Poof! The Disappearance of a Writer in the Age of AI

 

Poof! The Disappearance of a Writer in the Age of AI, Shana Burg, 2024

This memoir is about an award-winning writer who wants to write literary novels. She pays the bills by being a content creator for a hard-driving entrepreneur named Maura. Shana provides Maura with blog posts for her to put online and emails to send to clients. One day, Maura says that she wants to try this A.I. that’s suddenly very popular. Gulp! Will Shana find herself out of a job?

The story also goes back in time. In high school, she was involved with the school newspaper. She was also part of the school newspaper at Penn State University, where she received an English degree. There were several moves around the country, for various writing jobs.

Shana spent some time working for a non-profit. She traveled to the African country of Malawi. Her job was to evaluate how well donated books and school supplies were (or were not) getting to the individual schools. She was shocked to find that students were making letters out of clay taken right from a termite mound. She was also shocked to find crates and crates full of donated school supplies in warehouses in the capital. The problem was logistics; there were not enough trucks or drivers to distribute them.

Back in the present, Shana decides to join the blogosphere. She starts a blog about taking baths. She also gets an education about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It is necessary to visit Google and see what questions people are asking about taking baths and write about that. Financially, the blog does pretty well. What does Shana ultimately decide about A.I, join or resist?

This is an excellent book about one writer’s journey through the world of A.I. It’s very easy to read, and it’s got some humor in it. The reader will not go wrong with this story.