I Sacrificed a Short Story to the Spirits of AI. In Return, They Gave Me a Podcast about It.

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I Sacrificed a Short Story to the Spirits of AI. In Return, They Gave Me a Podcast about It.

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Last week, I sacrificed a short story to the gods of artificial intelligence. I was curious about Google’s NotebookLM feature. It’s the latest thing that they have now. If you give it a link to a website, or upload a document, it will use AI to provide you with a summary of whatever you’ve given it. You can chat with an AI personality about the document, and respond to any questions you have. It will make claims and cite passages from the text in order to back them up. It will furthermore—and this is the really weird part—generate an audio conversation in which two people discuss the document you have given it, as if they were recording it for a podcast. But neither of the people actually exists, and the conversation never took place.It is yet another strange new thing in the long parade of strange new things. It’s one more thing that makes me wonder how anyone can teach literature now. A student can take any essay prompt you give them, feed it to NotebookLM, and get a fairly competent response, which they can then turn in for a grade. AI detectors can only do so much, and I can’t imagine it’s hard for young people to outsmart them.I wanted to see what NotebookLM would make of my short story “Midnight Oil.” It’s a story I wrote some time ago, and which I gave up trying to publish. I decided it just isn’t good enough to persevere with. It is too ridiculous for its own good. Maybe its wings aren’t strong enough for it to fly on its own. But it definitely has its moments, and I don’t want to just burn it or bury it somewhere. So I’m devoting this newsletter to it. I’ll read it for the audio version, and for this written version I will cut and paste it, below. First I’ll show you what NotebookLM spat back at me when I fed it “Midnight Oil.” Here is the summary:The excerpt, taken from "Midnight Oil.C.pdf," presents a darkly humorous and poignant story about a brother and sister, Jack and Suzie. The text unfolds through a series of events centered around Jack's impulsive and eccentric business ventures. The story begins with Jack announcing his intention to open a pet cremation service called "Midnight Oil," much to Suzie's initial disapproval. The narrative then follows the chaotic day as Jack's business takes off, unexpectedly receiving a flurry of customers with dead pets. However, the most dramatic turn of events comes when a customer arrives with a bucket of live kittens, prompting a conflict between Jack and Suzie. Their differing perspectives on the situation - Jack's ruthless capitalist drive versus Suzie's moral concern for the kittens - culminate in a physical altercation. Ultimately, Suzie prevails, preventing Jack from cremating the kittens and ultimately taking them in herself. The text explores themes of familial bonds, the complexities of morality, and the struggle between idealism and practicality. It examines the clash between Jack's reckless entrepreneurial spirit and Suzie's attempt to inject compassion and ethical consideration into his business dealings. Through this seemingly absurd narrative, the author reveals the intricate interplay between human connection, personal responsibility, and the unexpected consequences of unchecked ambition.Key TopicsPet cremationFinancial troubleFamily tiesBrotherly conflictMoral dilemmaIt’s an excellent summary. All of the most important story elements are represented there. It also expresses pretty succinctly, I think, what’s wrong with the story, and why it ultimately just isn’t as good as other things I’ve written. The moral dilemma is too absurd for the story’s good. One of the characters thinks it’s okay to burn living kittens to death. It doesn’t make any sense.In a realistic short story, anyway, it doesn’t look right. Absurdity and gravity are at odds with one another, and the written thing suffers as a result.I wrote the story in the first place as an experiment. I used to give an assignment to students in fiction workshops, in which I challenged them to take one feature of their word processing software that they’ve never used before, and make it the foundation for a page or two of text. If they never tried using footnotes, now was their chance to play with footnotes. Students never failed surprised me and themselves, with what they came up with. It was a good time. It’s also something I like to do sometimes with my own writing. What does that button on the Microsoft Word “Insert” ribbon do? I have no idea. Let’s make a story out of it.In the case of “Midnight Oil,” I wanted to write a short story that had math equations in it. I wanted some of the math equations to make no sense and not really be mathematical.When it was finished, I liked the story. No one else did. I came to understand why. So I offered it up to the artificial intelligence. I cleaved some meat off of my brain and presented it to the AI gods, so that they may devour or discard it. I’ll put it below, and ...