TL;DR: Yes. I’m using them. Claude and ChatGTP, to be specific. Using them to bounce ideas off of. Results are actually pretty good. So far. I’m pretty sure this is going to be controversial, so feel free to leave your comments. That doesn’t mean I’m going to change my mind. Just so you know.
I’m pushing 70. That means I have, what, ten, fifteen ‘good’ years left? Twenty if I’m lucky and they don’t repeal Social Security. I don’t have time to, uh, “fart” around. I like my writing to at least be ‘grounded’ in reality, so I like to do some research before I put pen to paper. The problem with this is my writing tends to be pretty ‘niche’. I don’t like dystopias, and I don’t believe in utopias. The best we human beings can manage is a miss-topia: a society that bangs off of dys-and-u topias without fully partaking in either. A society that pisses off the maximum number of people while screwing the minimum amount? Better pissed off than pissed on, as Dear Old Dad used to say. Not exactly Heaven, but I might vacation there.
Anyway, why AI? It’s not like I can go to my father and bounce ideas off of him: he’s dead. He would also say “Hey, that’s pretty interesting!” without saying too much else. I need someone just as nerdy as I am. That just leaves my brother. The one with the successful marriage and the children who still like him. Yeah, well, he’s also still working, so he doesn’t have time to cogitate on bullshit like I do. Then there’s my Loyal Beta Readers (yes, my brother is one of them). They all tell me I’m good. Mostly.
The recovering Catholic inside me needs more, though. Eight years of parochial school have instilled the notion that somewhere, somehow, I’m screwing up. I would have an entire staff of researchers, editors, and coffee-getters if I had the money. But I don’t. And I like the way I make my own coffee, thank you.
That leaves godless, soulless AI. I don’t ask for writing advice, although I may feed it a few short stories and ask for a critique on, say, grammar, spelling, or readability. I’m making it do (some of) my research, and coming up with fascinating results.
So if you see something weird in the societies I’m writing about, especially in the Singularity Blues section, you know where that’s coming from.