Summer Lightning Round: Augmented Future-Shock Neon Memories of August 17's Bittersweet Kiss
prepare for the new era of my mind palace
hi. it has been a long, long time.
but never fear! i have returned, fresh from my extremely long and unintentional hiatus. a lot of stuff happened, most good, some not so good, but all of it was illuminating. and now i’m back here, on this page, to Post once again.
you may have gleaned useful information from the title: it is time for more short fiction. but what does that title mean?
follow me, down memory lane, to the deepest corners of Jeff Lore…
In 2017, I challenged myself to write and publish one piece of fiction every day for two months. It was mostly successful—I managed to smash through my word count goal and make some real headway into an idea that I had for a large-scale shared universe project (I was ahead of the curve (I’d actually just discovered Brandon Sanderson)). I tried to keep writing a bit more on it, but life and other stuff got in the way, and the entire project was left to languish on my hard drive.
Until now.
I have a lot of complicated feelings on AI, especially where art is concerned. What defines the amount of “art” that exists in something, especially if its author used an Artificial Intelligence product to create it? Is something inherently worth less because AI was used in its creation? Should we reject it outright, or use this as an opportunity?
AI represents…something. What, I have no idea. But it’s hard to shake the feeling that we’re at the start of something new. Not world-changing, not apocalyptic, not euphoric or whatever. Just new. And right now, the field is open enough to allow for a great amount of experimentation and freedom.
I know what I sound like right now, but I really do want to be a bit wide-eyed about it, because yes, I am deeply skeptical about the positive utility of automation and large scale AI, but I am more deeply interested in the responsible and playful use of AI. There’s something here that could just make things more interesting and easier to execute, if one has the patience and open mind to approach it without (too many) preconceived notions.
All of this is to say is that I will be utilizing AI writing tools on my old work, figuring out how to massage the work and the tool to get what I want, and hopefully, get some decent work out of it.
I have a few original ideas I’ve been developing and expanding with the help of ChatGPT, but I’m going to keep those in my back pocket for now. What I need to see now is how much I benefit from this tool.
So that’s it, for the moment. You’ll probably start seeing work in your inbox over the next few months. The first one should hopefully land by the end of the month.
As ever,
Love You, Take Care, Stay Safe.