What prominent writers have to say about AI and the future of writing brought to mind a story about Flaubert and Maupassant I had read in essay a while back. The essay quote what Maupassant had to say about what he had learned from Flaubert
“Whatever you want to say,” he would later quote from Flaubert’s teachings, “there is only one word to express it, only one verb to give it a movement, only one adjective to qualify it. You must search for that word, that verb, that adjective, and never be content with an approximation, never resort to tricks, even clever ones, and never have recourse to verbal sleight-of-hand to avoid a difficulty.”
In theory, AI could find that perfect verb, adjective and adverb to say what needs to be said. Presumably it is trained on this notion of perfection as defined by masters of the craft. But even that is only part of what makes Maupassant's short-stories so compelling and unforgettable. The language is polished to perfection but there is a lot more that cannot be quantified and that is where the creative genius resides.
Most of writers in the interview seem to have hope for that unquantifiable thing that makes a great writer - if it cannot be properly expressed, documented and encoded it is potentially safe from the all-devouring writing machine that seeks to make writers redundant.
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