I’ll admit that I was quite wary going into this book. Like many others, I believe very strongly that AI generators should not be used in the creative arts, but it’s still a fascinating subject and one that its important to be informed about, given the inevitable effect AI will have on our lives. The concept of this book intrigued me: the starting point is a nonsensical story written using ChatGPT, with the author/programmer then reflecting on what he learned. It was still difficult to predict what I was getting myself into, but when I saw that Nish Kumar voiced ChatGPT in the audiobook, I was sold!

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Overall, this was an enjoyable listen. The style of narration combined with the sound effects made it feel more like a very long podcast, and there was a good balance of the entertaining (the ridiculous ‘plot’ of the story) and the thought-provoking (Andy Stanton’s commentary). Stanton reflects on a wide range of topics, mostly in relation to the limitations and failings of the bot, but also mentioning bias, censorship and more. At his most philosophical, he discusses how uniquely human storytelling is, using ChatGPT’s most inhuman moments as a point of contrast.

There was some interesting discussion on bias and censorship, but I would have loved to hear a lot more on the topic. There were some passages that stood out to me as something interesting to discuss but that went completely unremarked upon. Another glaring omission is the intellectual property of the bot’s dataset. Stanton even acknowledges eery similarities to existing works, but doesn’t examine the potential consequences beyond a throwaway joke.

While I was mostly enjoying the listening experience, there were some points that it began to wear thin. Some of the jokes relied on excessive repetition which, while entertaining on a page that you can skim over, became annoying very quickly over audiobook. While the premise of Benny’s story is worth perhaps a chuckle at most, it soon became old. The running gag of the whole book relies on you having the same sense of humour as a thirteen-year-old boy. It was funny to start with, but about half way through I was done with it.

This was a fun and interesting idea for a book, and there are lots of worthwhile things that I took away from it. As much as I had my frustrations with it, I am glad that I picked it up. It’s clear that AI is here to stay, and I’m glad that Andy Stanton was there to guide me through what to expect.

I received a free copy for an honest review.