(The Atlantic) – I don’t think of myself as having much in common with Altman, but his persistent tinkering felt uncomfortably recognizable. I’m also in the dirty business of using language to keep someone hooked on a product: I write novels. The rules of fiction require me to do this indirectly, constructing a narrator—whether a character or an imagined voice—to deliver the text at hand. Sometimes a friend will read a draft of mine and come away feeling irritated by my narrator, or, even worse, bored. This might compel me to reshape the narrator’s style and tone in hopes of conjuring a more engaging storyteller. The reason Altman’s comments sounded familiar to me was that I know fictional characters when I see them. ChatGPT is one. The problem is that it has no author. (Read More)