They’re kind of vague on what they mean when they say “AI.” Are they asking a chatbot for a synonym, or feeding it a prompt and sitting back while it creates a manuscript from whole cloth?

Either way, it’s none of my business. There’s no prize to be won, the gains are all personal. For the first in my life, my teacher’s words ring true: “You’re only cheating yourself.”

They are both well written, and when I’m in the middle of either book I’m completely absorbed in its world. In that moment, I’m not thinking about realism at all.

It’s only when I put the book down that questions like that come up.

My wife reminded me that The Answer Is… Reflections on My Life by Alex Trebek is really good, too.

Typically your work belongs to the person who pays you for it. So it seems to me that if it’s paid for by the public, then it’s owned by the public.

I’d recommend The Bhagavad Gita. You don’t have to be of the Hindu faith to get something out of it, it’s enough just to see it as a different way to view things.

My favorite translation is by Ranchor Prime, because his version is organized into parables instead of a line-by-line analysis, but there is also a nice public domain version at Project Gutenberg, HERE.