning I looked up all the details for Clay's Compromise of 1850. It has five parts. I forget what they are already. Also, I'm sure you will all be interested in the exact Latin translation of mea culpa. Did you know that it's really too early to plant canna bulbs?

Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49 B.C. and not only made everyone in Rome mad, he left us with cute phrases such as "crossing the Rubicon," and "the die is cast." When contact makers ask for "power" on their on-line prescription form it doesn't match up with anything on the optometrists sheet.

Last week I finished a really hard book review about an academic book, When Sunflowers Bloomed Red. It was hard because the editor only allowed 150 words for a really complex book. I also joyfully jumped right into the edits for my very short novella. It took me one day.

And now. . .clearly I'm descending into some kind of Google craziness wherein it seems really, vitally, extremely important to look up something this very minute.

Oddly enough I have all kinds of essential household projects I could be doing. I want to go through all my files and papers before I die. I want to finish quilts for my grandchildren. And oh yeah, the photos. But I can't get motivated.

One of my very best and most admired writing friends once told me "writers who aren't writing are prey to a sort of free-form anxiety."

Little did she know that writers who swear they don't mind the coronavirus isolation are even more susceptible to Google Fever, and electronic consumption in general.

Is there anyone out there who is taking advantage of this social sequestering to complete all the tasks they have put off in the past?

Making a Better Human

After his time in Tombstone, Wyatt Earp and his common-law wife, Josephine Sarah Marcus, set out for Alaska, where they ran the Dexter Saloon. What intrigues me about this photo of their saloon is the humor, a hundred years after the fact, which still holds up.

Humor is an integral part of human nature, and though we are a civilization centuries old with many differences in customs, languages, and shared experiences, I'm amazed when jokes manage to transcend the ages. One of my favorites is from ancient China and discusses the origins of the house cat. The story is that cats had been sent by the Gods to watch over us, but the cats don't do a very good job of it because they sleep so much.

This interest about human character stems from panels at science-fiction conferences where we discussed future developments involving humans and high-technology. One favorite topic addressed the human-computer interface and potential changes to human biology. For example, connecting our brains directly to computers would allow us to access information from vast libraries and process that data at incredible speeds. The eventual goal would be "singularity," where every mind would be wired to the Internet to create one global super brain. What a schizophrentic mess that would be. Who would set the agenda? Proponents of that technology argue in purple prose that such a development should be hailed as the next step in human evolution. Homo-Google.

That ability would surely make us smarter. Right? And by extension, better. What's missing in this talk of becoming more advanced humans is any discussion about what truly makes us better. I've yet to see a software app that'll make anyone more honest. Or more empathetic. Or wiser. Conversely, I haven't seen an app that would prevent dishonesty, theft, treachery, or even murder. Human nature as expressed through humor, or doing good, or doing bad, won't change. To that end, here's one of my favorite quotes from Scripture, Job 5:7 Man was born into trouble just as surely as sparks fly upward. 

And that trouble is what keeps us crime writers busy.

2019 Looking Glass

Time to recap 2018 and gaze into the looking glass for 2019.

This last year gave me plenty of reasons to celebrate. I published two books, one of them my novel, Steampunk Banditos, and the anthology I'd edited, Blood & Gasoline. Plus I had one short story published, "Flawless" in A Fistful of Dinosaurs, and signed a contract for one to be published next year. I also received rejections on a couple of short stories but that's par for the course. Hopefully I'll find a home for them next year. I was honored to be a Guest of Honor at MileHi Con 50. I taught at Lighthouse and in the Regis University Mile High MFA program. Added to that is more cause for applause but I'll keep that hushed as it's not yet a done deal and I don't want to jinx myself.

My favorite read of the year has been out a while, The Promise, by Robert Crais.

Like many of you, social media has caused me to grind my teeth in frustration and disgust at many things. What's particularly grating is the increased intrusion into our lives by the tech companies. Recently Google rolled out an enhanced Gmail that supposedly improves my email "experience," but that's a lie. For one, my Gmail account is slower and more cumbersome than ever. And two, forget any pretense of privacy. Gmail automatically offers automated responses, which means they're reading my correspondence to teach their AI robots. Plus our searches are shared cross-platform. I Google something on my phone and then on my computer, without asking, Facebook pops up with relevant suggestions. Of course the companies deny they're spying, but we all know they're aggregating as much as possible about us into secret profiles, which they then monetize. Big Brother in 1984 was nothing compared to Alphabet, Inc. For 2019 I'm expecting more stories where smart speakers become part of homicide investigations. And that high-tech remains as vulnerable as ever to criminal predations.

On the writing side, I can't offer much in the way of prognostication, other than we "ink-stained wretches" have to tread on ever-more fragile eggshells. I borrowed that line from Kurt Vonnegut and I wonder how long before his reputation is pilloried for the un-pc things that he wrote back when. I've been told that steampunk has shrunk to a narrow-gauge railway, and that the time for the big breakout novel of that genre has come and gone. Demand for stories about the post-Apocalypse has stalled except when it hasn't. Vampires and other supernatural creatures, especially in YA, remain popular provided you put a timely spin on your stories. Science-fiction enjoys a resurgence. And crime fiction remains as popular as ever given that we humans are, as my favorite Bible verse (Job 5:7) puts it, "...born into trouble just as surely as sparks fly upward."

Respect Your Minions

I'm close to priming the BSP pump and start spraying news about my forthcoming Felix Gomez detective-vampire book, Rescue From Planet Pleasure. Early in that story I had a battle between the good vampires and the enemy bloodsuckers. My heroes were cutting down the bad guys by the dozens. Then during the writing of that manuscript I saw the James Bond thriller, Skyfall, and that made me reconsider the body count. Near the climax of the movie, a horde of bad guys close upon Bond and company trapped in the mansion. Our intrepid champions cut through the ranks of the evil doers who kept attacking and attacking like mindless zombies. Then it hit me.

Why are minions so willingly expendable? Why are the bad guy pawns so relentless in their attack despite being slaughtered? These guys are criminals, which means they have only two possible motives. Either they are cultish slaves or they're in the business of murder and mayhem for profit. Even if they are devoted slaves to the master criminal, wouldn't they--as they're being mowed down--ask the boss to reconsider their strategy? What's the point of them dying like vermin? And if they're in it for the money, I think that after one or two bite the dust, the rest would pull back and regroup. Money is only good if you can spend it, something that's hard to do from the grave.

In Skyfall the bad guys arrive in a gigantic helicopter, worth tens of millions of dollars. Flying that machine ain't easy, so it would have to be piloted by an experienced and rather level-headed crew, and despite their competency, the copter is easily destroyed. At what point would the crew hit "minion-override" and decide to quit acting stupid? A band of murderous criminals is like a pack of wolves, and like wolves, once the alpha threatens the pack, then they turn on him.

That realization made me reconsider the slaughter of the minions in my story, and I cut back on the body count. I even had some of the minions rebel against the villain because of their useless loss. As we writers like to say, everyone is the hero of their own story, so it would make sense for the minions to act in their own self-interest. Which actually makes for a more layered and deeper story. Lesson learned.