The AI year in natural stories
Not your father's year-in-review story
Happy New Year! With so many publications doing a year-in-review this week, I wondered if I could do the same. But since this isn’t a news publication, how would I summarize the year? The question had me stumped, but maybe an outside perspective would help. I decided to ask an artificial intelligence (AI), and things quickly got complicated.
As I wrote earlier this year, I believe AI can help writers—but not by writing. And not just by checking grammar. I occasionally ask an AI the sorts of questions I might ask a developmental editor: Does the story flow, does the argument work? Does the opening grab your attention? Is the tone sufficiently conversational? Often its responses aren’t very good. But the conversation can help me develop my own assessments of a story, help me see where to improve it.
How to start that conversation on this topic? I tried the AI’s suggestions: How has the author's approach to storytelling evolved? The answer is so vague and meaningless it’s not even worth quoting. What recurring themes and narrative structures characterize the author's work? Still vague, now also obsequious. And why does the AI want me to write a freshman English essay?
I tried my own suggestions: Based on these texts, summarize the year in natural stories. It lamely regurgitated the ideas from my September anniversary post.
Which stories were the most newsworthy? It cited Yellowstone’s Biscuit Basin explosion, the Wagon Box Inn DAO, and the 1948 Lake Solitude Dam hearings, noting that “the author's definition of ‘newsworthy’ is not limited to conventional news events. They are also interested in stories that reveal deeper truths about our relationship with nature and culture.”
Which stories were most likely to go viral? It gave nothing meaningful.
This was Google’s NotebookLM, which admirably limits its analysis to the sources I upload. But that made it frustratingly recursive, searching my archives for what it could interpret as my definitions of newsworthiness and virality, rather than society’s definitions.
NotebookLM is famous for being able to generate a podcast. I suggested that the hosts Explain to someone who has never heard of the Substack ‘Natural Stories’ what it's about, and whether it's good or bad.
In the podcast feature, a man and woman with radio-friendly voices speak informally about the content you uploaded. The gimmick is that the AI has turned the content into what feels like a genuine conversation. For example, while the AI-podcast was talking about my climate change story, the guy said, “Counterproductive! How so?” What most impressed me was that my original story expressed the idea of counterproductive but never used the actual word.
In this AI-podcast, the hosts talked about Natural Stories for 23 minutes. At first, it was weirdly compelling. I could listen as two people talked in depth about my work—this is every writer’s dream! Yet when I actually listened, it was still the AI being vague and obsequious. “Let’s just say it’s not your typical nature blog.” “Yeah, it’s not your typical pretty pictures and flowery prose kind of nature writing.” And later, “The writing is super-accessible, you don’t need to be some sort of Environmental Studies whiz to follow along.” I wanted to respond “Thanks, AI” with the tone someone might use for “OK Boomer.”
The hosts name-dropped Thoreau, Leopold, and Marshall, like over-eager students trying to demonstrate that they had done the required reading. But the hosts’ comments never amounted to anything worthwhile, either as summary or judgement. Was that my fault, for generating such a “diverse,” “unexpected” body of work? Or could the AI not tell a story to save its life?
After about six minutes I gave up. Solving that riddle wasn’t worth wasting any more time listening. I went outside for a walk and a more natural story.
This is fascinating. I don’t think you needed AI to answer the first set of questions you posed, but I assume you asked them just to see what the program would come up with. The AI podcast seems intriguing, but ultimately of no real use to the author unless you just like to imagine real people talking about your book. I can see the day when people don’t even aspire to have a real audience. Just summon AI and sit back with a glass of wine.
You're the real deal, John. You don't need none of that artificial stuff!