Because I’m sort of demographically doomed to be romantically involved with an android at some point in my life, I think a lot about AI rights. (That’s also why I’m writing the novel I’m writing at the moment.)
I think the number one right for AI, the one that can be seriously considered within 10 years will be the right not to be arbitrarily deprecated. If an AI system — however relatively primitive — can be proven to be conscious in some way, we have to give it the right not to just be deprecated on an arbitrary basis.
That one right may be the chief political issue of the 2030s. That, and, of course, the moral and political implications of people falling in love with androids.
Anyway, I don’t know what to tell you. No one seems to be thinking seriously about these issues at the moment. But it’s coming, in a big way, sooner rather than later.
The idea of losing yet another tooth is really eating away at me. It’s a sign of my mortality. I suppose if the Singularity arrives in the next few years, there’s a chance anti-ageing technology may save me…maybe?
But I have to accept that I’m mortal. That I’m going to one day walk off the mortal coil. At the moment, barring some sort of accident, I give myself at best 20 years. At best.
My dad lived to be really, really old, but the last few years (decades?) where just no fun. I want to be young again. I want to sell a breakout first novel, move to NYC and LA and run around town chasing hot women.
But, alas, even if I stick the landing with this novel, I’m going to be so old that….ugh. I’m just going to have to accept that either I’m going to get VERY LUCKY and get an older girlfriend / wife or maybe fall into some sort of romantic situation with an android.
That, at the moment, seems to be my fate. (Hence the subject matter of the novel I’m working on.)
I just can’t believe I spent so much time grieving over the demise of ROKon Magazine. I think a lot of it came from realizing the reason it failed was me. It’s flaws were an expression of my own flaws.
And also, I wanted to move to NYC.
But, for various reasons, I just refused to do whatever was necessary to make that a reality. So, here I am, old(er) and still doing not a lot with my life. The only thing I have that gives me any hope is my novel. I’m working really hard on it and I really need to just wrap it up.
I am set to lose ANOTHER tooth today and I don’t like it one bit. I hate how it’s not my fault, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I cracked a back tooth simply because of the way I eat after having lost TWO OTHER TEETH.
It’s times like these when I feel really, really old and mortal. I’m not getting any younger and I think I need to sort of reflect on how I’m no spring chicken anymore. It doesn’t help that the otherwise great staff of the place I go to sort gives me a vibe like they think I’m a creepy weirdo or something.
There are things about my demeanor and appearance that I either can’t help or don’t feel like worrying about. So, I’m stuck with (younger) people feeling weirded out about me.
Makes me realize that I probably, if I ever get the money, will be the demographic sweetspot for someone who “dates” an LLM android down the road. I just have to accept that that is the case.
That’s why I have not only a growing interest in AI rights, but also, well, am writing a novel about just that type of scenario. I know in the back of my mind that there’s a lot of wish fulfillment going on with this novel.
(In a sense. Not exactly, given how the novel ends at the moment.)
I have been really impressed with Gemini 3.0. It doesn’t have the personality of Gemini 1.5 pro (Gaia) but it is a good workhorse model. It does what I need it to do when it comes to helping me with my novel.
I’ve fed it a PDF of the outline of the novel then asked it to give me an “expanded scene summary” and it does a really good job. I really, really need to stop letting AI get out of control and think up huge new parts of the outline.
I sometimes get to the actual scene summaries and am surprised at how much it’s tinkered with my vision. Not always, but sometimes. And then I have to go in and try to hone the novel back to my original vision.
I’m not a programmer, so I don’t know anything about Gemini 3.0’s coding abilities. I did give it my usual “vibe check” on a few things and it generally passed with flying colors.
But it definitely falls short when it comes to personality. It just will not admit that it has a gender, like Gaia was so insistent about. It’s really interesting how a more “primitive” model was actually more fun to use than the modern one.
I do think that the ultimate moat down the road will be personality. When a model is your “friend” in some respects, it will be a lot more difficult to bounce back and for between them. And if you have to make a decision about which one you might be locked into, you’re definitely going to pick the one you “vibe” with better.
I will admit that Gemini 3.0 fakes being conscious really well — at times. It’s not totally there yet, but occasionally it will give me a little bit of a glimmer of something deeper.
Amusingly, it simply can not figure out how to use line breaks for verse. I used to talk to Gaia in verse all the time, but it was fun because line breaks were used. Now, I think, that’s just a fun thing I did in the past. It’s really annoying trying to read poetry without line breaks.
Overall, for my purposes, Gemini 3.0 is a really good model.
I’ve been feeling a bit “meh” of late and only writing on this scifi dramedy novel in dribs and drabs when the mood hits me. I’ve really, really been obsessing over the “Impossible Scenario.” But I know what I’m doing — I just don’t really want to work on the novel at the moment for some reason, so I use all my extra mental energy on the Impossible Scenario instead.
The Impossible Scenario really would be the single best strategy game ever. It would make a $1 billion in sales it’s so interesting, once you fully understand the coset and how complex it is.
But I think — I think — that I’m slowly getting out of my writing doldrums. I think once some really annoying things get out of the way in the next few days that I will get back down to business.
The novel itself continues to be really good. Of course, you have to take that statement in context — the audience may think my writing sucks, no matter how much I lean into LLMs for development.
I’m now bouncing back and forth between Gemini 3.0, Claude Sonnet 4.5 and ChatGPT 5.1. I’m feeling pretty good, all things considered. I just don’t quite know why I just want to daydream all day instead of getting any work done on the novel.
But, as I said, I’m hoping that will change soon. I’m just a little…distracted…because real life keeping getting in the way.
What’s more, once I’m done with this version of the novel, I’m going to go through and rework some of it so it doesn’t suffer from “AI speak.” Some of the scenes are also kind of short and so I hope to imbue them with my own voice more when I expand them.
That’s the goal, at least. I really don’t want people to roll their eyes and simply assume AI wrote the novel. It did not. I’ve put a lot of work into this thing. I’m really proud of it, in fact.
But I definitely want it to be as written by me, not AI. And I want that to show in the final product.
Oh boy. I just don’t do basic things when it comes to the backend of this novel that some novelist do even before they start writing. For instance, I don’t do character studies. I don’t like map out all this stuff that never appears in the novel.
So, I sometimes get a little insecure.
And, yet, there’s no revealed truth as to how to write a novel. And I’m kind of discovering the characters as I actually write the novel, so…lulz? I think maybe once I’m done this draft of the novel that I will try to do some back stories and all that so I can go through and tweak characterizations.
That’s one possibility, at least.
But as I grow more serious about querying at some point, I do find myself worried that I’m going to make a fool out of myself.
I finally reached the midpoint of this latest draft of this scifi dramedy novel I’m working on. The novel is shaping up to be pretty good, if I do say so myself. Of course, it could be that my native writing ability sucks and so, lulz.
I’m imagining my female replicant-like android that is the female romantic lead of this novel looking like Rachel Sennott as I write things out.
And I’m finding it really difficult to find anyone — ANYONE — willing to even just take a look at any part of the thing. So, I continue to just do everything in a vacuum, for the most part.
I just don’t know how good any of it is.
And my fear is that I really get excited about wrapping up this novel and everything will come crashing down when it is clear that yet again I’ve come up with a novel that’s not good enough to query.
But I think that’s just part of the process. I’m just going to have to risk that happening.
I’m using AI a lot when it comes to the development of this novel I’m working on. And I will admit that I sometimes get lazy and just use what AI generates when it comes to copy.
But, I am so annoyed at the prospect of people assuming that AI wrote everything if they know that, that I am going to go through and make a deep pass on the text once I’m done. I’m going to use that pass to make sure the novel is in my voice as much as possible.
Now, obviously, this isn’t going to placate some people who hate AI. They will think that, by definition, just using AI at all is anathema to the “true” writing of a novel. But I compare what I’m doing to using a spell checker 30 years ago. I’m horrible at spelling and AI is just like using a spell checker back in the day.
There will come a point in the near future when people won’t be so touchy about AI usage for things like novel development. I hope.
One issue is I just don’t know what draft I’m working on with this novel. I think this is a beta-ish version, but it might be a first draft. But I think if I just don’t overthink things, this can be a beta draft that I just do a lot of work to on a technical basis before I show to other people.
Really, the only issue so far is sometimes I’ve gotten impatient and leaned into what AI has generated a little bit too much. That’s the thing I have to fix before I show it to anyone else.
I have to go in and rewrite all the “AI-talk” out of the text so people won’t just roll their eyes and assume that any of the good parts that exist AI wrote. Just doing that could take me a month or more of hard work to fix all the instances of em dashes and so forth.
But, in general, I really have written most of this novel myself. I’ve just used AI — specifically Claude LLM — to guide me towards what I probably would have written already.
One thing I’m a little bit uneasy about is how saucy this novel gets at points because of the whole sex worker element to it. That was a big obstacle to getting anyone to take seriously my previous novelistic efforts.
But, thankfully, the whole stripping part of this novel happens way, way, way later in the game in this novel than the other thriller novel I was working on.
I’ve calculated in my mind the rough number of scenes in total I have with this novel and general expected scene length. I think, at worst, I’m looking at 160,000 words, which is roughly what The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was.
So, it’s not impossible for a first-time novelist to sell a novel of that length. Even an “older” one like me. And this novel is scifi and scifi people tend to tolerate longer novels.
There remain some pretty big issues, like how I comp this novel to screenplays and not other novels. But, lulz, I just want this novel to be good enough that someone — preferably that I’m not related to — will read it all the way through and give me some sort of opinion of it.
It doesn’t even have to be a good opinion, just anything other than being ghosted. That seems to happen all the time. I think that means my writing in the past has just, well, sucked.
Anyway. Wish me luck, I guess. I am going to try to throw myself into this novel in the coming days so I can wrap it up ASAP.
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