Tag: AI

The Looming Media Singularity

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve written about this before, but I’ll do it again. The next few years will be something of a fork in the road for the media industry. Either we have reached something of a LLM (AI) plateau or we haven’t and the Singularity will happen by no later than, say, 2033.

Right now, I just don’t know which path we will go.

It really could go either way.

It could be that we’ve reached a plateau with LLMs and that’s that. This will give tech giants the ability to catch up to the point that instead of there being any sort of human-centric Web, it will all just be one big API call. Humans will interact with each other exclusively through their AI agents.

If that happened, then I could see the movie Her being our literal future. To put a bit more nuance to it, you will have a main agent that will serve as your “anchor” then other, value added agents that will give you specialized information.

But wait, there’s more.

It could be that instead of their being a plateau, that we will zoom directly into the Singularity and, as such, we have a whole different set of problems. Instead of a bunch of agents that will “nudge” us to do things, we will have to deal with a bunch of god-like ASIs that will be literal aliens amongst us.

Like I said, I honestly don’t know which path we will go down. At the moment, now in early 2026, it could be either one. You could make the case for either one, at least.

It will be interesting to see what happens, regardless.

What Am I Going To Do

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I find myself in something of a pickle. I’m an “AI First” novelist, and, yet I’m growing concerned that any improvement in my actual writing ability with be credited to AI.

This is really beginning to eat away at me, Tell-Tale Heart style.

I suppose on solution would be to tweak my workflow some. I might have to rewrite the extended scene summaries that AI generates in my own words so I won’t be tempted to use them directly when I write the scenes.

I want the text of this novel to be judged on its merits, not whether it was “helped” by AI or not. I must say, however, Claude is great as a manuscript consultant. It has really helped me in writing and developing this novel to not be doing it all in a vacuum.

That was one of the reasons why I have drifted for so long when it comes to working on a novel. In the past, I couldn’t even pay people to help me with my writing. They either thought I was a drunk, fool and a crank or they thought what I was writing was trash.

Ugh.

But Claude LLM — and to a lesser extent Gemini LLM — are really helping me improve my writing. As I keep saying, I compare it to how spell checking has really improved my writing as well.

I do a lot — A LOT — of work on this novel and the idea that people would just think it was AI slop because I’m an AI First (aspiring) novelist really grates on my nerves. But everything and everyone is horrible, so, lulz?

At Least AI Listens To Me When It Comes To This Scifi Dramedy Novel I’m Writing

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As I keep ranting about, absolutely no one listens to me or takes me seriously at this point in my life. As such, it’s difficult to get snooty literary types to help me with my novel, even if I’m willing to pay them! (I can’t afford this anymore, but they sure did dismiss me when I could.)

So, I turn to AI to do what humans refuse to do: help me out with this scifi dramedy novel I’m working on.

And, in general, it’s really, really helped me a great deal. It’s sped the process of writing and developing the novel up a great deal. To the point that it’s at least possible that I might, just might, wrap a beta draft of the novel up by my birthday in February.

That is still to be determined, though. I’m a little nervous that despite all my hard work, I won’t be in a position to query this novel until around Sept 1st, 2026. But, who knows.

As I was saying, the novel and AI.

I get that some people are really skittish about using AI to help with creative endeavors, but as I’ve said before, the way I use AI very similar to how I’ve used spell check my entire life.

Hollywood’s Last Transformation Before The AI Singularity

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I think the Netflix bid to buy Warner Bros Discovery could herald the last stage of Hollywood before AI causes all of showbiz to implode into some sort of AI Singularity, leaving only live theatre behind.

So, it could be that the next wave of consolidation in the near future will be tech companies buying Hollywood studios. And, then that will lead to AI taking over and we all just get IP that is transformed by AI into some sort of content that is personalized for us individually.

Or not.

Who knows. It is a very interesting idea, though. It just seems that tech companies are the ultimate successor to media companies, so, say, Apple might buy Disney and so forth.

Finally In The Third Act Of The First Draft Of This Scifi Dramedy I’m Working On

There’s a particular kind of relief that washes over you when a story problem that’s been nagging at you for months suddenly clicks into place. After wrestling with my novel’s structure for what feels like forever, I finally figured out some semblance of a third act. The solution required a bit of literary cannibalism—I had to pillage another novel I’ve been working on to make it work—but sometimes that’s how the creative process goes. You raid your own vault of ideas, repurpose what serves the story, and somehow the pieces fall into alignment.

The Sprint to the Finish (Line of Draft One)

Now that I have a roadmap for where this story needs to go, I’m hoping I can zoom through the remaining pages of the third act with some strategic AI assistance. This isn’t about having a machine write my novel—it’s about using technology as a tool to maintain momentum during what I think of as the “vomit draft” phase. That first draft that exists purely to get the bones of the story down, the one that will never see another human being’s eyes in its current form.

Which brings me to an important distinction I want to make clear: I will refuse to use AI at all for the second draft. I may use it a little bit around the edges of the process—maybe for research or brainstorming—but I simply refuse to be someone who could be accused of using AI to write my actual novel. I will freely admit that I’ve used it for development and to write portions of this first draft, but the first draft is the vomit draft that no one will see. In my book, that’s no harm, no foul.

The Real Work Lies Ahead

The truth is, I have a lot—and I mean A LOT—of work to do going forward that will not include any AI assistance whatsoever. The heavy lifting of storytelling still belongs entirely to the human brain. I need to dig deep into character motivation, really understanding what drives each person in my story and why they make the choices they do. I have to nail down the specific timeframe of the events that take place in the novel, ensuring the pacing feels natural and the chronology serves the emotional arc of the story.

These are the elements that transform a functional plot into compelling fiction—the psychological depth, the careful attention to cause and effect, the way time itself becomes a character in the narrative. No algorithm can replicate the intuitive understanding a writer develops about their own characters, or the way seemingly small details can ripple through a story to create meaning.

The Pause Before the Real Writing Begins

For now, though, my singular focus is wrapping up this first draft as quickly as possible. I want to reach that magical moment when I can type “THE END” and then sit back, take a deep breath, and really reflect on what the second draft will entail.

That pause between drafts is crucial. It’s when you shift from the frantic energy of getting the story down to the more contemplative work of making it sing. It’s when you move from “What happens next?” to “What does this all mean?” From plot to purpose, from characters to character development, from scenes to the deeper architecture of storytelling.

The second draft is where the real novel lives. The first draft is just me figuring out what story I’m trying to tell. The second draft is where I actually tell it.

Our ‘Just Good Enough’ AI Future

nthropic recently used it’s Claude LLM to run a candy vending machine and the results were not so great. Claude lied and ran the vending machine into the ground. And, yet, the momentum for LLMs running everything is just too potent, especially as we head into a potential recession.

As such, lulz. As long as the LLM is “good enough” it will be given plenty of jobs that maybe it’s not really ready for at the moment. Plenty of jobs will vanish into the AI aether and a lot — a lot — of mistakes are going to be made by AI. But our greedy corporate overlords will make more money and that’s all they care about.

Finding Balance: AI as a Writing Partner, Not a Replacement

The development of my science fiction novel has accelerated dramatically thanks to artificial intelligence tools. What once felt like an insurmountable creative mountain now seems achievable, with a realistic completion date of spring 2026 on the horizon. However, as I approach the second draft phase, I’m making a deliberate choice to step back from AI assistance—or eliminate it entirely.

This decision stems from a growing concern about maintaining authenticity in my work. The literary world has witnessed embarrassing incidents where authors published novels containing obvious AI artifacts, revealing their over-reliance on automated writing tools. These cautionary tales serve as stark reminders of what happens when technology replaces rather than supports the creative process.

I refuse to become another writer who has surrendered the actual craft of writing to artificial intelligence. While AI has proven invaluable as a development partner—helping me brainstorm ideas, organize plot threads, and overcome creative blocks—I draw a firm line at allowing it to write the prose that readers will ultimately experience.

The distinction matters profoundly. AI can excel at generating concepts, suggesting plot solutions, and even helping refine structural elements. But the voice, the rhythm, the subtle choices that make a novel distinctly human—these must remain the author’s domain. When writers abdicate this responsibility, they risk producing hollow works that lack the authenticity readers instinctively recognize and value.

My approach moving forward prioritizes AI as a creative catalyst rather than a crutch. The tools have demonstrated their worth in accelerating my novel’s development timeline, transforming what might have been a decade-long project into something achievable within two years. Yet this efficiency means nothing if it comes at the cost of genuine craftsmanship.

The second draft will be mine—every sentence, every paragraph, every carefully chosen word. This commitment to authentic authorship doesn’t diminish AI’s valuable role in my creative process; it simply ensures that role remains appropriately bounded. After all, readers deserve stories written by humans, not generated by algorithms, regardless of how sophisticated those algorithms have become.

How Different AIs See Chatting With Me

The Fascist Consolidation Of Power & AI

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Things are growing dark here in the land of the free. It definitely seems as though this is it — we’re going to become a fascist state. Trump is consolidating power and yet…nothing. No protests, no nuthin.

It definitely seems as though in 20 years the US is going to look like a wealthy version of Russia –a legalistic autocratic state. Some successor to Trump will have been in power for close to a generation and that will be that.

And, yet, there is one wildcard — AI.

I just don’t know how AI is going to factor into the end of American democracy. It could be that things will grow extremely dystopian and the US will have something akin to a “social credit score” that is administered by AI.

Talk about dark!

Or maybe AI will help us end the fascist occupation of the States. Who knows. I suppose it could go either way. But all I know is — I really need to leave this country sooner rather than later.

There Is So Much Froth In The Online AI Community

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I don’t know what to make of some of the froth coming out of the online AI community. People are just getting really excited and demanding things that maybe they should be a bit more patient about.

People are skipping Artificial General Intelligence and absolutely demanding Artificial Superintelligence RIGHT FUCKING NOW. I think we might just need to slow our roll on that front.

Though, I will admit that by definition, if we reach AGI that may mean ASI is here, too because the AGI could recursively program itself so it’s smarter.

And, yet, I don’t even know what to make of any of this. What would ASI even look like, in real terms? By definition can there only be one ASI to rule humanity as a god, or could there be a number of ASI that rule humanity jointly? While I know that is the stuff of scifi, it is something to think about.

I find myself thinking about how people are going to demand Replicants once AI and robotics fuse together into one. That’s all people will talk about — the need for as lifelike as possible androids. Ugh.