Alligator Intelligence = the true AI

Elmore Leonard created the first AI over thirty years ago.

Photo by Simon Watkinson on Unsplash

Leonard, “the Dickens of Detroit,” is America’s gritty gift to literature. He could make an engaging, edge of your seat story out of bullet points – emphasis on the bullets.

Elmore Leonard left this world in 2013, BAI (Before AI) would have loved artificial intelligence. With his work ethic and creativity, he would have leveraged it to do some of the digital grunt work of research.

Which he would have then used to fill in some of the color and the details of his cohorts of colorful characters he alone could create.

In 1991, his novel, Maximum Bob was published. In it, there were many of these characters, but one in stood out in particular – it was an alligator. Leonard tells part of the tale from the alligator’s perspective. In a review at the time, James Hall of the Houston Post wrote (via C. M. Kushins in his book COOLER THAN COOL):

“It’s a very strange interlude, going into an alligator’s mind like that, an odd and risky moment, even for Leonard, who is used to dipping into some pretty exotic minds… Yet I, for one, come away totally convinced this is how an alligator thinks, the very words it uses. And if it doesn’t think this way, then by God, it should. Such is Leonard’s magic.”

Such is Leonard’s magic.

Magic.

We humans make a lot of mistakes and mountains out of molehills. We’re often irrational at best, delusional more often, and can cause more grief than we’re worth without batting an eye – writers in particular.

But…

When the stars align, and we’ve had our first cup or five of coffee, we can make magic.

Magic.

Not only are those moments worth all the aggravation, but the magic is more than a sleight of

hand on a keyboard.

Elmore Leonard created his own AI, but AI will never create an original like Elmore Leonard.