FAST FICTION Volume 2: Man vs. MachineA quick update… After pouring through a lot of stories in my inventory, I finally landed on the 50 I’ll be including in vol. 2. Technically, I’ll be including 51 of mine (just so I can wind up with the symmetrical grand total of 101). I want the 51st to have a man vs. machine theme. I have a first draft and believe I’m on to something, but…my initial group of readers correctly let me know that the story was not ready for prime time yet. They were right. I’m not giving up on the idea–I just need to make it “book-worthy.” Once that happens, it will join the other 50 stories which are now in the hands of my trusty editor. In terms of the other 50 stories, those are the ones being cooked up by A.I. The site I’m using is ChatGPT, and it’s currently the only AI site I have access to. I’ve applied for access to a couple of other ones (Google’s Bard and Microsoft’s Bing) but so far, it looks like my ghost writer will be GPT. At first, I thought it would be a very simple task. I’d just feed my prompts into the machine and it would instantly spit out decent stories. I didn’t think suspect they’d be as well-written as my stories, but I did think they’d be entertaining enough for my reader(s). So far, some of them are decent and some are completely illogical. I get it–this is a beta program that is still in its infancy. There will be lots of adjustments along the way, but I am surprised at how bad some of them are thus far. The end result is that I’m not settling for the first 50 stories that AI spits out. In searching for usable stories, I’ve looked at four or five different versions before finding one that I consider a worthy representative of AI writing. As of this writing, I’ve selected the first ten AI stories. Stay tuned for more. And now on to this week’s story. No Going BackAfter working remotely for two years, Katherine repeatedly ignored orders to return to work, until she received the ultimatum, “return or else.” “Welcome home,” the boss smiled. “Great seeing you in real life again.” “Working remotely was weird initially, but now it’s the only way.” “Zoom was tough, but everyone came back—everyone but you.” “Any chance of some remote days?” “Sorry. Everyone’s back—permanently.” Katherine nodded. “Then…guess I’m quitting.” “That’s too bad. Don’t forget to contact Personnel for your separation paperwork.” “I’ll go downstairs on my way out.” “Don’t bother. They’re online only these days.” “Of course they are.” Prompt: Quiet quitting
As always, thanks for listening! Scotty out |