MSN has a thriving comment section on a free non-paywalled version of the Business Insider coverage about my work and the backlash from the end of last week. If you haven’t been able to read it previously, you can skim it over there, and the conversation developing. Some 90 comments so far over there.

It’s mostly the usual grab bag litany of complaints I’ve gotten accustomed to turning out over the course of the past 18 months or so of having people flip out on me for merely following my creative impulses and experiment with AI tools openly. So I won’t rehash any of the common negative elements cropping up over there this time.

Instead I’ll highlight some of the quasi-supportive comments below:

“I won’t use new-fangled technologies ‘cuz I’m afraid of change. I won’t fly in a plane ‘cuz if God wanted man to fly…” yadda, yadda, yadda.
A.I. is a tool, nothing more. What is written AND THEN HUMAN EDITED, is still a human creation.

It’s the spammers who throw out crap-articles without even spell-checking, let alone using any editing skills, that are the problem, NOT A.I.

It’s a tool, people, that’s all. It’s up to US HUMANS to use discernment instead of knee-jerk reactions.

If you really feel that way, you should stop using technology.

Another:

Technology only ever progresses one direction,  you either learn to adapt to it, or get replaced by it.  This Author knows whats what, and all those fighting it well, their going to go the same way the people fighting the industrial or any other technological revolution.

Okay, this one isn’t “positive” but I think it’s illustrative in how wrong it is relative to my experience of being an artist and author using these tools and integrating them into creative workflows:

As a published author, I despise the use of AI to create any content that is commercially released to the general public.  The use of AI sanitizes the creative process; it eliminates the risks, the challenges, and the rewards of something that is a uniquely human experience. The end result is just soulless content that fails to live up to what the end consumer truly deserves.

I would encourage anyone who doesn’t think my work “takes risks” to first examine the context: having thousands of people routinely tell you how you suck, and then tell me that in itself is not “risky” as a path to proceed down, let alone persist in. Then, if anyone actually read any of the books instead of trying to burn them, they might find that the actual context is incredibly risky, and incredibly *not* sanitized, and is in some instances highly challenging (I’m thinking especially of the VOMISA books, for one, but many others too). Anyway, I know I’ll never reach those people, but it feels at least good to process through these responses where they come up and understand where they score points and where they clearly fall short.

This one is a little funny:

“I made billions by not paying living, human, American employees for their labor, thus perpetuating poverty, starvation, homelessness, and crime.”
“My God, Jesus must love you because of your wealth. Prosperity has found you smart, business tycoon! Someone should do something with all these poors, btw.”
“I made thousands selling a book made by AI.”
“THEFT! EVIL! SOMEONE NEEDS TO SDO SOMETHING WITH AI!!!!”

There was another comment further up that said something to the effect of “He’s only doing it for the money!” But like, look around you, people. Literally the entirety of modern society is based on people doing things for money. And I’m the bad guy twirling a mustache while a beautiful damsel labelled “writing” is tied to the train tracks? I think not. Or, at least, don’t stop with me. Carry that criticism all the way forward.

And this has always been a point of mine:

I don’t care.

Are the books good? Because there are a lot of books out there, written by humans, that are garbage.

Plenty of humans chase the algorithm. Plenty of humans churn out garbage based on trends, and chasing pennies. Judge the work by the work.

Is this true about Tron?

If people enjoy the books who cares, so ridiculous. When Tron wasn’t eligible for an academy award because computer effects were “cheating”(look it up). Every time something new comes along this happens, it happened with PC paint programs when they started to get big, autotune was just “fake” music. If its entertaining and sells i don’t care where it comes from.

According to Wikipedia, it’s true! Who knew! (Apparently this guy ^^)

Tron received nominations for Best Costume Design[2] and Best Sound[3] at the 55th Academy Awards. It was however disqualified from the Best Visual Effects category because at the time the Academy felt that using computer animation was “cheating”.[4][5]

There are also definitely some AI-generated comments on this thread, but they’re boring, so I won’t reproduce them.

This idea that all of this is somehow “political repression” is interesting when we think about how integrated technology is now into politics, culture, etc.

An artist should be free to choose their own tools and media.

Anything else is political repression of art.

Don’t like it? Don’t buy it.

I think there may actually be a more even balance of semi-supporters on this thread than I have seen previously, so perhaps the tide is starting to turn…

Why does it matter how people create work that others enjoy? Next people will complain that he didn’t write the books on a manual typewriter or use parchment and quill.

That’s all for now. Almost caught up on my backlog here, but a few of the backlog items are a lot bigger and deserve one or multiple posts each, which I’ll continue to plug away on over the coming days.

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