Tag Archives: Artificial intelligence

Academic publishers have set some guidelines about AI use and, well, it’s a start

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I like writing about the scourge of generative AI in the arts – obviously – and it seems like there’s new news almost every day.

I’ll make this quick:

In the new Publishers Lunch is a report on how some publishers have developed guidelines and methods of screening papers and books for AI use. (You’ll recall that the suspicion of AI has roiled the mainstream publishing industry lately, causing book deals to be canceled and, possibly, author careers to be stymied.)

Academic publishers cited in today’s Publishers Lunch have tried to come up with a constructive method of screening works submitted to them for use of AI. That’s because like a lot of publishing, academic publishers are being swamped with submissions of AI or AI-assisted slop.

The guidelines, which build on the use of AI-detection tools, set thresholds for when AI use is detected.

Some of the publishers have established four guidelines:

  • Assisted – AI helped you brainstorm or research but the writing is yours. Meaning, if you asked AI to find the relevant information for you and then you read those source materials and wrote from them, that’s a mechanical assist. It’s just AI working as a search engine.
  • Collaborated – AI drafted parts while you rewrote, verified, and made it your own. Meaning, if the facts, ideas, etc. came out of the AI model itself (e.g. you asked it explain something to you) and wrote from its answer instead of the source materials, that is AI collaboration and should be disclosed.
  • Generated & reviewed – AI produced the artifact, but you read every line, checked the facts, and stand behind it. To be clear, you hold responsibility for its integrity and accuracy.
  • Generated & unreviewed – AI made it and you didn’t really check. This is not acceptable AI use for PUP staff ever: internal, external or under any circumstance.

Publishers Lunch says that for at least one publisher, if a submitted work meets the last two guidelines, it’s rejected. That’s because that particular publisher correctly argues that the use of that much AI couldn’t be copyright-able because, of course, AI is based on the work of others.

I’m skeptical, but at least somebody is setting some guidelines somewhere.

(Image at the top of this post is from the wonderful, funny AppleTV Plus series MURDERBOT, based on the series of novels by THE MURDERBOT DIARIES by Martha Wells.)

What a week: More AI discourse, book news and … am I dominating your inbox?

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Some of you are old enough to remember July 24, where on this very site I said that I’d unsubscribed from a “help for authors” newsletter because they’d pushed out 14 newsletters in a month and that seemed like a lot.

How many newsletters is too many? Well, we’re about to test that number. This entry that you’re reading now is the eighth new piece I’ve posted here since that July 24 column. Those posts have been fueled by a lot of commentary on AI and some book self-promotion.

Each new item I post results in an email to those of you who subscribe, so it’s almost as if I was sending out some kind of … well, newsletter.

So I’ll be keeping track of how many I post and we’ll see if I exceed 14 in a month. And y’all can keep track too and blast me in comments or social media if (when) I blow past that milestone of 14 in a month.

But today, here’s some housekeeping stuff. As Carl Kolchak of “The Night Stalker” fame always says, item:

Item: Shoutout to Andrew Careaga, in the latest edition of his newsletter today, for citing my August 5 piece on the blog here about AI. You should subscribe to Andrew’s newsletter, Friday Five.

Item: The Publishing Confidential newsletter by Kathleen Schmidt has rapidly become one of my favorite newsletters.

Item: Also essential are the various daily newsletters for subscribers to Publishers Marketplace. There’s an expense to the subscription – basically a dollar a day – but I’m feeling more plugged in to the industry as a result of Publishers Marketplace, newsletters like Schmidt’s and Careaga’s and some others I’m going to cite here from time to time.

Item: As someone who has maintained a Facebook page, Wicked Muncie, for 10 years and this site, which began life as a WordPress blog something like 15 years ago and has now amounted up more than 1,100 posts about pop culture, books, Halloween vintage costumes and a bunch of other stuff, I wanted to mention that it’s hard to maintain an active site or blog or social media account and in particular I wanted to cite Mark Evanier’s News from Me site. Evanier, a veteran writer of comics, TV and books, posts pretty much every day, sometimes more than one post a day. He knows a lot about entertainment and he knows a lot of old Hollywood types and his annual Mel Torme Christmas post is reason enough to check out his site. I’ll include a link at the bottom of this post.

Keep me in your thoughts. I’m editing manuscripts from friends and upcoming books from us at Constellate Publishing and I’m doing a lot of reading for a super-secret project that I’ll detail around the middle of 2027.

And yes, I’ll post here this weekend or early in the week because something very cool is happening in regard to my novels THAT OCTOBER and SEVEN ANGELS. No it’s not a movie adaptation. (Although … no, I’ll tell you that story someday.)

Here’s that link:

https://www.newsfromme.com

Thoughts on AI and the ‘I never say no’ tech culture

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We’re living in the opening scenes of every dystopian science-gone-mad sci-fi story ever, even though most of them never included as a plot device some mundane but infuriating circumstances like billionaires’ Artificial Intelligence stealing our writing.

But we definitely find ourselves in the beginnings of dystopian tech-gone-amok sci-fi stories with this AI girlfriend thing.

There’s plenty of science fiction, books or stories or movies or TV, that rely for drama on the devaluation of individuals or a class of people: just to cite one example, remember the “furniture” in “Soylent Green?” That was the term for a rich man’s female sex companion.

But rarely have we seen “sex bots” that are not as stupid as the dumbass guys who are going to pay to use them.

I’m certainly not the first person to equate where the world is today, under the leadership of malignant and greedy oligarchs and their toadies, to say we’re entering dystopian science fiction territory. All we have to think about is the wanton destruction of democracy, our climate, our oceans, our natural habitats, the devaluing of people and originality and creativity and the wholesale assault on privacy and the rights of women.

And yes, I’m sure I left something out.

But in recent days, in the wake of reading many articles about AI and the pollution and water use for data centers to run AI servers and how the technology is devaluing so much of what’s important, I started seeing ads like the one above, in my Instagram feed in particular. There are others, but that’s the most blatant.

The illustration shows a “sexy” AI woman, like most of the ads, but this one is very explicit in what’s likely to be the most appealing aspect of these AI girlfriends to many men:

“I never say no.”

Talking to friends about these ads, they note – rightly so – that there’s always been an element of rape culture to AI sex. “Control your AI girlfriend” says one ad that I saw, along with enticements to make her look how the user wants – skin tone, hair color, figure, etc.

Certainly there’s always been a destructive undertone – sometimes overtone – to porn. (There can be in any kind of real-life relationship, of course. It’s how humans, especially men, function. But with two actual people involved, there’s always a chance for people to learn to treat each other better.)

But without a real woman in the mix in these AI girlfriends, other than the environmental destruction caused by AI-generating data centers, the greatest destructive effect is to the idiotic men who pay to use these programs. They’re stupid. And sad.

I didn’t expect to be telling other guys, in effect, “Dude, just go find some porn. You’ll feel like less of a fool. Maybe.”

Having said that, maybe these AI girlfriends will keep them busy so they don’t spend quite as much time destroying everything else.