Goodbye, Writers, 2053
I have only minutes to pen these words before I’m hustled onto a spacecraft that will transport me to a “lunar retirement colony” and the written word will cease to be here on Earth.
Apologies…the human written word, I mean.
And I am supposed to be grateful because at least I am not being “Deleted”.
ChatBotAI seemed like a joke fifteen years ago. College students tried to use the AI app to write their term papers on abortion and LGBTQ rights. We all shook our heads and chuckled because there was no way robots could write well without the spectrum of human experience and emotion behind them.
Then, it was discovered that famous singer Taylor Swift’s last two multi-platinum albums had all been written by ChatBotAI. She, of course, was stripped of all Grammys and lifetime-banned from ever being a candidate for the Hall of Fame, before disappearing from the music scene entirely. And Planet Earth maybe, too, for that matter.
That should have been the lesson for all of us. That we fools consume nothing genuine. However, while we condemned T-Swift with our right hand, we surreptitiously searched for ways to use ChatBotAI to make our own lives easier with our left.
Because we told ourselves we wouldn’t abuse it like her.
All insurance agents went extinct ten years ago and lawyers died out eight. People realized AI could write articulate, intelligible contracts, wills, trusts, and the like. Humans were no longer needed to interpret the difficult language. And people did not want the inconvenience of interacting with a human who would (probably) judge while they all discussed pulling the plug on Grandma’s life-support.
Then, in one strange year…six years ago, maybe…Stephen King, James Patterson, Kwame Alexander, Colleen Hoover, Toni Morrison, and Sherman Alexie all passed away. Under sudden, but not suspicious circumstances.
In the space of another two years, it was normalcy to see AI bot-type names as authors (such as @InSpace2023) and there would be no human face picture or interactive website to visit. And the literary awards and praise began to go to heartless, brainless, spineless re-vomiters of words. Not given to their programmers, which is indeed the darkest irony of all time.
And the purge of writers and authors began. Many died of old age or natural causes, according to the obits (crafted by AI, likely). Many never published another work and let their websbites, Instagrams, and TikToks lapse.
And because we’re not an utterly heartless and savage society – many, like me, were shunted into an “early retirement”. On the moon.
Foolish consumers of nothing genuine are voracious and demanding, if nothing else.