About this Blog

A few years ago, many would've said artificial intelligence and creative writing won't mix. With the emergence of generative AI (ChatGPT, Bard and friends), that's changed and presents both risks and opportunities. AI systems has shaken public society probably more than any other discovery in the field -, it's not a stretch to say these two worlds are on a collision course. And that's what got me interested.

I'm Timo, a software engineer by trade, and always had a strong interest in ML - my master thesis was about detecting money launderers with ML, I once co-founded a startup about quant trading with ML, and have been working at Kaggle and Google's Core ML department for the last few years, where I now lead a few teams around ML data management. I think it's fair to say that, when it comes to AI, I know what I'm talking about, and I'm always looking for ways to make somebody's life better with it.

At the same time, I'm also a writer. I wrote my first novel a while ago, and learned the hard way that getting it published is very very tricky, especially for a first-time author. You usually get rejected all the time. And if you make it, it's probably more luck than skill - authors like Stephen King or JK Rowling got rejected 50 times or more until somebody by chance picked up their work.

So I thought: What if we had a ML model that could predict how sales-worthy a manuscript is (or interesting or groundbreaking - whatever a user wants to optimize for)? Such a model could assess a full manuscript in seconds, make decisions free of emotion, reward great content on its quality alone, and ultimately make both authors and publishers happy. So I built such a model.

So this is how writing and ML came together for me. 

This intersection is what this blog is all about. In my posts, I'll switch between both sides of the coin, sharing writing tips that I learned, or giving background on AI. But the most interested topics will be where both things come together and the opportunities that arise on these seems. I'm super excited to explore this with you. 


Are you an agent, publisher or author? Then maybe this is interesting for you: I'm putting my knowledge about writing, the publishing industry, and AI into action at www.quantifiction.com.


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