The Big Contest: AI or Human Part 1
(This Week’s Focus: AI and Storytelling

Who writes the better tale? A human or AI?

Let’s find out. First, a statement about the beginning of a novel will be provided to a human (me) and then to an AI chatbot. Neither will know what the other is doing. Read them and make your own decision. Tomorrow will be the big reveal.

Here’s how the novel is to begin: “A traveler discovers an abandoned notebook in an aging train station.”

What follows are Option 1. and Option 2.

Option 1. It was an historic train station with a look of past grandeur. Amid some modern touches, there was a musty smell. A woman, dressed simply but with an air of sophistication, sat on a wooden bench decorated with ornate carvings. I can’t wait, she thought, anticipating the fun of a long overdue vacation.

Yet her eyes and attention were drawn to a notebook lying beside her just inches away.
She reached over and picked it up. Maybe there would be some identifiable clues to who it belonged to. No one was close by. Flipping through the sheets of papers, her body suddenly tightened. I recognize who’s being talked about here. And I know who wrote this. And then her attention was drawn to one paragraph in particular. She kept reading it over and over again.

Her heart pounded. I’ll never be the same. And she wouldn’t.

Option 2: The train station smelled of rust and time. Faint echoes of past departures lingered in the air, like whispers of forgotten journeys. The traveler, weary from miles of aimless wandering, paused beneath a flickering bulb, its weak glow casting uncertain shadows across the cracked floor.

A sudden gust of wind stirred the dust, revealing something wedged between the slats of an old wooden bench—a notebook, its spine curling with age, its pages brittle and yellowed.
With careful hands, the traveler lifted the relic, tracing the weathered edges with curiosity.
The cover bore no name, no inscription, only the imprint of countless touches that had worn it smooth. The first page yielded nothing but a single line in hurried ink: “If you’ve found this, the story is now yours to tell.”

The traveler hesitated, heart thrumming with the weight of unseen secrets. Whatever lay within these pages was bound to change something—whether it was the course of a single life or the tide of an entire fate, they couldn’t yet know. But with a deep breath, they turned the page.

So, which is better in your opinion, Option 1. or Option 2.?