It’s been well over 20 years since I wrote a story called “Hemmingwrite,” about a fictitious computer program that allowed a writer to work in the style of their favorite author.
Sadly, I received emails from fellow writers who asked where the program was available. The idea scared me so much that I consulted a computer programmer friend who said that this would never happen.
I was glad to know that a machine would not be telling our stories. I no longer revel in such naive joy. Something more advanced than my fictitious program has arrived.
I know better than to watch the news before retiring to bed. Still, there I was, wide awake, popcorn in hand at 11 p.m., digesting all the hot topics of the day. One story was about how robots were coming for my job as a writer.
So, am I to understand that a wet-behind-the-ears (do they have ears?) machine that has never surfed is gunning for the Waterspot column? Did any of you, my fellow writers, see that piece? If so, I hope you slept better than I did, dreaming all night of a rad surfing robot named Kelly teaching me the fundamentals of grammar and tube riding. This is the stuff (bad) dreams are made of.
Now, if the current generation of AI can write, what’s to keep future generations form surfing literal circles around us. A computerized surfer could read a wave instantly, pull into a barrel without hesitation, wipeout and right itself like one of those toss-into-the-whitewater surf toys.
It would never tire or hesitate, and instantly calculate its chances of making a wave. Kelly Slater would teach it all his tricks before it learned them, improved upon them and taught them back to him. Thirty-foot Jaws, barreled on takeoff, exit to Stalefish, get drilled in whitewater, bottom turn, catch up to green water. Repeat.
If all that sounds like a dream, consider where we were a mere three decades ago when pagers were new. AI is coming. AI is here. AI can be made waterproof. AI wants your job, your friends, your waves.
AI can do anything we can better than we can, and all we can do is watch it morph into something increasingly beyond our abilities. One thing it does not have and cannot have, in my case anyway, are my experiences.
It will never know what it feels like to hitchhike to Rincon in 1964 and paddle out into a new 6-foot north swell. It will never stay up late dreaming of the new 7’4” speed egg Gary Hanel is shaping for it. It won’t know the agony and the ecstasy of being held up at gunpoint deep in Baja and escaping to find a perfect point break without a single footprint in the sand or a single surfer in the lineup. It will never know the painful bliss of an offshore wind stinging raw skin.
A machine might learn to write and surf perfectly. It might win a Pulitzer Prize for literature, take a World Championship or two and beat the pants off Bruce Lee. It might dance with the stars before taking us to the stars.
It will never, however, know what we know about the struggle that leads the overcomer to stoke, or what Skip Frye meant when he invented the term “soul surfing.” AI may one day take my job, but it cannot have our hearts and our souls.
