So recently there’s been a big controversy over a website called Prosecraft. This is from a techcrunch article on the subject. “On Monday morning, numerous writers woke up to learn that their books had been uploaded and scanned into a massive dataset without their consent. A project of cloud word processor Shaxpir,
Do you think audiences will prefer novels written by AI models if they *know* they're written by AI models, though?
Just for myself (given current, almost-certainly-unconscious AI) find the idea of reading a novel without an actual *consciousness* behind it unappealing. Isn't connecting with another consciousness, with its own unique way of seeing the world, one of the key pleasures of literature?
The real questions seem to be:
1) Does this apply to non-artistically-ambitious genre fiction that just aims to tell a ripping yarn? For me, at least--as someone who has enjoyed a lot of Stephen King and other genre fare--the desire for an actual conscious perspective is still there.
2) How much input from AI can there be before the sense of an author's conscious perspective is lost? Does merely coming up with a plot outline, having the AI write the first draft, and revising afterwards keep the human spark?
3) Will there be widespread concealed use of AIs, if audiences are unwilling to read novels they know to be AI-written? The very fact that fiction is infamously oversupplied--that people *enjoy* writing it--suggests that most authors won't be motivated to reduce their workload by outsourcing it to AIs. OTOH, the flood of (still-mercifully-terrible) AI-generated stories and children's books does seem to show that a minority of non-intrinsically-motivated writers will try to make money off writing by AI-generating it in bulk. And the real threat--certainly for TV and movies, but also potentially for fiction--is corporate middlemen cutting out the human author.
This has been a problem for a long time... and if I'm being honest, a problem that I don't think authors can win. Once the internet was built, information was going to flow freely no matter what happened.
We've already seen the collapse of humanities academia jobs from an enemy much less intimidating than AI, and despite the frantic efforts of organizing and consciousness-raising from younger (and some older) academics, there doesn't really seem anything even in the way of stopping the bleeding. The idea that artists, whose median member is even less materially successful than the median humanities academic, can go up against the corporate AI juggernaut seems hard to accept for me.
On the other hand, there are a few mega celebrity artists who have more sway in society than any academic, and, in a strange way, your average person on the street does have more respect for the layabout bohemian artist (and much more respect for the successful celebrity artist) than the professor or medieval studies. But 89% of American workers aren't unionized!
Do you think audiences will prefer novels written by AI models if they *know* they're written by AI models, though?
Just for myself (given current, almost-certainly-unconscious AI) find the idea of reading a novel without an actual *consciousness* behind it unappealing. Isn't connecting with another consciousness, with its own unique way of seeing the world, one of the key pleasures of literature?
The real questions seem to be:
1) Does this apply to non-artistically-ambitious genre fiction that just aims to tell a ripping yarn? For me, at least--as someone who has enjoyed a lot of Stephen King and other genre fare--the desire for an actual conscious perspective is still there.
2) How much input from AI can there be before the sense of an author's conscious perspective is lost? Does merely coming up with a plot outline, having the AI write the first draft, and revising afterwards keep the human spark?
3) Will there be widespread concealed use of AIs, if audiences are unwilling to read novels they know to be AI-written? The very fact that fiction is infamously oversupplied--that people *enjoy* writing it--suggests that most authors won't be motivated to reduce their workload by outsourcing it to AIs. OTOH, the flood of (still-mercifully-terrible) AI-generated stories and children's books does seem to show that a minority of non-intrinsically-motivated writers will try to make money off writing by AI-generating it in bulk. And the real threat--certainly for TV and movies, but also potentially for fiction--is corporate middlemen cutting out the human author.
This has been a problem for a long time... and if I'm being honest, a problem that I don't think authors can win. Once the internet was built, information was going to flow freely no matter what happened.
We've already seen the collapse of humanities academia jobs from an enemy much less intimidating than AI, and despite the frantic efforts of organizing and consciousness-raising from younger (and some older) academics, there doesn't really seem anything even in the way of stopping the bleeding. The idea that artists, whose median member is even less materially successful than the median humanities academic, can go up against the corporate AI juggernaut seems hard to accept for me.
On the other hand, there are a few mega celebrity artists who have more sway in society than any academic, and, in a strange way, your average person on the street does have more respect for the layabout bohemian artist (and much more respect for the successful celebrity artist) than the professor or medieval studies. But 89% of American workers aren't unionized!