Your guarantee.
Look me in the eye.
I understand that is a virtual challenge, but it is pure and true. As an author and an artist, I am, and will continue to be, an AI virgin.
My vision, my values, my laughter, my creativity and imagination: All are PURE me, PURE human.
PURE Lake Michigan, this photo taken by me this spring from the shore in front of Little Sable Lighthouse near Mears, Michigan. It is somewhat ironic that Michigan has a slogan which is PURE MICHIGAN. I’m a Michigander—not a goose, not a gander, nor a wordplay, The word pure has integrated itself into the cultural vocabulary of Michigan. Now the bright eye of the glow of the sunset is for you to inhale the purity.
My guarantee: it is pure. And fun and fabulous. Why create if not to explore, have fun, probe the gamut of life?
Do you, priceless reader, begin to wonder about the authenticity of the author’s writing when you read? The climate of fake and fraud has touched us all with its grasping talons.
Do you question if it is coming from the wildly firing synapses of direct experience or in-depth research? Might it be altered and prepared for your tastes by AI?
Scary. Dangerous. Infinitely captivating with a lure beyond our human capacity to fully comprehend.
Seen anyone walking with their head hung down face pointing blankly at a screen and never noticing the rabbit hole directly in front until it begins to close up on top of him or her or them?
Why so frightening? Because it is insidious, and fast becoming ubiquitous.
AI has the allure because of its capacity to run algorithms at warp speed. For health, for data, for myriads of applications, AI is a boon beyond boons for efficiency.
But it cannot BE human. IT is an IT, a WHAT.
Therefore, when AI touches the creative side of life, it becomes a perpetrator of intellectual property theft.
Yes, out-and-out robbery. NONE of the works in the AI box have been authorized for use by the authors, artists, journalists, musicians and screen writers who have birthed the words, songs, thoughts and the artworks.
Everything, which, by the way, includes every word that has ever been written and appeared online. EVERYTHING.
Not a judge, but as an author with compassion and conviction, I crave balance. Continual change requires continual rebalancing.
My hope is coupled with my vow.
All my works, as well as all of every author’s works, which are currently streaming into the AI box, will be banned from remaining inside that AI box without notarized permission directly from the author or the legal copyright holder. Possible, but not probable.
Curious as to why little mostly-unknown author me makes such a bold statement?
I love my synapses. I love yours. I adore the surprises that bubble up from the who-knows- where and bring to life new learning and new connections every moment of awareness. Learning grows. It is as alive as a blade of grass. (Ahh, Walt Whitman and your eulogies! Your Leaves of Grass!) Unforgettable—and pure of course, long before AI.
Learning proliferates. Learning enhances us. Learning feeds upon the nuances of each character invented in the non-dream life of each author.
We don’t know WHO AI is—because it isn’t a WHO.
I am a WHO as are you. (Horton, the elephant invented by Dr. Seuss, heard a Who and smiled.)
We are not WHATS. We are all WHOS.
The Elephant in the Room, my debut novel, will enchant you as it becomes more and more real, more and more a part of you.
There are many elephants in many rooms. Some in your room. Some in mine.
Embrace the life and the elephants in your room and let creativity and truth mark your values.
As they will mine!
As long as elephants live.
My boat is off and sailing, but I’m not done (until I’ve passed to the other side—and most likely not even then).
So here’s a wickedly cut image to tease your brain as you scoff the validity of what I’m vowing regarding my guarantee of no AI in my art…
A chuckling lizard, wrinkled under the unrelenting pressure of a hot desert sun. That lizard is battered by the constant pressures of AI, heavier and harder than the scorch of the sun, but she smiles.
Her grin crackles with the glee of mischievous mirth. Her eyes, half-hidden under wizened lids, are alight with the knowledge that she’s busted through the pressures and is in sole regal possession of herself.
From afar, that lizard looks lazy, petrified in the near-suffocating heat.
But approach her, reach out to catch her, and the camouflage of her scaly body whips into a muscled frenzy.
Hah! She’s alive!
She’s escaped imminent capture.
She’s a self-disciplined marvel. Her own magic.
She embodies the power of uncompromising.
You can never be ready enough for surprise.
Perpetual surprise—the power of human-generated creativity.
Can you see that writhing lizard in the background of AI noise?
Peer closely.
You will be rewarded.
She’s alive!
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