Stephen King perfectly sums up why he isn't worried about being replaced by AI

Stephen King has revealed why he isn’t scared of artificial intelligence replacing him – but he issued a warning for future writers.

Artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly integrated into our lives, with many people concerned that it is reducing our critical thinking skills and could even impact jobs in creative industries such as writing, filmmaking and art.

In an interview with The Times, It and The Shining author King revealed that he has not given much thought to AI, but admitted that younger writers, such as his two sons, are feeling concerned about it.

“I don’t really care about AI,” King said. “My sons [Owen King and Joe Hill] are both writers … and they’re all hot to trot about AI and how awful it is for writers.”

He continued: “I just think that it’s a foregone conclusion that people are going to write better prose than some kind of automated intelligence.”

AI models are trained on a whole host of data, much of which includes creative works (which is why authors protested outside the Meta offices in April). But there is some argument about whether what it then produces based on this is anything close to what a human with lived experience can produce.

Getty Images

When asked if he believed AI would never be able to match up, the horror writer replied: “I didn’t say that. I think that once there is a kind of self-replicating intelligence, once it learns how to teach itself, in other words, it isn’t going to be a question of human input any more. It’s going to be able to do that itself.”

King referenced the novel The Time Machine by HG Wells, in which human society has collapsed and one race, the Eloi, is preyed upon by another, the Morlocks, who work machinery and eat them, and argued that it is how humans will end up with AI eventually.

“We’ll become the Eloi and AI will be the Morlocks and they’ll basically run everything,” King argued. “Once you teach AI to write a novel, a good novel, it’s going to be a different ballgame. I like to think that I can stay ahead of AI in the time that I have left.”

Why not read…

• A worrying truth about AI boyfriends and girlfriends has been discovered
• China is making AI education mandatory for kids
• ChatGPT is outright refusing to do this task and people are furious

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings