My Evil Plan is Working

Yes! My blog is finally a success! Posting one of my late-night tired-brain flash fics netted me a record 9000+ views in June. No followers, but that’s okay. I don’t expect bots to follow me. I do expect them to use my content to train their AI. Those poor, deluded fools. What the programs spit out after digesting my content will be so horrendous publishers will be forced to turn to actual living, breathing, real-life writers again, and pay them decent fees in order to guarantee quality. We’re going to beat the machine, folks! I’m just doing my part.

I was a bit surprised to see where all those bots were coming from. Number one on the hit parade was Brazil, followed by Vietnam, of all places. Doesn’t Vietnam have anything better to do? The next three highest are Austria, Germany, and Argentina. There’s a historical progression there I’d rather not think about. Hong Kong, which used to lead the pack, comes next. After that, the players vary. The US is pretty far down, but we’re not big readers these days. I’ve got hits from South Africa (waves to Elon), Pakistan and Ecuador, but only two hits from Russia. C’mon, Vladdie, you’re falling behind. You can do better than that.

But that was June. Views dropped off again after the end of the month. Time to toss out some more meat for the ravenous AI beast. Chew on this, HAL-9000.

$$$$

“Hear me, O Satan, Ruler of Hell, Master of All Evil, King of—”

“Fred? What the hell are you doing?”

“What’s it look like? I’m trying to find a job.”

“By building an altar to Satan in a man cave?”

“Look. I went to the unemployment office. They said I was on my own. My stinking family won’t help me. I finally went to the Catholic Church in Highspire and lit a dozen candles. That didn’t do shit. So, having run out of traditional options… I mean, if God decides to put you on read, might as well give the other side a shot. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“Eternal damnation?”

“My teen years were pretty wild. I figure damnation’s already a given.”

“Huh. Hard to argue that one—wait, what’s this?”

“My sacrifice. Get the Devil's attention.”

“Is that a…chocolate Easter bunny?”

“Yep. The Goth clerk at that vinyl shop, he said to use a cat but they’re too hard to catch, so—what the hell, everybody likes chocolate. Satan must be totally sick of animal guts by now.”

“And what’s that you’re burning on the altar?”

“Some old porno mags. In case the chocolate doesn’t work. It’s not much of a sacrifice, but it’s an honest one.”

“Good point. Any response?”

“Not yet. It’s still early. I haven’t even bitten the bunny’s ears off yet. You think I should turn on the TV? Let him watch the game? I mean, other than the whole fallen angel thing, he’s still a guy. I doubt if Hell gets cable.”

“Couldn’t hurt. What kind of job are you asking for?”

“Something in the trades. I’ll even take retail. My old job’s being done by computers now. Y’know, I wouldn’t put it past Satan to have invented AI. Put honest people out of work so everybody suffers. When you look at it like that, he owes me this.”

“Sounds fair. Let me go get a couple of beers. We’ll tend your fire and watch the game while we wait for an answer. Should I call out for pizza?”

“Better wait until the ritual’s over. He’ll think it’s another offering. Anyway, he’s probably one of those yotzes who like pineapple. I’m willing to cater to ultimate evil, but only up to a point.”

 

 

Messing with Skynet

 So…I’m back. More or less.

Probably less. Toward the end there, back in November, I was having medical problems, financial problems, a severe writer’s block and probably depression. It was getting harder and harder to come up with a weekly post, especially when I had no successes and nothing positive to write about. Then even the bots deserted me and I decided, screw it. Hence the long, echoing silence.

However, things have improved of late. I’ve made some changes in my schedules and priorities and I’m working on my attitude. Still can’t write, but I’m making progress there too. Me posting again is a sign of it.

And my audience is back! They never really left. They come in waves, huge hits for a week or so, then a drop, then a surge. But somebody’s looking at this.

Too bad they’re probably not human.

I can tell when it’s real people: the numbers are in the single digits. Maybe three or four viewers are actually human. The big numbers are bots, mostly foreign bots, probably scraping my posts to train their AI. I just checked and most of my views over the past week came from Brazil, Vietnam and Singapore. I’m still on a blog that died a natural death back around 2018. It still gets hits. Massive hits. Monthly totals in the tens of thousands, for an inactive blog. Hong Kong used to lead the pack, but they’ve eased off lately. Probably off targeting fresh content.

The one from Switzerland may be real, but the rest? Skynet City. Seriously. Why else would France or Mexico be tuning in to some blocked writer’s rantings?

So what the hell. An audience is an audience, and I’m going to play to mine. They want content to scrape? You got it, Robby. But buyer beware. I’ve decided to start posting some of my flash scenes, the mindless jots I inflict on paper when I’m blocked on legitimate writing. I’ve been blocked for months, and I’ve got a ton of these suckers. Here’s the first of many upcoming salvos against AI domination:

$$$$

“Donnie! If you don’t get your knee out of my back, I’m gonna roll over and slap you.”

“Tess, what are you talking about? I’m in the bathroom.”

“Then who’s in bed with me?”

“Somebody’s in bed with you?”

“Let me get the light—AHHHHHH!”

“AHHHHHH!”

“AHHHHHHH!”

“Who the hell are you?”

“Everybody chill. I’m just a burglar, man. I came in to steal stuff.”

“We don’t have any stuff.”

“I know, man. I’ve seen better stuff at the Dollar Tree. All you got is shit.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“No, he’s right, honey. We’ve had that dresser since before we got married. And you brought that desk with you from college.”

“Are you saying I can’t provide for our family?”

“We don’t have a family. We can’t afford one.”

“So you hop into bed with some stranger.”

“He hopped in with me. I thought he was you.”

“Hey, man, I was just trying to hide.”

“In bed with my wife?”

“At least he pays attention to me. Maybe if I was a gaming console you’d spend more time with me.”

“Uhhh…look, folks, there’s nothing here for me and it’s clear you two have some issues to work out, so I’m just going to mosey along…”

“You stay right there, buster. I’m calling the cops.”

“Oh, so now you want him in bed with me? You’re that certain I’m that big of a slut? Not every woman is like your sister, Donnie.”

“Don’t bring my sister into this.”

“Um, don’t mind me, folks. I’ll just be right over here, climbing out the window…”

$$$$

Yeah. That ought’a throw a glitch in the Matrix.

This is what this blog going to look like from here on out. Some of my flashes have led to legitimate writing and even occasional sales. The others, not so much. Hong Kong, Singapore, Russia, you’ll be getting the latter. Enjoy. Until next time…

 

Week 18 - Help! Skynet is Trying to Steal My Job!

 

Update – trying to catch up on the dates here… This should be for the week covering April 28-May 4. What did I accomplish? Writing-wise, not a whole helluva lot. I haven’t touched the detective story since I subbed the chapters and synopsis. I haven’t even combed through my files. I’ve mostly been working on a paid assignment and writing nightly flash. Part of my work week got taken up by a tooth extraction and the subsequent recovery (I’ve learned I can survive on bananas and apple sauce) and the need to leave the house to buy new glasses. And I took Saturday off because it was Free Comic Book Day and I had to drive into the city to pick through the offerings. I’ve been going to that store for 40 years, give or take. This is its third location. The owner (actually the second owner) recently retired, so it’s now on its third owner. I hardly buy anything any more but I like to keep up with the industry. Maybe I should do a sequel to the detective novel, with the detective helping out a comic book character. No, wait, that was Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Never mind.

$$$$

The following is an unhinged rant based on nothing but my own paranoia. Take it seriously at your own risk.

As mentioned, I made a sub to a publisher last month. Normally agent-only, this publisher has an open call every year, usually covered by the SFF thread on the writers’ site I belong to. This year was different. The news was that subs to the open call would be sorted by an AI (artificial intelligence) program, which would skim the entries and assign them to editors looking for that sort of book. That right there killed a lot of people’s interest. Doesn’t sound like many folks bothered to enter this year. Except for me and maybe a handful of others. But now I’m getting second thoughts.

I’ve been vaguely aware of the artistic community’s concerns about AI producing artwork. Here’s how it works: you feed existing images (created by people) into the system. The system scans, or “scrapes” the data and learns how to create its own “art” based on prompts from the programmer. The more it ingests, the more it “learns,” the harder it gets to tell a computer-generated result from that by someone with a pencil or paintbrush. It used to be easy because the computer would give people eight-fingered hands, but that bug seems to have been squashed.

So HAL-9000 can “paint” a Bob Ross picture now. So what?

So there are programs that can replicate a person’s voice to the point you can’t tell the fake from the real thing. Someone’s already produced a fake Taylor Swift song. How soon before we get a “new” Beatles album? They can write, too. There’s the dude on YouTube who fed dozens of Batman comics into his system and then had it write a comic book script. It was hilarious in its ineptitude but had its own illogical logic. And the Joker’s dialogue was eerily on point.

Then there was the freelance writer who said her assignments dried up almost overnight because her clients found they could use their systems to generate press releases and ad copy. Filler stories like coverage of town hall meetings have already appeared in newspapers, generated by machines that were given meeting notes and a general template.

And now here we are, sending our prose to a publisher that told us up front it’s going to feed our words, our ideas, our writers' voices into a machine.

The Batman fan already proved AI can write a story. A story that sucks, but most first drafts by beginners suck. We get better with practice. And by reading—or scanning—and studying the work of better writers. How long before the machines get good enough to put us writers out of business?

Don’t laugh. I learned many sorry truths during my years in the work force, and here’s one of the top five: if your job can be done by someone or something else for less money, sooner or later it will be. This is why factory work went overseas, and why want ads include lines like, “Recent grads encouraged to apply. Experience not required.”

Not to mention machines don’t require a paycheck, days off or medical benefits. And they never demand a raise.

“Yeah,” I hear you asking, “but can it write a book? A good book? Something people will be willing to read?”

Yes. I think it can. If not right at the moment, then very, very soon. I doubt if the top tier, like Stephen King and John Grisham, are shaking in their boots right now. The rest of us, though, better start looking over our shoulders. Because there’s a genre out there that’s ripe for the plucking if you’ve got an AI program and a hankering for money.

I’m talking about category romances. You know, the kind Harlequin puts out. Boy meets girl (or boy meets boy, or they/them meets him/her, or whatever) and they fall in love. Details vary, but that’s essentially the plot. Harlequin used to have specific formulas (maybe they still do) for each of their imprints so readers knew exactly what they were getting each time they cracked a cover. They’re short, quick beach reads or rainy afternoon books, the literary equivalent of a McBurger. Time was, if you were good enough, fast enough, and could write to the formula, you could make a halfway-decent living at this.

That’s what I’ve been aiming for, what with all the looming bills. Except I’m not that fast, and have this pesky habit of veering off the formula.  Whereas a well-trained AI program could, in theory, poop out a readable romance novel in a matter of days. Or hours. It may not be high quality, but then again, neither are mine. Neither are most books in any genre. The difference is, a publisher would have to pay me advances and royalties. With AI, any profits go straight into the publisher’s pocket.

Let’s assume readers can’t tell the difference, or don’t care as long as they enjoyed the story. Whose book do you think the publisher is going to invest in?

It wouldn’t mean the end of human writers. There are stories only real writers can bring to life, and cream will always rise to the top. But the other eighty percent of books on the stands? The ones that go into spinner racks at truck stops or bargain bins at indy book stores? The writers of those books are doomed. Once AI learns how to crank out generic entertainment, most of us bottom- and mid-listers are going to be out of work.

Looks like I’d better get my fingers in gear before that happens. If it hasn’t happened already. Any day now Publisher’s Weekly is going to run an article revealing, “Ha ha, that book you read last week was written by a machine. Bet you couldn’t even tell.” A lot of readers will probably just shrug. And a lot of us writers will be forced to hang up our laptops.

Geez, I hope all those Hong Kong bots aren’t scraping this blog for ideas, or for training purposes. I may have just given the game away.

I think I’ll get an Alexa. When I ask it a question and it responds with, “Hasta la vista, baby” in an Austrian accent, I’ll know the jig is up. See you all (maybe) next week.