Hii.
Such a simple, powerful word.
Friendly, open, inviting an desire to connect and exchange. BUT.
The challenge we’re all facing right now is that most of us are now really unsure about whether the Hello/Hi is coming from a human or a bot AND we’re so overloaded with information that we increasingly don’t trust the messages and information we’re receiving.
Hi/Hello could be the message you click on that opens you up to a scam, fraud, identify theft or much worse.
For us humans then, Hi/Hello has become a potential threat.
AI has put a rocket under this….and it’s demoralising and dehumanising.
This simple word has, potentially become toxic – just like much of the information we’re now bombarded with.
At a recent Wall Street Journal event, Anthropic (aka Claude) CEO Dario Amodei stated that in the next two, maybe three years, AI systems will be better than humans at almost everything.
For those of us in the book writing and publishing world, AI is already having a significant impact on all aspects of books: writing, editing, translating, design & layout, self publishing and marketing. Non-human content (written, audio and visual), fabricated content and bot-driven engagement is drowning out us humans.
Many people I know who write are so despondent about AI that they’ve given up writing!
Some of you may be feeling the same way about the book you’ve written or are thinking of writing. And I can understand why.
BUT…we humans are not done for yet, and the printed book is not done for yet either.
As philosopher and self-development expert Dr Wayne Dyer said:
“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”
As a business historian and book self publishing adviser I am taking a stand. We have to take up the fight for being human, for utilising the AI tools that are being developed NOT being subsumed by them.
I am determined to do what I can to reinstating humans in writing and engagement through retaking our agency back … and one way is the humble printed book.
So, I am formulating the Hii Project – Human intelligence and imagination.
Hii is a human agency project for writers and publishers.
Hii seeks to promote the vital role of human agency in a world of AI-generated books and content
Hii seeks to promote the vital role and power of books to create and sustain connection
Hii seeks to change the AI/book publishing discussion from one about what AI can do to one about what it should do, or not . . . and how we humans can and must step up.
To reclaim our agency with the written word we need to change the way we look at information.
We are now living in a world where we are drowning in oceans of information and seas of sameness.
Information (content) on its own can be powerful and move people and nations…but it’s not the information per se that does this, it’s about the connections information makes.
Information is fundamentally about human connection.
Writing and sharing information is really what connects and inter-connects humans.
The stories we tell each other, the information and knowledge we share, the feelings we express, the ideas and imagination we use to ‘create’ – and how this makes others in our lives and communities feel.
Of course, much of this is now done through social media channels but this doesn’t diminish the power of books. In many ways it makes books more powerful, trusted. Sharing a printed book is ultimately a way to connect with others at a deeper level, to start a conversation that might:
- help someone else through a challenge,
- seize an opportunity,
- change direction,
- lead to a deeper professional or personal relationship.
This is real connection, and highlights that not all content is made equal.
This said, it’s increasingly hard for all of us to make sense of just what the large social media algorithms have done to us, and our children, let alone what the new tsunami of AI is doing, and might ‘do to us’.
Let’s face it, most of us have been asleep on our sun loungers as Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, OpenAI, Google and others have scraped, stolen and manipulated us through their ‘offerings’ – turning us and our behaviours into products and then manipulating us through their algorithms to buy products, form views on, well, everything from the ‘safety’ of their engagement driven, sticky eco-chambers.
We gave up our agency…and it’s time to change the way we look at this, act, and get it back, using AI tools to do this. That’s what the Hii Project is all about.
AI is a tool not a solution and we have, at least for the moment, some level of control over what we will and will not allow it to do.
There are already hundreds of AI tools that can ‘help’ with the writing, publishing and book marketing process. I use a number of them including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini (formerly Bard), fireflies, Jasper, Grammarly, Rytr, Claude, QuillBot, Hemingway and more.
Each have their strengths and weaknesses depending on what your goals are with your writing and how skilled you are at prompting (engaging) with it.
I use AI to help with thinking around book titles and sub titles, content outlines, chapter structure, buyer personas, market segmentation, comparison books and more. I rarely use it for writing because most of my writing is from non-published sources and first-hand interviews (and none of these are going anywhere near online).
As a judge with the Australian Business Book Awards I’ve had to wade through a couple of books that were ‘written’ by AI. One was so obvious/bad that the ‘author’ didn’t even have an author bio anywhere in the book.
The world doesn’t need more crap content. It needs humans to connect through the meaningful and deliberate sharing of knowledge and insights to make the world a better place for our families now and into the future.
Hii – Human insight and imagination is powerful
As humans, we have feelings, thoughts, intuition, foresight and insight. We synthesise information from completely different experiences and areas – none of which AI can do. It can mimic some of these things but it’s pretty crap at connecting disconnected things.
Einstein’s story is insightful here.
Einstein was the product of a well-rounded education and was an accomplished violinist. He was intimately involved with the scientific complexity of music, and was able to bring a uniquely aesthetic quality to his theories. He wanted his science to be unified, harmonious, expressed simply, and to convey a sense of beauty of form.
He shared that he thought about science in terms of images and intuitions, often drawn directly from his experiences as a musician, only later converting these into logic, words and mathematics.
His second wife Elsa told the story of him disappearing into a room for two weeks (emerging for the odd piano session and jotting down notes), he then surfaced with a working draft of the theory of general relativity.
Let’s look at ourselves
Each one of us has our own unique story, influences, experiences and brings the totality of these to our thinking and our writing.
If we put this into a book, we’re offering to connect our story (insights and knowledge) with others to:
- let them know they’re not alone,
- help with their challenges,
- inform them so they make better decisions for themselves (the don’t make the mistakes I did scenario),
- inspire them to take action,
- encourage them to self reflect,
and more.
We do this because we want to connect…not simply create more content.
Sure, we have to create content to market our books (and here AI tools can be useful), but the totality of writing and publishing a book is bringing together your story, knowledge and insights.
Human content is really about connection
To quote from Yuval Noah Harari’s latest book, Nexus, A brief History of Information Networks:
Information has no essential link to truth. Rather what information does is create new realities by tying together disparate things.
Its defining feature is connection rather than representation, and information is whatever connects different points into a network. Information doesn’t necessarily inform us about things. Rather, it puts things in formation.
Facebook and other platforms spin the line that they are connecting people and democratising information. The now proven reality is that it drives disconnection and isolation for many, and its algorithms drive misinformation and disinformation, hate, insecurities and more. And we humans are left struggling to find a way through it.
Writing and publishing books, then, gives us agency to create meaningful content and to connect in the ways that humans want to.
You write (maybe with the aid of some AI tools) to share your unique insights…not rehash existing information.
You share it with the world through a book, presentations, speaking engagements, interviews, Podcasts, articles and one-to-one conversations.
That’s what most authors want to do, and what we humans need.
In a world of disconnection and isolation what we need is more human, real connection and ways to make this happen.
The humble printed book is one amazing way to do this.
Join me in the Hii Project
If you are a professional writer or author self publishing your book/s, a traditional publisher, marketing professional, journalist or work in the media – any role that has research and writing and at its core], engage with me as I build out the Hii Project.
If you think countering the worst impacts and effects of AI doesn’t really matter and will ‘sort itself out’, remember what Hannah Arendt said back in 1974.
A people that no longer can believe in anything cannot make up its mind. It’s not so much that they believe the lies…they don’t believe anything anymore. When a society is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge – with such a people you can then do what you please.
It’s time to act and exercise your agency as a writer, reader, self publisher or traditional publisher.
The first step is to connect with me, share your thoughts and ideas and share this message through your networks.
I’ll be building the Hii platform where we can share expertise, insights, alerts and some training.