AI Assisted Dream

It was yet another night of disappointment for Nate. Results for the prestigious Litwin, a monthly short story writing competition, were out and he couldn’t find his name anywhere near the top. Though this was not the first time and one should have been used to it by now, it still sucked the soul out of him, like it had every other time.

Nate had been reading fiction since he was six. His father, a local school teacher, would ask Nate to wait in the library after his classes till he finished his remaining duties, following which they walked back home together. It was in this library that he fell in love with books and stories that lit up his imagination. As he grew older he dreamt of becoming a writer one day and imagined his novels in the midst of other literary classics.

With age, responsibilities grew for the next many years. First studies to get into a good college followed by even more studies to land a good job, because that is how it is supposed to be and everything else comes second. Writing was left for the right time, once the currents of river called life were stable. Nate was now almost 30 and bored by his monotonous job. By this time he had realized that no one would arrive at his door one day and tell him his right time had just started. Maybe it was time for him to get his long awaited dream out of the shelf and start writing. So he decided to act. To write a whole novel seemed too overwhelming to start with. In the past he had heard of short story writing competitions and thought it could be the right place to begin with where he could sharpen his skills and at the same time also learn in the right company. His search led him to Litwin, a monthly short story writing competition judged by respected writers themselves, that provided the right platform to showcase his work, make his name in the game and win a hefty prize money as an additional bonus. Having read so many books over the years, a short story seemed like easy work, all he had to come up with was an interesting plot.

So he began his search for an idea. He would think of something and then feel it sounds too simple or cliched, then think of something more complicated but have doubts if he could complete it. It took him almost two months to decide what he actually wanted to write about. Then came the part to put his idea into paper. He wrote drafts after drafts, sometimes binning entire work and rewriting from scratch, other times spending hours just perfecting one line. It took him another three months to finally finish the story which he thought could be submitted. Still having doubts and a feeling that the story could still be improved, but already given it so much time that he couldn’t go on any longer. As it was his first time in such a competition, he did not have very high expectations before he started to write, but having spent almost six months writing and perfecting his story the expectations grew. When he finally submitted the story, there was a sense of relief and a small sense of achievement.

The results were announced in a fortnight and Nate couldn’t find his name anywhere near the top. Although he had told himself to not get his hopes high, to actually not see it happen pained him. Still, consoling himself he thought that it was his first time and it’ll only get better from here. Except it never did. Competition after competition, he would take more and more time submitting the stories, he would spend more and more time editing to create the perfect art but when results were announced he would end up disappointed. This pain of failure was making him hollow from inside, as writing, he had always believed was what he was meant to do. He had not just imagined his books in the midst of literary greats, it was also his name among them, and now time after time, he was shown that he couldn’t even write a short story let alone an entire novel. But something would change soon.

Technology has always been evolving, but its evolution into AI was something remarkable. To top that, the speed with which AI evolved in a short space of time took many by surprise. AI was now doing things you never believed a machine could do, and it allowed you to do things you never believed you could do. Believing in himself was what Nate had almost given up until one day he saw one of his colleagues in his office using AI to complete his reports.

Using AI to write up a whole story was a line Nate wouldn’t cross, but using it sparingly to make small adjustments was something he didn’t feel too bad about. It was not changing his story or even his words for most of the part. A few words here and there doesn’t make that much of a difference. So Nate started incorporating AI into his work. The first few submissions went as planned. He would write the story and only use AI once or twice in the process wherever he felt stuck. The technology infused writing also got rewarded in the Litwin leaderboard where he was improving his rank after every submission.

Seeing the formula work, Nate’s desperation to taste success grew. As time progressed,AI crept more and more into his work. His ideas would come from AI, whole paragraphs would be reformatted by just a click and even writing styles would change by clicking some buttons on the keyboard. It was like AI writing its own stories and using Nate wherever it felt stuck. The leaderboard however was blind to this and kept rewarding him more. He expected to be at the top of the leaderboard in no time.

The thing about technology is that if it is good then everyone wants a piece of it. It wasn’t just Nate with AI at his disposal, others also had the same epiphany. Nate’s access to AI at his job just put him ahead of the curve, a curve which was now flattening and others were catching up. The top row of the leaderboard which was getting closer and closer had now stopped at some distance and soon started drifting away. It was back to square one and Nate was once again lost in the crowd and this time it hurt even more as he was almost there.

But he wasn’t someone to give up so easily, especially after getting this close, so his next move was to go bigger and better and buy the best in class AI tool. Once again he started having his edge back, but yet again others caught up with him and he had to upgrade again to not just the best AI model available but best of all AI models available. His creativity now was not in writing a story, but in getting the AI to write the best possible story and to bring different AI narratives together. This again worked for some time but yet again others caught up. As a result Nate was again back to square one, out of ideas and nearly out of money. The deeper he went into this, the more difficult it became to come out. Now Artificial Intelligence all used up, he turned to Human Intelligence. He took a debt and employed 2 people, handed them each key to access AI and asked them to come up with the best story on some plot he would decide. The first two didn’t work out well, so he fired them and hired two new ones. The two new ones asked more questions of him than AI so he replaced them with two new. Two weren’t getting him anywhere so he hired three more. All this while depleting savings and increasing debt. He believed the suffering is temporary and necessary to succeed, once he wins the competition every problem solves itself. This was not to be.

One afternoon, having exhausted all his debit taking limits, the time to pay wages to his hired human intelligence arrived. He deferred it a few times, lying with his imaginative stories, but the hired human intelligence would not take any more of it. They wrecked his house, breaking expensive equipment in the process and left him with a lot of anxiety-inducing threats. His recent endeavour had also left him on thin ice at his job. The only reason he was still getting paid every month was due to his relations built over the years but even that wouldn’t have lasted long. All the wreck around him and threats snapped him out of his trance. The last couple of years flashed before him and he took a step back to understand what he was trying to do. He asked himself if he even wanted to write the stories in the first place. This was supposed to bring joy and excitement in his life. When did it turn into a competition he had to win? Can he only be happy when his stories are validated by people around and be miserable if that doesn’t happen? Or he just wanted to write because he liked imagining and putting those imaginations in words was something he enjoyed, that he could do for hours and lose the world around him in the process.This sudden introspection made him angry at himself which was followed by a sense of relief and calm. He still wanted to write but lose himself for good reasons this time.