The famed horror author, whose body of work is weaved (in a multi-verse-before-multiverses-were-popular way) around a fantasy series about a gunslinger in a post-technological society that incorporates a sentient AI train (who is a pain), wrote for The Atlantic that he isn’t worried about AI supplanting him.
At least, not yet. This abridged passage illustrates why:
A character creeps up on another character and shoots him in the back of the head with a small revolver. When the shooter rolls the dead man over, he sees a small bulge in the man’s forehead. The bullet did not quite come out, you see. When I sat down that day, I knew the murder was going to happen, and I knew it was going to be murder by gun. I did not know about that bulge, which becomes an image that haunts the shooter going forward. That was a genuine creative moment, one that came from being in the story and seeing what the murderer was seeing. It was a complete surprise.
Could a machine create that bulge? I would argue not, but I must—reluctantly—add this qualifier: Not yet.
[The Atlantic]
