We Worry About AI Writing Our Novels. Should We Be Worrying About Something Far Worse?

12 September 2026 — Reelika Lootus

The debate about AI writing novels has been loud. There are writers and artists pushing back against AI-generated content, editors questioning what authenticity means anymore, and readers wondering whether it matters who — or what — wrote the words they're reading. These are real concerns. I share some of them.

But I keep getting stuck on a different question. One that feels less like an industry argument and more like something crawling up the back of my skull at 2 a.m.

I write fiction about the near future. Stories set in worlds that haven't happened yet but feel disturbingly possible. My entire practice is built around asking what if — and then following that question somewhere uncomfortable. So when I hear researchers, engineers, and philosophers discussing whether advanced AI could become an existential threat to humanity, I don't hear science fiction. I hear a premise I might write.

There are growing calls from researchers to pause giant AI experiments, citing risks that aren't hypothetical anymore. At the same time, experts are divided on what AI means for the future of humans — which is perhaps the most unsettling sentence I've read in a long time. Not because they disagree, but because the people who understand it best are the ones least certain about where it leads.

We are very good at worrying about the visible, manageable threats. A ghostwritten novel. A plagiarised painting. A job made redundant. These matter. But they are legible problems — we can name them, argue about them, draft policies around them. The larger question sits behind all of it, quieter and much harder to look at directly.

I don't know where this ends. Neither does anyone else, which is precisely the point. The honest thing to say is that I find this frightening — not in the way a thriller is frightening, with stakes you can feel safely from a distance, but in the way that real uncertainty is frightening. When you genuinely cannot see the shape of what's coming.

Maybe that's why I write what I write. Not to predict. Just to sit inside the discomfort long enough to understand it a little better.

Get reader updates from the Fast Moon universe.

Early chapters, world files, and release news.