Writing is, historically, something humans do quite well. It's hard to imagine handing this activity over to robots, or more specifically the technology of artificial intelligence (AI), given the nuance and personal touch required to do it well. In other words, much of the conversation around integrating AI into the workstream is centered around questions of "will the robot take my job"? This is, it turns out, the wrong question. In the case of writers for examples, while AI may not hold the promise of writing full stop, it can be a powerful tool in sharpening human skill.

Discussions about the ethics, safety, and societal impact of Artificial Intelligence seem to come back to the same cultural touch points found in AI stories that warn of worst-case scenarios. Whether in press coverage or in policy position papers, we keep going back to the same stories. We need to tell more diverse and realistic stories about AI if we want to understand how these technologies fit into our society today, and in the future. In Kubrick's HAL 9000, the calm assistant shuts Dave out of the system in 2001. In The Terminator, the AI defense system SkyNet becomes self-aware and initiates a nuclear holocaust to decimate the human race.