They used my book to teach AI how to write
I guess they wanted the machines to learn from the best ...
My human friend Ben Gabriel1 hit me up this week to let me know some of America's biggest companies were using my book to teach artificial intelligence how to write.
I thought: Cool! Let me grab my tweed sport coat and dog-eared Raymond Carver short story collection and I'll show these robots a thing or two.
But it turned out that's not what he meant.
Alas, my novel "Champion of the World" was merely listed on a searchable database published by The Atlantic as one of almost 200,000 books secretly pirated by tech giants like Meta and Bloomberg to train their Generative AI-systems to mimic human composition.
It sounds a lot less flattering when you put it like that, doesn’t it?
The Atlantic’s database was a follow-up to an August article by Alex Reisner revealing that developers had been ripping off huge quantities of previously published work to use as grist for the AI mill.
It turns out training the Robert Patrick character from "Terminator 2" how to write isn't easy. Teaching Generative AI engines what Reisner calls "the relationships among words in intelligent-sounding language2" requires feeding them massive amounts of actual writing done by actual people.
Naturally, these powerful, insanely rich technology companies acquired that writing the same way big business has gotten everything else during the last century or so: They stole it.
Long story short, some sneaky-ass computer nerds took my seven-year-old historical novel about 1920s professional wrestling and cooked it into a tasty digital stew to nourish their suckling AI monster babies.
On the bright side: at least someone (or something) finally read my book.
Hey there, autonomous organic organism, fight back against the machines and save the future by buying “Champion of the World.”
As much as I'd like to pretend Mark Zuckerberg himself found my prose indispensable to understanding the depth and power of human consciousness, most of the books you've ever heard of before (and many you haven't) were also in the stew.
Michael Chabon, Margaret Atwood, Stephen King, Rebecca Solnit, Zadie Smith, George Saunders and most other writers who released a book through a major publisher during the last 20 years all had their work cannibalized to feed the algorithm.
My far more successful friend Jamie Ford posted on social media that his novels had been included and I saw current crime fiction superstar SA Cosby post that his had as well. Neither of them were particularly psyched about it.
While it's super cool to be included on the same list as these people3, this is obviously a disquieting turn of events.
As a writer, I can't control what happens to my book after I put it out into the world. I can't control who reads it or what's done with it or how many copies ultimately get bronzed and used as doorstops4.
But this shit feels sinister.
And these titans of American industry couldn't even do me the courtesy of actually buying the thing before they threw it into the wood chipper.
(As of this writing, the ebook version of “Champion of the World” costs $4.99 from most online retailers. Just sayin’.)
As Reisner puts it:
"Pirated books are being used as inputs for computer programs that are changing how we read, learn and communicate. The future promised by AI is written with stolen words ...
These authors spent years thinking, researching, imagining, and writing, and had no idea that their books were being used to train machines that could one day replace them. Meanwhile, the people building and training these machines stand to profit enormously."
Yeah, that sounds bad.
I admit, I'm not quite as worried as some others about the prospect of AI enslaving us all. Perhaps I'm naive, but I'm holding onto the hope that actual human creativity will always count for something. I know it's foolhardy to rely on consumers to ever do the right thing, but will people really be content to read books and watch movies written by machines?
Especially when they know the end product is just a cynical amalgamation of stuff that came before? I don't know if I would have enjoyed “Deadwood” as much (or at all) if I knew a computer made it up because it cybernetic brain told it people liked cowboys and cursing AND Powers Boothe.
I don't know how we get anything new from a system like that, not to mention how we get any art or even anything halfway entertaining.
Also, I'm arrogant: Could a computer ever really write a better book about wrestling than “Champion of the World”?
Fat chance, Max Headroom.
Even at my most hopeful moments, though, I don't totally understand why we're doing this AI stuff in the first place.
I'm sure there are many legitimate industrial and commercial uses for artificial intelligence, but what's really the best-case scenario here? Are we hoping that after we let it read All The Books, AI will figure out how to reverse climate change or cure cancer or invent a pair of swim trunks where the liners don't bunch up around our massive thighs?
Maybe, but that seems like a big risk to take when the worst-case scenario is (allegedly) the destruction of human civilization as we know it.
And even if we do think AI can build us a better mousetrap, why would we ever want to apply it to art -- aside from the obvious answer that the people in charge of those big, powerful corporations imagine a future where they get infinite content and don't have to pay anyone for it?
For all the money that's being spent to train Generative AI to write like people, couldn't we just pay people to write instead?
Maybe that's where we'll land in the end. This week, 17 writers and The Author's Gild filed a class action lawsuit against the tech company OpenAI alleging copyright infringement on behalf of writers whose work has been used to train its AI systems.
Maybe the humans can win one in court.
Maybe not.
Maybe we're all doomed.
Maybe I’m wrong and the only future is for the machines to hold us all hostage in goo-filled pods, harvesting our life force to power their dystopian future world, until a humble computer programmer becomes a Christ-like figure known as Neo who rises up and—
Shit.
We already let the machines read the script for that one, didn't we.
I have long said that Gabriel Intelligence poses the greatest threat to mankind.
Yes. Exactly how I describe my own writing.
In publishing, we have to take these small victories when we get them.
Shout out to 8th grade math teacher Bill Cannon for this amazing visual.