More book editing and AI: manton.org

@manton

I sometimes have a similar conundrums when woodworking: Do I spend the next couple hours flattening this piece with a No. 5 plane or run it through the machine planer a few times? Do I carve out this dough bowl by hand with a gouge or put a carving disk on the electric grinder?

I really like using hand tools, but certainly will use power tools to save time and energy. Where I personally draw the line with woodworking is that I have no interest in using a CNC, but I don’t mind when other people do.

In some aspect it is the artist’s creative vision that counts most, but there is definitely a sliding spectrum on which the method of execution matters, too. An AI prompt is a kind of creative vision, but there is a lot to be said for a human grappling with and creating art manually.

@manton fwiw, I have a book in press, which I got Claude & GPT to critique. But I didn’t let them write anything. (I mean they did, agains’t my direct instructions, but I refused them all.) but diff’rent strokes…

@njr That’s mostly how I’m approaching it too. As a critique it’s useful because it can read new drafts instantly. When it suggests something, I can still write it myself instead, or rephrase it.

@manton It sounds to me like hiring a human editor did not occur to you despite declaiming “I want the human voice.” If you’ve written about the possibility of working with a human editor I missed it.