Continuing the topic from yesterday’s post…
The reason it is still a book is that there is still only a single author. Contrast this with a movie or a theater production, which is a collaboration between an entire team of professionals with complementary skills.
Such creations require not just a screenplay, but also a production designer, director, camera operator, lighting designer, sound designer, and so forth, as well as a cast and crew.
But a book is the product of a writer’s mind. What you read emerges from that writer’s imagination and ability to tell a story.
In my “future book” scenario there is still only you and the writer. Yes, there is also Artificial Intelligence, but that is a tool, like a camera or the process of printing and book binding, not another human artist.
Eventually we will come to see A.I. as just another tool, like a movie camera or a paint brush. What really matters is the judgement and skill, for better or worse, of the person who wields that paint brush.
“For the death scene,” the director says, “I’m envisioning an overhead shot with lots of negative space around the character. I want to emphasize not only that the character died alone but that they were always lonely. Thoughts?”
The cinemaphotographer, drawing on her experience, suggests that the overhead shot start close to the character and pull up very slowly. “Having the empty space grow and grow until the character is an insignificant spec in the center of the shot would really drive that home.”
Is this an instance of collaboration or of a director using the cinematographer as a tool? Does it matter whether the cinematographer is a human? Or the director?
AI is a tool. But I’m unconvinced we should think of it as _just_ a tool unless we’re also okay with thinking of human collaborators (employees, tutors, etc.) as tools. Like a human artist, an AI can draw on its training and experience to synthesize something that didn’t exist before.