Times being what they are, I guess I need to write a little policy here to let you all know my feelings about AI as it relates to writing.*
The term “AI” is a broad one, and is often used to intentionally obscure the way these systems function. In fact, the term “artificial intelligence” is not accurate, because it implies that the system is using intelligence, rather than sophisticated pattern-matching algorithms. Even the most complicated of these machines cannot and do not think.
There are several different types of AI. Of most interest/pain to writers is the large language model, or LLM. These generally use a vast amount of text or images scraped from the web (without regard for copyright) alongside linear algebra to produce words in sentences that seem to have been created by an intelligence. Some writers have been caught using these programs to try to “enhance” parts or all of their work, to create first drafts, to flesh out characters and world building, and to edit their work, or less directly to create marketing materials, cover art, and other stuff peripheral to the actual sale of books.
I find this incredibly boring and pathetic. All of it. Nothing makes me want to die more than listening to someone explain how they can’t afford an editor, but they pasted a chapter into ClemAI** and it said they were using a character ineffectively. Or they only used HaydenPT to help with creating the characters, as if character creation in novels was something you could do by rolling a die and not a complex act that needs to respond to the actual situations presented in the book. As though stories just exist somewhere, and the author is merely involved in writing them down.
If I rolled my eyes any harder they would fall out of my head. This is not the way to write a novel. This is not the way to write anything.
I therefore would like to lay out the following points:
1/ First, ethically speaking, every single one of these multi-billion-dollar companies should pay fair rates to license the stuff they’ve absorbed into their models, or they should delete their models. Companies that are not multi-billion-dollar companies should ALSO pay or fuck off. I don’t think I need to go into more detail about this. It’s awful that corporations can steal my work without compensating me (or any of the other writers and artists so affected) in a way that an individual could be prosecuted for doing. There should not be a tech ecosystem that can only exist because of theft. That is antithetical to the entire purpose of copyright.
I have long turned a blind eye to a little piracy, because I’ve been in that world, and I believe that people who read my books that way and like them will come back and buy them when they can, or find other ways to support my work. But it really sucks that this has led to my books being scraped from the pirating websites by groups that could afford to pay for them, but won’t, because they might have slightly fewer dollars for private planes and ugly hoodies.
As the old saying goes, “Fuck you, pay me.”
2/ LLMs can never create interesting philosophical insights because they cannot think. By the same token, LLMs can never describe genuine emotion because they cannot feel. And to predict the most likely next word in a sentence is invariably to wind up clothed in clichés, because there is no true insight or unusual metaphor about the sunset that can be provided by something that cannot comprehend the existence of the sun.
Therefore:
3/ My books are one hundred percent created by humans. I, a human, get up at 5am every morning to write them. I force my human friends and loved ones to read and give me feedback on them. I create the cover art myself with paints and markers, which I scan and typeset myself. For the tasks I hire out, such as editing and the occasional creation of art, I expect that the people I hire will not use any sort of generative AI in their creation. We survive by our wits, or not at all.
I believe that people have more interesting things to say, more interesting thoughts to think, and more interesting art/ways to create art than these models do.
If you read one of my books, you get a human experience. To quote Raymond Chandler, “I do my thinking myself, what there is of it.”[1]
That’s all I have to give to the world.
*I have a lot of other thoughts about AI in general and humans’ response to them. I find the way that many otherwise-intelligent-seeming humans get tricked into believing that AI is something more than it is fascinating (if tragic). But this is not a philosophical treatise on how we perceive intelligence/selfhood. This is a policy.
**I refuse to learn the names of any of these models. I hope they all catch fire.
[1] Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep, 1939. Reprint, London: Penguin, 2014: p. 248.