Task #12 – Speculative Futures

Prompt:

Describe or narrate a scenario about an artwork found a millenium into a future in which society as we know it has come apart. Your description should address issues related to the government and elicit feelings of disgust.

The Story

An Analysis

 

AI is used as a  tool to support writing a story

      For the purpose of this assignment, with the readily available tools to create an AI story, I want to reflect on the product that was provided by the generative AI and I will illustrate where there could be improvements in the prompt to create a story. In the video presented by the Santa Clara University (2018), Dr. Shannon Vallor illustrates that the generative AI that is running the prompt is one that supports the person “writing” the prompt on a direction for the story, but is also acting as an accelerant where it is taking a task that would normally take an hour or two into something that took 3 minutes. While I love writing stories from scratch, the AI opens up possibilities of being able to complete something that I never thought would have been possible and shift my direction of creativity and process (Ford, 2020). 

       As a hobby, I prefer to write short mystery or short horror short stories with a specific first character point of view. The prompts would have given me a bit of difficulty as I normally require more than 500 words to set up a character, a plot and a story. The prop I was given was existential and science fiction which I would have required a bit of time to create. This would have required a reflection on previous experiences of science fiction before I wrote, but with generative AI, I would say it created a good enough skeleton. Harrari (2017) indicates that AI will be a disruptor in how we do our jobs and in this case, this was an illustration of how a good skeleton can be created in a few seconds. That being said, I saw the positive in that if I wanted to write science fiction, the generative AI could assist with that endeavour for a hobby writer like myself, but could spell trouble for someone in that profession who writes (Harrari, 2017).

 

AI is can write a story, but it can’t write a great story

   As I look closely at the work, I am reminded of how Hemmingway (1981) dissects a short story as a matter of a piece of work written by someone who is a good explainer, the art is done when the writer knows to leave out an important part and doesn’t do any explaining.  The prompt given breaks Hemmingway’s (1981)  concept of a short story in that it explains many things but doesn’t have elements of a good story where there is an overarching arc of leaving out details that the audience can build with the blocks of the text (Hemmingway, 1981). The AI feels more like mimicking the role of a writer, like it’s poised to do to take over many industries that will upend economic order (Harrari, 2017) but doesn’t specify which writers that it will replace. Sure, it will replace hobby writers or a few writers that are new in their craft, but will it replace the greats or concepts of speculative design? That I don’t think so.

  As I read through the prose, created by AI, I note the guideline that Hemmingway (1981)heeded which was that a good short story requires the writer to have a secret that couldn’t be told until the very end of the story and it left me wondering if I could replace or enhance some of the features with inspirations from different speculative design principles (Mitrovic et al., 2021). In the quote from the prompt below, it could be improved with some principles of what I think could be good writing which can include improving the story through a different perspective or adding characters who could react to what they’re seeing rather than remarks.

“The sculpture was a commentary on the governments of the past, a scathing indictment of their failure to lead with wisdom and foresight. The figure was adorned with the trappings of power, but its form was a testament to the corruption that had festered within the halls of government. The artwork was a physical manifestation of the disgust that the people of the past had felt towards their leaders, a silent scream of outrage at the injustices that had been perpetrated in the name of progress.”

Proposed improvement:

– Add the character the reader gets introduced to at the beginning with a limited backstory

-Can change perspective to first person from the character we are introduced to. Have a foil to set the background of the world that we live in further

These improvements about having tension or having someone feel the unease rather than trying to illicit a response puts another one of Hemmingway’s (1981) notes on a good short story which is to draw characters’ experiences and emotions from yourself. “How would you react if you saw that?”. The prompts are from data about a post-apocalyptic story, but the domain of affectiveness is missing from the prompts. With great stories, you would sense dread and despair in the writing instead of being told to feel that emotion.

References

Harari, Y. N. (2017). Reboot for the AI revolution. Nature International Weekly Journal of Science, 550(7676), 324-327.

Hemingway, E. (1981). The art of the short story. Paris Review, 79, 85-102.

Mitrović, I., Auger, J., Hanna, J., & Helgason, I. (Eds.). (2021). Beyond speculative design: Past – present – future. Speculative Edu.

Santa Clara University. (2018, November 6). Lessons from the AI Mirror Shannon Vallor [Video]. YouTube.