The Living Writers Series was continued on Sept. 23 with two presentations given by Professor Soma Mei Sheng Frazier discussing this semester’s theme, “A/I—Artistic Intelligence/Artificial Intelligence.”

The first session of the afternoon was held in the Marano Campus Center auditorium, and was attended by Professor Sari Fordham’s Living Writers class in addition to other faculty and community members. During this presentation Frazier gave her audience insight into the process of getting one’s writing published, while also discussing the impact artificial intelligence has had on the writing industry and pointing out the key differences between human-made and AI based work.   

Frazier is the author of the successful novel, “Off the Books” as well as numerous award-winning short stories, though she joked that having to publicize one’s own work is dread-inducing. “Off the Books” was chosen as this year’s Oswego Reading Initiative selection to be read across campus. While many of the students in the auditorium already knew Frazier from the SUNY Oswego English and Creative Writing department, her list of titles extends beyond that of professor, and includes San Francisco Library Laureate. 

She was honored with this title at a fundraising gala hosted in the atrium of the San Francisco Library.

Frazier said, “We give mini-speeches about what the library means to us and converse directly with library supporters who pay to sit at our table, and proceeds from the event fund children’s programs, lifelong learning initiatives, arts and culture projects and branch renovations.” To Frazier the role of Library Laureate is to be a public advocate for literature.

Frazier’s appreciation of the passion that goes into poetry and literature is part of why she found it so important to discuss the impacts of artificial intelligence to this year’s Living Writers Series class. 

Frazier opened her discussion of AI vs. artistic intelligence by reading an excerpt from Roald Dahl’s “The Great Automatic Grammatizator,” a short story in which a man creates a machine that follows all the rules of grammar to swiftly produce work that is, on paper, correct, but ultimately lacking in soul. After acknowledging that Dahl was an intellectual, yet problematic man, Frazier noted how his grammatizator is oddly similar to the generative AI being used now. This concept of a writing machine that takes the place of human authors to churn out books at rapid rates was ahead of its time for a story written in 1954.

Frazier found this piece of writing to be very timely, explaining that science fiction authors and children’s book authors often think in patterns and are therefore better at predicting the future. She then spoke about a poetry project she was recently invited to be a part of.  

“The human vs. AI poetry slam is organized by author, editor and educator Jonathan Brennan and titled ‘ChatGPT Poetry Throwdown.’ By the time Dr. Brennan invited me, he’d solidified a human poet lineup,” Frazier said. This lineup is made up of a diverse group of Poet Laureates from across the United States, Navajo Nation and United Kingdom. According to Frazier, the project remains a work in progress. 

“Poets are notoriously difficult to wrangle,” Frazier said. 

As part of the “ChatGPT Poetry Throwdown” participants were challenged to make a prompt, feed it to an AI chatbot, then write their own poem based on the same prompt. Frazier told her AI chatbot to write 20-25 lines of poetry about a wife, her husband and her family. The result was nauseating, and way too sweet, according to Frazier. 

She responded with a much more complicated cleave poem, which consists of two poems arranged side-by-side that can be read vertically on their own, or horizontally across to create one large poem. In comparison to Frazier’s expert grasp of poetic devices, the chatbot’s rhymes fell flat. Frazier attributed this difference to the fact that she is human, and AI is not. 

“Mine’s a work in progress, theirs was spit out as a final product,” Frazier said. “I think you can hear that feeling of bursting to say something in human writing.”

According to Frazier there is no objective “better” when it comes to literature. So while AI may be learning faster than humans can, and able to produce finished pieces much more quickly, it will never write “better” than human authors. 

“Writing is a labor of love, heavy on the labor,” Frazier said. But in the age of AI, she also emphasized it has to be heavy on the love. 

One of Frazier’s passion projects was the founding of Subnivean, the undergraduate-staffed online international literary journal of SUNY Oswego. Frazier connected her journey with the Subnivean to the evening’s theme by sharing that many literary journals, including the Subnivean, are receiving AI submissions. People trying to pass generative work off as their own has become something that has to be dealt with not just in the classroom, but in the world of publishing as well. 

Frazier ended her first presentation with a Q&A session in which she spoke on her process of conceptualizing novels, the benefits of following the traditional publishing route as she has and the importance of being aware of one’s audience. 

  Frazier’s newest novel, “Eat Bitter, Anastasia” will be forthcoming in Feb. 2027.