Sandra  Faulkner

 

At the heart of each book, and the center of each trial, there is a story that must be told, and told well. Publishing and litigation exist under pressure and are driven by the loud, constant ticking of a clock.  

 

There is a fundamental misconception about what both editors and jury consultants do for their clients. For example, an outsider to the field may think that a jury consultant selects juries for high-profile cases, and that an editor corrects manuscripts and pulls the work out of the writer. Surprisingly, these two things happen, but they are not always the core functions or roles. What an editor does for a writer has little to do with punctuation (see Didion below), and what a jury consultant does for a case has less to do with the letter of the law and everything to do with identifying and evaluating the social and psychological factors surrounding the trial. 

 

Jury consultants focus on the cultural perception of the law or procedural justice. Their journey begins months before the trial, starting with questions: What social factors will influence the case? What are the filters by which jurors will see and hear the attorney's arguments? Are the attorney's arguments credible? Does this case warrant the expense of hiring a jury consultant? Will the story hold up to a group of twelve? Why? Why not? 

Is this beginning to sound like an editor's job to you?

 

A good editor can recognize something magical even when it is scrambled and raw, not yet fully defined on the page. They appreciate the energy in the writer's words. They can identify the force within the writer that cannot be extinguished (even when the writer is faced with the daunting task of countless weeks or years of what will seem like an endless cycle of revisions, rejections, revisions...). 

 

Author Joan Didion, when writing about her long-time editor, Henry Robbins, explains what he did for her work (AFTER HENRY, Vintage, 1992, page 20). "What editors do for writers is mysterious, and does not, contrary to popular belief, have much to do with titles and sentences and 'changes'," Didion explains that the relationship is subtle and profound, both elusive and radical, at times somewhat paternal. In the end, she explains that Henry Robbins "was the person who gave the writer the idea of himself that enabled the writer to sit down alone and do it." 

 

What does the above have to do with editors and jury consultants?

 

Jury consultants and editors work with people who either write about, or fight for, things that matter-things that matter to them and things that ought to matter to all of us.

 

 

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Learning a new language can be challenging, and understanding the culture associated with it plays a crucial role in the learning process. Norms and regional differences familiar to the native speaker are often elusive to the outsider. Nowhere is this more true than when learning ASL, a language that is neither spoken nor written, and one used exclusively by the deaf community.  It is no wonder that mistakes are made in the learning process. Many of these mistakes can be avoided. 

After teaching ASL and serving as an ASL interpreter for years, these are the core things I took away.

 

The hands are faster than the eyes.

Let me explain.

When interpreting from spoken word into ASL, beginning interpreters often make the mistake of trying to keep up with what is being said. They rush along, their hands flying, as they try to keep pace with the speaker. In the process, they forget that the primary responsibility is not to interpret what is being spoken, but rather to communicate what is being expressed.  Good interpreting requires interpreters to step into a world of silence. The language that inhabits this world is filled with precise movements, symbols, spaces, and facial expressions. For the most part, ASL does not share its syntax with the spoken word.  Its syntax is unique.

 

Syntax is Tricky; think of a Venn diagram that has two independent circles with some overlapping parts. 

 

ASL has a unique syntax.  It shares some syntactical rules with other languages; for example, Chinese incorporates symbols and indicates the tense (past, present, or future) at the beginning of a sentence.  American Sign Language was developed in an English-speaking culture and shares some of English's structural elements. That said, it is a mistake to impose the rules of written and spoken English onto this language.

 

Adjectives, Adverbs, and Tone:

 

Cadence is modulated by varying time space, and force(or speed), and is done not with voice but with movement, using body positions, facial expression, subtle shifts, and so much more.  ASL is a three-dimensional language with space-specific, sign-specific, and facial expression-specific elements, all happening simultaneously, to create a language as complex as it is beautiful. 

 

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* Condensed experts from my sociology dissertation proposal at University of California, San Diego.
 

 

 

 

 

 

I hope we will resist the temptation to rely heavily on AI-generated content and instead continue to advocate for nuance and authentic human expression in the arts. 

 

My experience with AI is limited, but like most of us, my interactions with it grow daily. 

Like many writers, I have a love-hate relationship with it. I appreciate that it condenses knowledge into easily accessible bits, available to each of us who has a supercomputer in the palm of our hands. Who wouldn't like that? 

 

I dislike that it learns from my writing and consumes it.  My sentences and thoughts, even these humble initial ones, will be part of its digital brain bank. In a minute, I will push the publish button, and then, within seconds, my thoughts, words, and sentences will be consumed, processed, and they will belong to something artificial and intelligent.  

 

I ran a test 

I admit, upfront, that my interaction with the writing programs was bare-bones and basic, driven by curiosity and viewed through a lens of skepticism. That said, I did my best to keep an open mind and silence critical voices that have called AI enemy of creativity, a copyright thief, and a present and future threat to the world of books, films, and signals, perhaps,  the dramatic reduction of the creative class—those who make their living in the fine arts.  

 

Here's what I did: I took a collaborative approach, thinking of AI as a coauthor, producing several different scenes. I craft good prompts and questions and set clear parameters. We know from experience that our writing reflects clear thinking, and clear thinking is fundamental to the process; that's where most of the work happens—much like painting a house, most of the work is in the preparation. I started by determining the motives, genre, mood, and length of the first draft. I had to define the central question to be answered within the scene: Does the character know she is being followed? What was set and stated?

In the end, the bot made the scenes scarier than I had imagined. It added factual details, such as the weather conditions in which the scene took place, accurately incorporating the number of steps inside the building (The Astor Column) within the given parameters.

Was it usable?

Not much of it. 

AI produced several pages of clichés, strange tropes, and sentences that lacked the normal rhythm and cadence found in good work. Dare I say, it sounded robotic to me? 

 

Was it a waste of time?

 

No, I used the weather information, the number of stairs inside the building, and one or two other facts that I would have found, but it would have taken me much more time. 

 

The above issues will be resolved; AI will consume more original writing that, at this very moment, is being produced by more creative and innovative humans. It will likely master nuance and learn to generate good questions, with suitable parameters. There is little doubt that it will be used in film and writing, held back or limited only by hard-fought battles waged by the Writers Guild of America and the Authors Guild of America, among others.

I conclude that AI has social implications, as explored within the scope of books and films.  AI is seductive because it caters to our inner sloth, allowing us to follow the path of least resistance. Yawn.

 

We are no longer on a slippery slope when it comes to bots and the written word.  We are floating on a river moving toward the deepest resting place, before settling (read: dying) there.  Our laziness, coupled with their speed and ease, may be the downfall of the creative classes.