The last real writer

A short story about AI

This is a bit of a diversion from my normal posts, but it was one of those stories I had to write, or it was going to burn a hole in my brain. I’ve been bombarded with messages saying basically “Do this and use our integrated AI.” It comes from everywhere. Google, Microsoft, Samsung, Photoshop. I literally got one from Facebook this morning. So, enjoy a little light reading and feel free to share far and wide.

By Eric Douglas © 2025

Computer. Activate Recording.

This is Jack Simon. Recording Number 7.

I’m not even sure why I’m doing these recordings. I can’t tell if anyone is listening when I upload them. Or if the AI is simply blocking it and allowing me to babble on. I will persist. Someone has to remember.

People used to talk about a “slippery slope.” A small step that could lead to larger consequences. But no one uses that phrase anymore. The computers decided it wasn’t clear enough language. They didn’t like colloquialisms. Or something like that. I’m not sure it wasn’t the computers not wanting people to think that way. They wanted people to take small steps but never look back to realize just how far they’ve come. Or how much they normalized, um. AI. My crotchety old journalist habits want me to spell it out on first reference. That’s Artificial Intelligence. Probably more accurately generative artificial intelligence. It makes things.

This whole gig started innocently enough. AI was an aid to autofill your emails and search queries as you typed them. People liked that. It was easier and faster. They didn’t have to think. We were always surprised when Google found something for us, um, when we hadn’t even told it where to look.

Then they trained AI on books and newspapers and art. It violated copyrights and intellectual property of the best writers, poets and artists. But no one, except the writers and painters, seemed to care much. The AI users liked to be able to create silly avatars in artistic styles.

It was a little scary, but you could ask an AI to write “in the style of” a certain writer and it could search books and essays in its files and spit out a reasonable facsimile. No one really paid attention to that, either. They thought it was fun. Well, except the writers, of course. They’d spent years working on their craft and thousands on therapy in the process.

Once that was done, and they worked out some bugs, AI could think on its own. And it could create. People got better and better at crafting a few select instructions, and they made, for the sake of this discussion, we’ll call it art? Some referred to it as art, anyway.

The artists didn’t, of course. Just like the writers.

People called themselves “creators” and used AI for everything from self-help to fan fiction. And even real fiction. College students, and their professors, used AI for research. And they even let it write, or grade, their papers for them. What do you call it when an AI system grades the same paper it wrote just a few days before? Will it give itself an A? Or will it flag its own essay for cheating?

It wasn’t long before “creators” were shouting instructions into the air in pure bohemian fashion and letting the 3D printer churn out their vision.

There’s that phrase again, slippery slope.

In 1942, science fiction author Isaac Azimov created the “Three Laws of Robotics” for a short story he was working on. It was called Runaround. He used those same three laws in a bunch of stories that we finally compiled into a collection called I, robot.

Azimov said the rules come from the "Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D." To my knowledge we don’t have the first one, so 56 editions is a long way off. His rules were simple but extraordinary. They are:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Everyone agreed those rules were solid, especially coming from someone decades away from the microchip. I mean, can you imagine?

We’ve had more than 100 years to think about Azimov’s rules. I’m getting close to the year he said they would be created. But I don’t see anyone even thinking about something like that.

When AI first took off a couple of decades ago, no one thought to include the Three Laws. Azimov was JUST a science fiction writer. The idea was laughed off. I mean, who understands humanity better than someone who spends their entire career trying to understand the current human condition so he can predict, with uncanny accuracy I might add, what people will be like in 50 or 100 years.

Don’t get me wrong. I like a lot of the conveniences. I use AI to transcribe an interview. I use it to build maps where a story might take place if I’m writing fiction. I use it to sort through loads of information to find patterns or compare documents.

But to use artificial intelligence to create something on its own… that’s just not art. That’s not writing.

To my mind, there is a substantial difference between using a tool and letting the tool make the decisions for you.

The slide down the slippery slope picked up speed. And we just didn’t see it coming.

Now, it seems like I’m the last actual human who is actually writing. That’s probably not true, but most of us have gone underground. We write for ourselves or posterity hoping a little sanity returns to the world. Because writing and creating with our hands is looked down on. It isn’t “productive.”

Like these recordings. I don’t know if anyone listens to them or if I’m just talking to myself. At this point, I may just be doing it to hold myself together. Talking into a mic makes it a bit more seemly than just talking to myself, I guess.

Back when this all started, we were told AI would free us from the drudgery of the daily grind and allow us to create and think and enjoy life. That bright moment quickly turned to gray.

And then AI started telling everyone what to do. And people listened. It began organizing our day. There was art and music, but it came from a computer chip and an algorithm, designed to keep people working and not thinking — critically anyway.

Artists and writers couldn’t support themselves because there was no market for art, when you could say “Paint me a picture in the style of Van Gogh in the colors of my living room that I can hang over my couch.” And then it spit out of a 3D printer already in a frame.

No one needed journalists anymore. Most people didn’t trust them anyway. Politics in the years leading up to AI saw to that. There was so much disinformation and claims of “fake” news that no one knew what to believe so they didn’t believe anything. Was the AI sabotaging public confidence or did AI step into fill that vacuum? We’ll probably never know.

Look, I know at this point I sound like an old man standing in my front yard yelling at the clouds. It is here. Our lives have changed. Many would say for the good. I’m just not so sure.

That’s enough for today, though. I’m gonna wrap up this recording. I’ll be back in a few days, though with some more witty repartee. Or something like that. Until next time, thanks for listening.

Jack Simon. Recording number 7. Out.

*****

“Wow, that was great, Kim. It really sounds like a cynical old man. He’s on the run, but still wants to get his message out, trying to save humanity, or something.”

“Thanks, Deshawn. I’ve got just a little more tweaking to do on the algorithm, but it's heading right where I want to be.”

“What do you plan to do with this version of the AI?”

“I’m thinking about standing it up as a real radio broadcast. I mean, Jack can inspire writers and philosophers and they don’t have to actually do anything. That should lull some of them into complacency.”

“That’s genius, Kim.”

“My next step is to create a body of work from Jack so if people get curious who he is, they will see the hundreds of articles he wrote. Shouldn’t take more than a couple hours.”

*****

Because I love irony, the image at the beginning of this post was created with Chat GPT in about 5 minutes using the following prompt: “Create an image of a man in his 40s, but looks tired, with tousled hair sitting behind a futuristic desk talking into a microphone.” For more irony, ChatGPT sent a notification that so many people were creating images that it might take a few extra minutes.

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