Whiting, as you have guessed, is neither historian nor human. His fake persona is harbinger of an alarming trend threatening disaster to academics and journalists alike.
AI projects designed to pose as real researchers, set in motion by unethical humans, with the cooperation of a powerful corporation, are now capable of fooling even careful bibliophiles. This is not the ChatGPT of 2022. “It reads beautifully and is accurate,” Cline says ruefully of 1177 BC Revisited.
According to Ernest Hemingway, “there is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” In our brave new world of AI, unless we very soon decide otherwise, such dogged effort won’t be necessary. All you will need is a dash of deceit and avarice, mingled with data, algorithms, and computing power, to fill that blank page.
Who the hell is going to by and read an AI generated book?