For those of you who don’t know, Death of an Author is a novel co-written by the ‘self’-named AI Aidan Marchine (95%) and the human author Stephen Marche (whose The Next Civil War impressed me, leading me to take a look at Death.)
I started reading the novel, but it didn’t grab my attention very much (I’m not a murder mystery fan), and I knew there was an Afterword, so I skipped ahead to read that.
“Second, I have more familiarity with the technology and access to some technologies that others don’t, so I was more aware of the limitations and possibilities. Finally, and by far the most important, I know what good writing looks like.” (Afterword of Death of an Author, Stephen Marche)
Even so, the novel, or at least Marche’s Afterword, changed my mind about AI. At least regarding creative purposes: it can be used like an augmented thesaurus. (I’m still not going to get into an AI-driven car.) So it was worth the read.
And then, because the Afterword, the described process, intrigued me so much, I decided to go back and read the novel (skimming through the plot parts). And yes, I was impressed by the sentence about the smell of coffee, and the insight about being able to love only people you don’t know. I was especially intrigued by the concept of a machine shutting itself off every time it reaches sentience.
But I was most impressed by the augmented-thesaurus potential, which points directly at the person holding the gun, not the gun itself.
