The phrase jumped out at me as Joanna Penn talked about the leaps in artificial intelligence during her podcast about writing and book publishing, The Creative Penn.
Penn, who writes thrillers as J.F. Penn and nonfiction as Joanna, is diving into the world of AI, using it as a tool as she develops her plots and characters and worlds. She is doing the writing but bounces her ideas off ChatGPT to refine them.
She’s having fun with the possibilities of this once-science-fictiony tool, not interested in the idea that AI theoretically could write her novel for her in a few seconds. After all, where would be the fun in that?
As for competing with the lowlifes who may want to make a profit by having AI generate a ton of books, Penn isn’t worried about that either. The key to competing against artificial intelligence, Penn says, is to “double down on being human.”
That sounds like good advice in many aspects of life. Up against a machine? Double down on being human. Surrounded by political goons who treat their enemies as sub-human? Double down on being human. Tired of this sterile world devoid of emotion? Double down on being human.
Double down on being human. Yep, that’s a good start, thinks I.