Fiction writers fear the rise of AI, but also see it as a story to tell

For a vast number of book writers, artificial intelligence is a threat to their livelihood and the very idea of creativity. More than 10,000 of them endorsed an open letter from the Authors Guild this summer, urging AI companies not to use copyrighted work without permission or compensation.

At the same time, AI is a story to tell, and no longer just in science fiction.

As present in the imagination as politics, the pandemic or climate change, AI has become part of the narrative for a growing number of novelists and short story writers who only need to follow the news to imagine a world upended.

“I’m frightened by artificial intelligence, but also fascinated by it. There’s a hope for divine understanding, for the accumulation of all knowledge, but at the same time there’s an inherent terror in being replaced by non-human intelligence,” said Helen Phillips, whose upcoming novel “Hum” tells of a wife and mother who loses her job to AI.

“We’ve been seeing more and more about AI in book proposals,” said Ryan Doherty, vice president and editorial director at Celadon Books, which recently signed Fred Lunzker’s novel “Sike,” featuring an AI psychiatrist.

“It’s the zeitgeist right now. And whatever is in the cultural zeitgeist seeps into fiction,” Doherty said.

Other AI-themed novels expected in the next two years include Sean Michaels’ “Do You Remember Being Born?”, in which a poet agrees to collaborate with an AI poetry company; Bryan Van Dyke’s “In Our Likeness,” about a bureaucrat and a fact-checking program with the power to change facts; and A.E. Osworth’s “Awakened,” about a gay witch and her titanic clash with AI.

Crime writer Jeffrey Diger,…