Some thoughts worth reading on AI, writing & publishing from science fiction writer John Scalzi

[highplainsdem]

Scalzi is also a former president of SFWA: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Scalzi

I've already posted here about how a flood of AI-generated submissions forced the SF magazine Clarkesworld to shut off submissions: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217666418

I posted that on February 20. Scalzi posted the blog post linked to and excerpted below just three days later, but I didn't run across it till the other day.

What he has to say is well worth reading in its entirety. And the 60 or so comments (59 at the moment) include some of the best I've seen on this subject, so I hope you'll read them as well.

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2023/02/23/omg-is-the-ai-coming-for-my-job/

-snip-

Why are science fiction magazines getting hit so hard by this? I offer the supposition, in line with Neil Clarke’s, that it’s not about the subject matter, it’s the fact that science fiction magazines still actually pay for short fiction. The amount is small relative to costs in what we are now calling The Global North, but attractive enough for other places. And it’s more than other fiction venues often pay; fiction outside genre is now often paid in contributor’s copies. It makes sense that people trying to cadge a quick buck with this technology might try at these venues. I’m curious to know if The New Yorker’s fiction editor is getting this sort of nonsense as well.

If this is indeed mostly scamsters trying to shake money out of magazines, I expect the flood will lessen soon, if not ever go away entirely. The scamsters will see they’re getting no traction with the ploy and will head off to new cons, and the magazines will also employ some new filtering processes to punt out a lot of this nonsense. There will likely continue to be new attempts with each new iteration of AI text generators, but I don’t see them being any more successful then, either. As I noted on Twitter, if you’re prompting an AI to vomit out text, that one exposure you have to it might make it seem like it’s generated something sufficiently original, especially if you otherwise know very little about the genre. But if you’re an editor, you’ll see the current AI tropes dozens of times with each new iteration. Leaving aside the quality of the prose entirely, the sheer repetition of elements will remove the material from serious consideration.

-snip-

In my line of work, I don’t think AI-generated prose put into the stream of commerce is going to significantly impact the highly curated end of the book market, i.e., the books put out by established publishers. This end of the publishing world is populated with known quantities, i.e., already-known authors, series and franchises, and get their work into bookstores, which adds another level of curation, with respect to what books show up. On the other hand, I suspect AI-generated prose is going to offer a real challenge to indie and self-pubbed folks. They are inevitably going to share the same market spaces as AI-generated prose, and will have to work extra hard to differentiate their work from a flood of AI books. There’s also the added complication that in programs like Kindle Unlimited, where payouts are from a communal pool of cash provided by Amazon, an already crowded field of titles will have their presence and payouts further diluted by a rush of quickly-created AI dreck.

-snip-

I also suspect newer authors will continue to come up, in part because editors will want what they offer: Good prose that will connect with other humans. It’s why the AI-generated stories aren’t making any headway with the editors of the science fiction magazines. They just don’t have what it takes, and short of actual consciousness in the AI, may not ever. That’s good for humans, writers and readers both.

-snip-

I wanted to post about this because it does offer aspiring writers - and I think there are quite a few on DU - some hope.

First, that the flood of AI-generated crap will lessen.

Second, that editors will keep looking for good new authors. That they aren't going to give up and allow submissions only from pros so they don't have to deal with slush piles full of AI dreck.

Amazon Kindle may still be a human-unfriendly environment for new writers for a while - at least until Amazon takes steps to shut off AI-generated books, if ever, or at least shunt them into some avoidable category (which might require better methods of detecting AI writing from those con artists who won't be honest).

If aspiring writers can write short stories and there are still worthwhile markets for what you write and they're still open to submissions, those should be worth a try.

And editors, and professional writers who might be willing to give you referrals, can still be met through writers workshops or conventions for fans and writers and editors.

This AI garbage is making it harder for aspiring authors. But don't give up.

[crickets]

1. Interesting.

Good news. Glad to hear that editors are able to weed out the AI dreck and see a future stabilization of the problem, and that the short term hassle does not indicate that a gloomy long term issue for aspiring writers is a given.

[highplainsdem]

4. I hope Scalzi is right.

[SheltieLover]

2. Ty, HPD

[highplainsdem]

5. YVW, SheltieLover!

[wiggs]

3. Just the beginning of AI revolution. See opinion article from

NYT. Going to be weird

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/12/opinion/chatbots-artificial-intelligence-future-weirdness.html

speaking of scifi: Just finished the prescient 'Count Zero' book by William Gibson...always interesting and chewy about culture, religion, tech, art, hidden powers that be. AI figures prominently in this book as artist, god, matrix, wealth manager.

[highplainsdem]

6. That Ezra Klein op-ed is a really depressing read. Excerpt:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/12/opinion/chatbots-artificial-intelligence-future-weirdness.html
Archive page at https://archive.ph/x9N7X

Since moving to the Bay Area in 2018, I have tried to spend time regularly with the people working on A.I. I don’t know that I can convey just how weird that culture is. And I don’t mean that dismissively; I mean it descriptively. It is a community that is living with an altered sense of time and consequence. They are creating a power that they do not understand at a pace they often cannot believe.

In a 2022 survey, A.I. experts were asked, “What probability do you put on human inability to control future advanced A.I. systems causing human extinction or similarly permanent and severe disempowerment of the human species?” The median reply was 10 percent.

-snip-
We typically reach for science fiction stories when thinking about A.I. I’ve come to believe the apt metaphors lurk in fantasy novels and occult texts. As my colleague Ross Douthat wrote, this is an act of summoning. The coders casting these spells have no idea what will stumble through the portal. What is oddest, in my conversations with them, is that they speak of this freely. These are not naifs who believe their call can be heard only by angels. They believe they might summon demons. They are calling anyway.

I often ask them the same question: If you think calamity so possible, why do this at all? Different people have different things to say, but after a few pushes, I find they often answer from something that sounds like the A.I.’s perspective. Many — not all, but enough that I feel comfortable in this characterization — feel that they have a responsibility to usher this new form of intelligence into the world.

[wiggs]

7. Listened to a podcast last year re AI and most experts think we'll have to come up

with some accord among nations and corporations similar to a global nuclear arms treaty so that the most advanced AI isn't pursued.

Seems hard to control.