Today, 13/9/2024 I asked ChatGPT do write a short story for me. The result is chilling in that it wrote the story better than most mere mortals can do. It did this instantly. Here was my question;
Write a short story of approximately 1,000 words with the following details: A detective whose name is Sam Verity investigates a murder. The murder was that a man was changing his flat tyre on his car but a car sped past him and hit him. This was a deliberate revenge on the man who didn’t repay a loan for £1,000. This happened in the central belt of Scotland. The murderer was found by Sam Verity tracing detailed of the deceased’s life. Sam Verity loves poetry, and is a high thinker and is accused of not having a sense of humour. You can make up any details you wish.
The Silent blow
Detective Sam Verity stood on the edge of the narrow country road, gazing at the spot where the man had died. There was a finality to this place—a silence that hung in the air as heavy as the dark clouds rolling across the Central Belt of Scotland. The sound of the nearby motorway hummed in the background, but here, all was still.
The victim, Gavin McMillan, had been changing the flat tyre of his car when a vehicle sped past, clipping him in what seemed like an unfortunate accident. But Sam Verity, renowned for his methodical mind and poetic soul, didn’t believe in accidents like these. He had a sense that fate, guided by human hands, had orchestrated McMillan’s death.
Sam brushed his fingers over his neatly trimmed beard, deep in thought. A breeze swept across the road, carrying with it the faint scent of petrol and damp earth. His colleagues had often said he was too serious, too cerebral, that he lacked humour, as if his constant contemplations of human nature were a shield against light-heartedness. Sam didn’t mind. He found solace in the complexities of life, in the deep currents that others missed. And he loved poetry—specifically, the kind that wrestled with life’s contradictions.
McMillan’s body had been removed, but the skid marks on the road told part of the story: the car hadn’t swerved to avoid him. It had aimed.
“A hit-and-run is hardly ever a hit-and-run,” Sam murmured to himself, recalling lines from a poem that danced on the edge of his memory. “Every touch leaves its print.”
His partner, Detective Grace O’Connor, joined him, her sharp eyes surveying the scene. “Any insights from the philosopher’s mind?” she asked, half-teasing, though with genuine respect.
“A man is dead. And I think someone meant it to happen,” Sam replied, crouching beside the skid marks, tracing them with his finger. “Whoever did this didn’t just want to scare him off the road—they wanted to make sure he stayed there.”
O’Connor folded her arms, her expression tightening. “You think it’s murder.”
Sam rose, staring down the road, as if he could see the moment frozen in time. “I do. The question is, why kill a man while he’s fixing his tyre? Why not somewhere more isolated? More private? This was personal—done out of anger, not convenience.”
O’Connor glanced at the notebook in her hand. “We’ve been digging into McMillan’s life. Apparently, he had financial trouble. Big debts, some shady dealings. Owed money to a lot of people.”
“A thousand pounds,” Sam said softly, recalling the preliminary report. “It’s the detail that stands out. Among all his debts, there’s one that’s strangely small, but recent.”
O’Connor raised an eyebrow. “One thousand doesn’t seem like much in the grand scheme of his debts.”
“But it’s recent,” Sam continued, his mind already forming connections. “Someone loaned him a small amount—a personal amount, not a business deal. It feels intimate.”
O’Connor flipped through her notes. “Aye, here it is. A loan from one Stuart Lawson, small-time businessman. Owns a couple of pubs in Stirling. His name came up when we interviewed McMillan’s colleagues—apparently, Lawson had been badgering McMillan about the repayment. But a thousand pounds… murder for that?”
Sam’s eyes narrowed. “It’s not about the money, Grace. It’s about the principle. The slight. The feeling of being disrespected.”
They drove to Stirling, where Lawson owned a pub called The Brass Lion. The place had the faint smell of spilled beer and old wood, with low lighting and patrons speaking in murmurs. Lawson himself was behind the bar, a man in his fifties with graying hair and a perpetual frown. When he saw the detectives, his eyes flickered with recognition.
“Detective Verity, Detective O’Connor,” Lawson greeted them, wiping his hands on a towel. “This about Gavin McMillan?”
Sam nodded, taking a seat at the bar while O’Connor stood nearby, scanning the room. “You loaned him a thousand pounds recently.”
Lawson’s frown deepened. “Aye. I did. And I regret it.”
“He didn’t pay you back?” Sam asked, his voice calm, almost conversational, as he watched Lawson’s reactions.
“No,” Lawson snapped. “The bastard strung me along for weeks. Kept saying he’d have it tomorrow, then the next day, then the next. I don’t know why I bothered. I should’ve known better than to trust a man like him.”
Sam tilted his head slightly. “Did it make you angry?”
Lawson’s eyes hardened. “Aye, it did. But what does that have to do with him being hit by a car? That’s got nothing to do with me.”
“You weren’t there that night, were you?” O’Connor asked, her voice steady, though the tension in the air had thickened.
Lawson shook his head vigorously. “No. I was here, working. Ask anyone.”
Sam tapped his fingers lightly on the bar, his mind working through the details. “Here’s what I think happened, Mr. Lawson,” he said quietly. “You lent McMillan money, and he disrespected you by not paying it back. That stung. You’re a man of pride. Maybe you didn’t plan to kill him at first. But when you saw him by the roadside, vulnerable, something snapped.”
Lawson’s face twitched. “You’ve got it wrong.”
Sam leaned forward slightly. “It’s not about the thousand pounds, is it? It’s about the feeling of being made a fool. You loaned him money as a favour, as a gesture of trust, and he spat on it.”
Lawson’s jaw clenched, his knuckles white as he gripped the bar. “You don’t know anything about it.”
“I know people,” Sam said softly. “And I know revenge when I see it. You couldn’t let it go, so you made sure he paid in full.”
There was a long silence. Lawson’s face, hard and defiant, crumbled just for a moment—a flicker of guilt, regret, and then anger. He slammed the towel on the counter.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen,” he whispered fiercely. “I just wanted to scare him. Teach him a lesson. He owed me.”
O’Connor exchanged a glance with Sam. They had heard confessions before, and this was as good as any.
“You took something far more valuable than a thousand pounds,” Sam said quietly, standing up. “And now, you’ll have to answer for it.”
As they led Lawson out of the pub, Sam felt a familiar melancholy settle over him. Human nature, twisted and tragic, never ceased to amaze him. He glanced up at the darkening sky, the words of a poem rising unbidden in his mind:
“The moving finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.”
There was no undoing the past, no washing away the guilt. But there was always the truth, and Sam Verity had found it once again.
The End.
This is what CoPilot thinks Sam looks like;
Conclusion: We have no idea where AI is going to take us. We need a sound moral base for this to work for us. The alternative is not good. Atheism has not led to the vacuum atheists thought it would. Instead it has led to polytheism where everyone is their own God. For AI to work for the good of society, we will need to get back to the Truth Himself. Truth is not just a concept. The logos is not just a word. Truth is a person. That is the only foundation where AI will work for human flourishing.
Peter Hall's Poetry 