021: The Fourth Minute

(tl;dr - After an extended hiatus, I have published a new story! Read it here)

Two years ago, when Amit and I started Sudowrite, we weren’t sure if writers could effectively collaborate with an AI. I knew I could, but there was a good chance I was just weirdly obsessed with LLMs. Now with the rise of ChatGPT and huge influx of LLM-based startups, AI writing seems destined for ubiquity.

In turn, this December was one of the biggest growth months at Sudowrite. Ever.

I probably touched more than 50k lines of code in the last year, more than any other coding project in my life. I’ve found that it’s difficult to focus on prose writing when deep in a coding project—the forms are vastly different. Perhaps this is why we measure code in lines and prose in words: code is closer to poetry.

james yu @jamesjyu

this year marks my 2nd year of building sudowrite. it's been good to rest the past week after an intense nov and dec. here's to more code (and writing) in 2023!

But I do miss writing stories, so I’m rebooting my fiction writing practice.

I dusted off an old story I had trunked called The Fourth Minute, which was my first serious collaboration with GPT-3. The process of writing this story was a major inspiration for Sudowrite: it showed me that LLMs could act like a mirror, illuminating themes and undercurrents in my own work that I should pay attention to¹.

I’m also going to publish these short stories on Kindle since my preference for reading longer form pieces is on an e-ink display. Get the story here:

(Or if you prefer, you can read the story on the web here)

Leave a review if you like it!

1. Specifically, GPT-3 shaped the ending of this story. It planted the idea that the Voice should disable Trin’s voice, which made me rethink the entire theme. This wasn’t about how addictive a brain implant could be, but rather, about how to find the courage to stick your neck out after being beset by oppressive organizations for your entire life.