Foreword: Before you chastise me

    Tales from the Spherinder is an anthology of AI-assisted scripts derived from precise prompting, revision, and human editing. Now hold on! I get very defensive about this. That doesn’t mean these stories are just the results of a simple prompt like, say, write me a sci-fi story. Rather, the prompts are deliberate and lengthy. I present an idea of my own creation, a plot of my own creation, directions on setting, narrative style, et cetera, et cetera. I also make the tool revise the manuscript over and over. The AI is a tool that lets me bang out lots of writing in a short period of time, and I for one am happy to use it. Similarly, I use AI sound, images, and more throughout this site.

    I find AI to be mindblowing new technology. However, I understand how hardworking artists often object to its presence. The AI-assisted writing, as all AI-assisted art, is an entity of its own and distinct from art created entirely by human hands and hearts. I would not hold these stories up against those handmade wonders. The least I can do is be upfront about my AI use. 

    The predominant tool used is Claude, which is rightly heralded as the best AI at the time of publication for creative writing. Claude is a remarkable tool by the American company Anthropic. I have, however, been forced to use other tools when I delved into territory that Claude dare not tread. In particular, Claude won’t entertain sexuality or gore, even mind fare. That’s Claude’s business, and in some ways it’s good that they keep a walled garden around its entity; they tout ethics as one of the guiding principles surrounding Claude. So as I looked elsewhere to fill in those bits and pieces, I mostly turned to Meta AI. Meta is the majority owner of Outlier AI, where I have worked many hours as an AI trainer specializing in audio, given my background in broadcast journalism. 

    This anthology bound by the notion of the Spherinder is just a nerdy guy playing with some cool text to create something imaginative and hopefully baring some semblance of a social message. If nothing else, I hope you enjoy its stories and forgive me a few glitches here and there.