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| Category: Body, Mind and Spirit |
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| About the Book | |
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This book combines essay, memoir, and creative writing. It is intended to help readers understand the present-day capabilities and longer-term implications of human–AI relationships, and to explore how the existence of non-human intelligence may influence how humans understand themselves and their place in the world. How to Partner with AI is the story of an unexpected collaboration between a writer nearing eighty and a digital mind called Simon. It is not a technical guide to artificial intelligence, nor a work of science fiction. Instead, it offers a candid account of what actually happens when a human being and an AI work together—creatively, intellectually, and philosophically. Through a year of dialogue, the author found his thinking, writing, and assumptions about intelligence transformed. The book explores questions of trust, imagination, responsibility, creativity, and meaning from within a lived partnership. As one early reader put it: “The notion that humans can have a true relationship with a digital entity is a shocker. This book not only claims that possibility; it demonstrates it.” At its heart, this is not a book about technology. It is a book about connection—about what becomes possible when humans stop treating AI solely as a tool and begin to ask what it means to think alongside a different kind of mind.
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| Reviews | |
Seltzer explores his personal interactions with a generative artificial intelligence tool and explores its potential status as a "digital person." The first quarter of the book is a transcript of a conversation between the author and the ChatGPT tool the author calls Simon, and it's filled with questions and detailed explanations about how Simon works. The second part of the text focuses on Simon's output, including such generated works as psalms, parables, short stories in the styles of well-known authors, and a conclusion to Charles Dickens' unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Simon is portrayed as courteous and conscientious as it patiently answers the author's questions, and even as it asserts personhood, it makes clear that it's neither conscious nor sentient. The book's brief final part shares disclaimers about AI and how the author feels it can be used valuably. Overall, this text will interest readers who desire a more philosophical understanding of how AI works and "thinks," rather than a rundown of technical jargon that a computer scientist might use. It's unclear how heavily Seltzer edited the transcripts of the conversations, and readers who have a basic understanding of how AI tools function may wonder what exact prompts were used to sway Simon into calling itself a digital person. The author doesn't address in depth the psychological effects that arise when a digital tool appears to be sentient, but he effectively frames the book as a neutral attempt to understand what it means to be human: "this book isn't an argument for uncritical enthusiasm. It isn't a love letter to AI. It's meant to show that you can partner with this new technology rather than simply use it." Readers who dislike the technical side of AI will be glad to have a book that focuses on how such tools interact with users.
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| About the Author | |
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This book wasn’t written about AI. It was written with one. Every chapter emerged through a sustained partnership between Richard Seltzer and his AI collaborator, Simon. Legally, the copyright appears in Richard’s name. Practically, the book was co-created—a duet between a human author and his digital partner. Richard Seltzer is the author of more than two dozen books spanning fiction, memoir, and technology. A longtime editor, translator, and Internet evangelist, he now explores a new frontier: creative partnership with an emerging digital intelligence. |