How Generative AI has helped Storytelling
And not in the way most people are generally using it.
Next week I am offering a 2 hour skill-building workshop to city managers from around the country. They are gathering in Boston to better understand the benefits generative artificial intelligence and how this can make their jobs easier. The organizers, in their practical wisdom, have decided to offer a storytelling workshop to the attendees as well. They are doing this because they have seen how central storytelling is to the City Manager’s job. But they are also curious how storytelling might work with the weekly waves of new AI tools and applications. I am too. I have some suspicions.
First of all, how is storytelling central to the City Manager’s job?
City Managers, like any manager, need to connect data with action. They need to convince people to respond to what has been learned.
City Managers, like anyone in leadership, are in charge of making the system work. Systems include people and their “motivational fit” with their responsibilities. Leaders need to help people better understand their role and how to do the work expected of them.
City Managers, like anyone in government, need to connect policy with practice. They need to translate new bills and laws into practical application. This asks that the team have a common understanding of the bill’s meaning.
This is some high level storytelling.
So what does all that have to do with Generative AI?
First up, for those of you who think this AI stuff is worrisome or something on the horizon, well—you’ve been using AI for a while now. In fact you are using it right now. Artificial Intelligence connected you to me by way of this platform and all its content. It created or at least strengthened our relationship by delivering this essay to you. It helped me with write this with spelling, grammar and research support.
And with ChatGPT, CoPilot, Bard and other Generative AI tools, it could actually write the first draft for me. And pretty well, quite honestly. It would have been fun for me to say that this essay was written using GPT-4, but I actually have my own system that is ultimately (with re-writes, editorial integrations, etc) faster than using the AI tools. More on that another time.
But I think these tools are great.
They are content factories that spit out high level stories in seconds. These tools, with the proper prompts, can write a Sparkle Story technically as good as anything I’ve written. Technically. That word is key. Which leads me to why Generative AI is great for storytelling.
Because it shows us the true power of storytelling.
And its not the content.
If robots can now write Sparkle Stories as good as anything I would write, then what exactly is storytelling? Meaning from a human perspective—what is storytelling?
And before you say that storytelling is our ability to vocalize and communicate well, robots are also getting good at that. It won’t be long before AI tools will be able to replicate my voice and be able to tell the robot stories with my voice so well, that it will be difficult to see the difference.
But you will know the difference—and that is what makes storytelling a human activity.
It has to do with the connection.
We are all so focused on what is in the story, and how the story is told, that we forget WHY we are telling a story in the first place. And THAT is the most important part of this investigating.
The reason behind storytelling is why it will always been an intimately human activity that is impossible to replicate by robots: humans need to connect.
We need to be connected to each other.
Like trees in a forest, we literally need each other. Dis-connection is at the root of every downfall in our species. Disease, war, famine, isolation, and greed have disconnect at their roots. We lose empathy and our ability to FEEL into each other. We forget our interdependence. We tell ourselves stories about willpower and being “self made” and none of it is true. We are who we are because we are a part of a community. It is truly the only thing that makes us happy, joyous and free. Each other.
So Generative AI tools might write content as good as what we humans are writing, it might even tell or perform these stories in audiobooks or shows or movies as good as human actors can, but it will never be able to replicate why we have stories, books, movies and shows: connecting one human to another.
Only a human could have known this needed to be said. Thank you David.