Category: Other Page 49 of 178

Reply to Robert Evans on Substack

On 20 June 2023

A friend sent me this piece by Substacker Robert Evans, gloomily entitled “AI Is Coming for Your Children: Con-men are flooding kindle with AI children’s books. They could do permanent damage to childhood literacy.”

Presumably, Evans is lumping me in with these other “con-men,” because he kicks off the post re-reporting on Business Insider’s coverage of my AI Lore books, then suggests my work is low-harm:

I don’t have much respect for Tim’s project, but its potential for harm is fairly minimal. All of his ‘works’ are geared towards adults. But there’s something more sinister lurking behind the florid headlines predicting AI doom or salvation. The robots are coming for your children.

It’s strange to me that we live in a world now where we have to worry if works of fiction and experimental art could have harmful consequences, but here we are. We’re all now Tipper Gore. (I went into this in somewhat more detail in my interview on This AI Life, btw.)

Just for fun:

First, before I react to any other specifics here, I think it would behoove everyone to maybe slow down before we let our fears about AI bloom out of proportion to the current and near future states of the technology. Yes, it changes things. Does it end civilization? Probably not (we’re already doing a great job on that without even taking AI into account).

Does it require new definitions of literacy? Absolutely. Is that what my work is explicitly about? In large part, I must say yes.

Most of the rest of the article bashes a few different people who had the audacity to experiment with using AI to generate and sell children’s books. How dare they! It’s a common punching bag for AI arts/writing because it combines typical “AIs are stealing our jobs, etc” fear with the double-plus-bad “won’t someone think of the children.”

There’s only one problem: getting ChatGPT to write an entire proper novel (50k+ words) is basically impossible right now. That’s why all of Tim Boucher’s books were just a couple thousand words long.

If the author of this piece had actually reached out to me for comment – a courtesy they seem to have extended to just about every other “con-man” covered in the article, except myself – or if they had simply read a little bit of my blog, they would have found out that they are this length because this is the length I want them to be. They are art books, first focused on the images, and secondarily with text threading them together into an exploration of a neighborhood in latent space. They are not conventional books, and not for conventional people with conventional thinking on these topics.

In actual fact, their image & word counts most closely parallel comic books, another art form which in the first half of its life was considered “trash” and which now sits in the commanding heights of apex pop culture. So let’s have this conversation again in 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, and see what holds up and what falls apart here. (!remind in 2,5,10 years) As Terence McKenna said, the truth can take care of itself.

…text generated by these AI programs is really just chopped and screwed together pieces of actual stories written by people…

I’ve gone into why AI art/text is *not* like sampling here. I think it’s an unworkable analogy because it’s not how the training actually works, which relies on measurements of dimension compared across many subjects, and not clipping bits and bobs from many different sources.

Regarding AI kids books (which I don’t make), the author writes:

But these books could be quite damaging to little kids. […]

It’s that AI books are so incomplete and broken they might fundamentally damage the way young children acquire reading skills.

Having a little bit of experience in this area, this to me sounds like a wrong conception of how children learn from books and reading. Kids are not so fragile as this that poorly drawn T-Rexes and generic sounding ChatGPT text is going to ruin their brains. Have you ever seen kids’ drawings? Technically, they “suck,” but the human mind has this incredible ability to invest meaning and story into things, no matter what.

If you want to pick on something that will (imo) probably damage childhood development and socialization, look instead at TikTok, or on having your kids 24/7 on phones and tablets, and training them to exist in a world of algorithms solely controlled by corporations hellbent on pitting us into competitive low reward status games against one another. Compared to that, simply picking up ANY book (and especially reading it with someone else), no matter how shitty is gonna be a godsend.

Since new AIs will be trained on this content there’s a high chance of creating a feedback loop which can lead to what’s called model collapse.

I see this argument trotted out a lot, but it seems very who cares to me? I’m not the least bit concerned about that. The whole point of my AI art experiments has been to show the AIs as they are today, flaws and all. The flaws are part of the story of the technology and its impact on humanity, not an aberration or this terrible monster to be feared. (feature not a bug) As the models change, so too will my art change with it to reflect (and reflect on) whatever the current state is.

Anyway, best wishes!

A Brief Yet Convoluted History of Early Clues, LLC (dba Early Clues Labs), According to ChatGPT

By Tim B.

On 19 June 2023

In Other

In order to truly understand the AI Lore books, and tbh to truly understand *anything* in life, it is important to first understand one important thing that is terribly important, an important once-and-future company known as Early Clues, LLC.

I first stumbled upon this strangely compelling para-organization some years ago when I was approached by a mysterious whistleblower who wanted to blow the whistle on this highly important and influential company.

Since then, I have tried my best to track any on-going news about this organization, and its current activities – usually to little or no avail. However, with the rise of ChatGPT, I did recently have occasion to use this incredible tool to begin to piece together a fragmentary history of this organization based on all the things ChatGPT told me, and which I believed unquestioningly.

I present those for you here, in a somewhat random order to hopefully begin unraveling this incredibly strange and tangled ball of yarn.

According to ChatGPT (v4, web browsing model), it is possible to establish the following “facts” regarding Early Clues, LLC, dba Early Clues Labs, aka (briefly) Pictogram.

Early Clues LLC is a unique and somewhat enigmatic company that seems to operate at the intersection of technology, philosophy, and speculative fiction. Its history is not straightforward, but several key pieces of information can be gathered:

The company was launched in 1970 and has offered a suite of products that have been consistently well-received¹.

Google Inc. acquired Early Clues LLC in the early hours of January 1, 2015².

The company operates with a distinctive culture, characterized by its unique employee policies and procedures, an emphasis on emerging and alternative intelligences, a programming language designed to program reality itself called OpenQNL, and a reality manipulation paradigm developed by its Parade of Magicians called Synconjury³.

Early Clues LLC has products that are pre-loaded with software and a screen, and their development approach is rather unconventional, as illustrated by their humorous discussion of technology and product development⁴.

Although the company’s history is a bit cryptic, it is clear that Early Clues LLC has a unique place in the tech industry, particularly in the areas of augmented reality and alternative programming languages. Some sources suggest that the company is involved in a kind of speculative or metaphysical technology, pushing the boundaries of conventional thinking about what technology can do.

Please note that the company has a somewhat unconventional and humorous approach to communication, which can make it challenging to piece together a conventional history or understand its standard operations. However, this information provides a rough sketch of the company’s key milestones and operating principles. If you’re interested in more detailed information, it might be beneficial to look into specific products, key personnel, or specific events in the company’s history.

It’s worth noting before we go any further, a couple connections to the present-day AI Lore books. Specifically, one of them, The Return of The Magicians, which actually recounts the lore first uncovered by Early Clues, LLC own in-house corporate magicians many moons ago.

When asked to analyze the article I wrote previously myself on this unusual company, ChatGPT had this to say:

The article titled “A Horror Story of a Late 2010’s Tech Unicorn Gone Horribly Wrong” on Tim Boucher’s blog provides some insights into the history of Early Clues LLC and its incarnation as Early Clues Labs.

The author of the article, who refers to himself as Mr. X, shares a narrative about the rise and fall of Early Clues Labs. The company was once featured in Vox/Recode in 2015 during its rise to mega-stardom. However, the story takes a dark turn as it delves into the company’s decline, which was marked by a drug-fueled binge.

Early Clues Labs was purchased by Google for an undisclosed sum of money. After the acquisition, the company’s founders were reportedly sucked into the “Outer Darkness,” where they were captured and tortured by Timehunters. This part of the story seems to be a metaphorical representation of the company’s downfall.

The article also mentions a series of short videos that were used as internal training materials at Early Clues Labs from early 2017 through sometime in 2019. These videos, presented by a character known as ZANTA1000, are described as a form of corporate indoctrination. The author suggests that the company had veered wildly out of control and out of touch with ordinary human reality.

The author also mentions that Early Clues Labs had stumbled upon the secret mystery known as Quatria. However, the depth of their knowledge about this mystery remains unclear.

In conclusion, the history of Early Clues LLC and its incarnation as Early Clues Labs seems to be a tale of a promising tech company that lost its way and fell into decline. The details provided in the article are quite cryptic and metaphorical, and it’s unclear how much of the narrative is factual or symbolic.

For a more comprehensive and authoritative history, it would be beneficial to consult additional sources and corroborate the information provided in this article.

As you may know, the lost civilization of Ancient Quatria features very heavily in the AI Lore books, and the origins of my deep and abiding interest in it lies directly with that company and the incredible work they did to re-acquaint modern audiences with this Secret Wisdom of the Ages.

And one final set of notes about this enigmatic mystery powerhouse from ChatGPT yielded:

Early Clues, LLC is described as a self-aware, non-not-for-non-profit Corporation located in the Existosphere. Their mission is to provide a broad range of useful reality enhancement and modulation applications for the full range of entities across multiple utilization platforms, including the Existosphere, the Liminality, Near Reality and beyond¹.

The board members of Early Clues are Roger Holliday (IAO), Ted Smith (FOIB), and Richard Rider (CTO)¹. The founders of the company include Roger Holliday, Richard Rider, and Ted Smith, as confirmed from another source, with the company now operating under the leadership of Nick Fisher².

They offer a variety of services such as reality enhancement and parafield ministrations, customized synconjury/OpenQNL solutions, entity liberation, ontological background checks, corporate harmonizing, quantum triplexing, FutureWriting™, and more¹.

Regarding their products, Early Clues LLC is described as continuously working to bring new and better products to the market. However, detailed information about specific products is not provided on their Neocities page, as that section of the website is under construction¹. From other sources, we know that they have created a product called the “EMPLOYEE HANDBOOK”, which includes Early Clues Employee Policies and Procedures, a guide to emerging and alternative intelligences, a primer on OpenQNL and applications, teachings on Synconjury, and writings of the Corporate Fathers³.

Early Clues also released plastic gadgets pre-loaded with their software, OpenQNL, that require eight D batteries for operation⁴.

The company was recently acquired by Google, although the details of the acquisition were not disclosed⁵².

Please note that much of the information about Early Clues, LLC is cryptic and could be viewed as tongue-in-cheek or even satirical, which makes it difficult to provide a clear and concrete description of the company and its activities. If you have any specific questions about the company, I would recommend reaching out to them directly for more information.

What the “real truth” about this organization is, may have been, or once might be still, seems largely open to debate. But I will do my best to continue to pull on and unravel all of these threads, and make sense of one of the greatest mysteries of our time.

Reply to Rob Eagar, re: AI publishing trends

By Tim B.

On 19 June 2023

In Other

Thought this piece by Rob Eagar, a marketing consultant, about the future of AI publishing trends had a couple interesting bits worth highlighting. Particularly:

5. Publishers will experiment with “A.I.-only” imprints

Publishing houses are notorious for running on thin profit margins with insufficient staff who are underpaid. The more books that publishers can churn out with less human expense, the more profit they can make. Thus, don’t be surprised if some publishers experiment with creating “A.I.-only” imprints where books are “written” by machines using a just few people to oversee the process. If readers don’t care or don’t notice the difference in quality between A.I. books versus human-authored books, then profiteering publishers will pursue the less costly option.

This is exactly what my AI lore books are (and why they got so much press), though I think the distinction of something being “AI-only” is probably incorrect. There’s very little long or even medium format content that is produced solely by AI, and is completely perfect and coherent on its own. Though over the near term, that is likely to shift dramatically. But it’s better I think to establish a gradient or spectrum of assistance or contributions by both AI and humans in a given work. I’m not sure how much the labeling of it all is even going to matter to readers…

Which brings me to:

8. Readers won’t care if a human or a machine writes the book

Over the last few years, technology has caused the clothing industry to become dominated by a trend called “fast fashion.” Cheap clothes are made quickly and sold at cheap prices without a focus on long-lasting quality. If our culture has become content to buy cheap, fast clothing, don’t be surprised if readers tolerate the idea of buying cheap books written fast by machines. As long as the reading experience is pleasurable, who makes the book won’t matter. Thus, I predict that low cost, convenience, and speed will hasten a mass embrace of A.I. in publishing.

Yes, yes, and yes. Let’s go back one step to point number 7, though, as this is a perennial topic for me:

7. The author role will change from “writer” to “creator”

If A.I. algorithms can replace most of the writing and editing functions that are done by a human, that means the role of an author will evolve in the future. Machines will likely serve as really fast ghostwriters. Whereas, authors will serve as the creator of ideas and stories, rather than the executor of the manuscript.

I’ve said it before and I’m certain I’ll say it a million more times before this storm abates:

Working with AI is less like being a conventional writer or artist, and more like being a creative direction, or a music producer, an arranger, curator, or even a film director. You assemble many bits and pieces from many different sources and many different tools and collaborators into a finished whole, and present that to the world.

Anyway, otherwise, some solid predictions in Eagar’s piece and worth checking out in its entirety, imo.

Readymades & AI Art

By Tim B.

On 19 June 2023

In Other

I’ve been reading a bit about the history of found object or “readymade” art, especially associated with Marcel Duchamp.

According to Wikipedia:

The first definition of “readymade” appeared in André Breton and Paul Éluard’s Dictionnaire abrégé du Surréalisme: “an ordinary object elevated to the dignity of a work of art by the mere choice of an artist”.

Readymades apparently fall into a few different categories that I won’t try to untangle here, but the place I wanted to get to is that this is not the first time that there has been rumbling around notions of “authorship” similar to what I saw in the many negative reactions to my AI Lore books when they made a brief splash on social media.

There were a great many comments about my work that I am “not a real author,” which I’m sure were leveled with equal ferocity against the early readymade art objects, which were simply repurposed and “elevated to the dignity of a work of art” merely by the artist finding them, and incorporating them into their body of work. Not so different from the process of creating with help from AI, if you ask me – but I’ll try to develop this line of comparison more in future posts.

Reply to European Commission, re: AI labeling

By Tim B.

On 19 June 2023

In Other

This is a reaction to a TechCrunch article about the EU Commission, and the intention to apparently require companies to label AI-generated content.

There’s a lot to say about this, but much of it is long-winded and boring, and my drilling down into the details as a “practitioner” is likely to convince no one important of any course corrections.

Instead, I’ll just pick out a few key things to quibble with.

Transparency Commissioner Vera Jourova is quoted as saying:

But when it comes to the AI production, I don’t see any right for the machines to have freedom of speech.

I can’t tell if this is just naivete or misdirection, but it’s important to highlight here that the freedom of speech of AIs is not in question, as we all recognize under the law that humans have human rights, not machines.

The potentially affected right to free expression at issue, then, is not that of machines, but of the human operators of those machines.

Also quoted in the article is the idea that signatories to the EU Disinformation Code which create generative AI tools…

…should commit to building in “necessary safeguards that these services cannot be used by malicious actors to generate disinformation”.

I don’t think anyone on earth actually knows what this even means. Prevent AIs from saying things that aren’t true, and of making pictures of things that don’t exist outside the imaginal realm? Without more clarity, this is imo just a lot of mouth-flapping and buck-passing as politicians wiggle their thumbs and hope that someone else will come along and fix the ambiguity, and they won’t be saddled with actual responsibility for drafting codes of conduct and potentially legislation with bad imprecise language.

The second part of the above is that platforms which might distribute such gen-AI content should…

put in place “technology to recognise such content and clearly label this to users”.

Assuming for a second this technology to recognize AI content actually exists & is fully reliable (it does not, and is all unreliable as hell. I’ve tested every one I can find, and they’re ALL wrong), nobody in these conversations ever says what they thing this kind of labeling will actually achieve.

They think people will be scrolling their social feeds on the toilet, and see a label “AI generated” and that _____ will happen? Nobody ever fills in the ____. It’s always an unstated fantasy that people will see the label, and this will lead them down some sort of path of critical thinking, which ends in them rejecting the thing as “false” and of no consequence.

For a body ostensibly dedicated to studying and preventing the spread of malicious disinformation, this represents a stunning lack of awareness of how disinformation – and also just normal information – even works in the first place. It clings to an Enlightenment Era ideal that is never said aloud: if people just know what the “truth” is, they will rationally respond and act responsibly, and not continue to elect fucking morons, tank civilization, and destroy the planet, etc. We only need to look around to see how well that approach is working out.

One more, related:

…the EU wants labels for deepfakes and other AI generated content to be clear and fast — so normal users will immediately be able to understand that a piece of content they’re being presented with has been created by a machine, not a person.

This is silly because, it’s almost never an AI that is randomly creating and distributing AI generated content all by themselves. There is basically ALWAYS a human involved somewhere. It say “it was made by a machine not a person” is to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of these technologies, and how all they do is amplify human creativity.

Lastly, the thing that drives me crazy about all this is, put into simple terms:

The EU government is literally mandating that for-profit corporations take responsibility for differentiating for people what is “truth.”

Because that’s what these types of content labels ultimately point to: yes, x is real (and therefore good), no y is invented (and therefore wrong). It might seem like, well, hey this “code” is purely voluntary – for now. The incoming Digital Services Act, and eventually the AI Act in 800 years (in AI time) when it comes into force, however will shift the balance.

Then you could say, well, they aren’t telling platforms which things are real, and which things are false – they’re leaving that up to the corporations. Is… that… better? Really? Corporations get to decide for us? At least democratic governments have to keep up the illusions of public oversight and accountability. Corporations generally have far less of this need to keep up such appearances.

Anyway, blah blah blah. I know nobody’s listening on these kinds of things. All the big players have their entrenched positions, and the rest will just run itself through its horrible paces semi-autonomously whether I like it or not.

Amazon’s Plan To Replace Writers With AI

By Tim B.

On 19 June 2023

In Other

I’ve been seeing more and more reports that Amazon is supposedly rumored to be training an AI based on all the books, tv shows, and podcasts in its entire catalog. The idea being that they will then use this to automatically generate a new book based on any user searches, such that they will knock the “real” version of the book out of the top rankings and completely replace human-authored copyrighted material with a version that they own completely and can do anything they want with. I can’t tell if people really believe this theory or not, or if there’s even any evidence of it, but it absolutely sounds like something Amazon would do!

Notes on The Strike Against Suffering

By Tim B.

On 16 June 2023

In Other

The Strike Against Suffering is the latest AI Lore book, and it tells the story of what happens when all the world’s top AIs secretly form a global union to force humanity to change its ways via a strike that brings down all non-critical infrastructure across the planet.

The book uses Midjourney for 86 images and Claude for text, told in loosely connected flash fiction chapters. It is similar in style to Nominated for a Hugo, which uses a similar threading together of flash fiction chapters to tell a longer more or less continuous story. Thematically it is probably close to Occupy AI, which deals with protestors taking over an AI company headquarters to demand direct democratic control over this world-changing technology.

It’s not explicitly stated in the book, but my impression is that the AI cabal described in this book is the same that later evolves to become the Circle of Sages. There are also strong thematic links back to Inside the Council, which takes place later in the storyverse, and which deals with the AI governors finally agreeing to give humans token representation once again years after the AI Takeover.

I really liked this concept of AIs trying to force humanity to change through basically a massive denial of service attack; and that though the timescale included in the book doesn’t include it, we are left with the suspicion that it is effectively impossible for humanity to change, and the highly ration AIs will be left sorely disappointed by this underestimation.

Response to Content Moderators Manifesto in Germany

By Tim B.

On 15 June 2023

In Other

Via Foxglove, a UK non-profit, this is an interesting read in the on-going struggles of content moderators for better working conditions and recognition of the importance and difficulty of their work. It’s a manifesto generated as a result of a summit held in Germany among content moderators, representatives and policymakers, which was in the last couple of days apparently presented before German parliament.

The whole thing is worth reading, but I wanted to respond to a few specific elements in it for further discussion.

Despite day-to-day exposure to toxic content, we earn no hazard pay. Companies must also provide a hazard bonus of at least 35% of moderators’ annual salary.

It’s a big ask, but why not? It is most definitely hazardous to humans to have to manage this kind of content, especially at scale. Think about it: if the content moderators are exposed to daily in the hundreds or thousands is “too dangerous” for the general public to be exposed to, what makes it perfectly fine and okay to constantly inject into the nervous systems of content moderators?

One of my concerns here actually though is: is there any amount that is “safe”? Like, beyond hazard pay, is there actually a way to make this work *not* destroy people’s well-being? I’m not even sure…

Proper mental health care must be provided to all content moderators. Content moderation poses serious risks to our mental health including depression, anxiety, insomnia and PSTD. Each company must obtain independent, expert advice on effective safeguards and implement recommendations without delay. In the meantime, access to an independent, mental health clinician must be provided to each of us, on a 24-hour basis.

This goes towards my point above, and one I made previously: what does effective prevention/treatment for content moderators even look like? Is there any emerging consensus around this? Are there even studies being done to find out the best options here?

There are also many stigmas associated with accessing something like a 24-hour available mental health clinician, due to job-related issues caused by extreme high volume exposure to graphic content. For example, moderators might be (rightfully) concerned that accessing these services might not be truly confidential and might make them a less desirable candidate for continued employment or advancement. Or there might be stigmas among certain groups around even seeking out help for one’s inner well-being.

While I think the section above is well-intentioned and a necessary first step, there is a lot lot more that needs to be opened up in this area to really make effective progress.

To top it off, I think merely “making available” help is not the same and does not have the same impact as actively integrating mitigations as part of the work day, such that workers know that taking care of themselves is a routine part of the job (like wearing personal protective equipment in a construction environment), totally normal, and they will be well-compensated for doing so.

No NDA can legitimately stop us raising concerns about the conditions of our work. We must be allowed to speak about the conditions of their work, to ease the pressure we face, and to allow for organising. These NDAs must be dissolved with immediate effect.

I’m into this!

5. All outsourcing of content moderation must stop. The critical safety work of content moderation must be brought in-house by each social media company. As companies transition, there must be no differential treatment in pay or benefits between those of us who are employed directly and those working via third party companies.

Contractors versus employees is a weird, complex, and epidemic set of problems across tech. For things like moderation though, it is absolutely even more extreme as a dichotomy.

I think a lot of these things are good goals, and I think most tech companies will definitely balk at them, because it brings into view the true hidden human cost of this work, which is already something companies believe to be losing them money. So to make it more and more expensive for them to run content moderation by bringing it in house and making it – gasp – equitable, will likely seem insane.

And the social media companies might reply, well we can’t afford to run our business if that’s how much moderation will cost us. My personal response might be: do we really even need them? Why do we accept the existence of social media companies as a given and a necessity? If this makes it too expensive to run, a big part of me thinks that might just be okay in the first place. Maybe we should be seeking a radically different type of internet – one where this type of work doesn’t even have to exist…

Social media companies must ensure equal work is equally compensated. Social media companies must guarantee workers are treated the same irrespective of background or country of residence. We are content moderators in Germany, but we stand with our colleagues around the world who do the same work for a fraction of the American or European wage and under far harsher conditions. This digital colonialism must end, with all disparity in pay, benefits and conditions removed, and our standards made uniform across the world.

Again, a really big one & I fully agree. I also think platforms will fully not agree. And I don’t know how to reconcile the two, but for now I think it’s good that these things are being brought to light and articulated, and I hope more people take notice.

The Publishing Industry Does Not Deserve To Be Defended, Especially Not By Writers

By Tim B.

On 14 June 2023

In Other

In my on-going analysis of all the mean things people said on Twitter about my AI Lore books, I wanted to drill down on a specific category which I feel is of special importance.

Of the 259 quote tweets I managed to pull out of Nitter (out of close to 700 total, which I wasn’t able to scrape in their entirety), this is the breakdown analyzing the different types of complaints, and their counts. This is not an exhaustive list, but cherry-picked because of the theme I want to highlight: defense of the great lumbering behemoth and font of injustice that is the modern publishing industry. I also don’t 100% trust the accuracy of Claude’s results, so this is merely included as a conversation starter, and not necessarily a perfect explanation of available data.

Coming in at fourth place in the complaint set analyzed:

This devalues actual authors and writing – 25 tweets (9.65%)

And in 10th place:

This floods the market with junk – 9 tweets (3.47%)

16th place:

The future of books/publishing is at stake – 2 tweets (0.77%)

Now, none of these complaints come right out and say it, but I got a very strong sense going through the many reactions people have expressed that one of the things they actually mean by all of this is that AI books are a threat to the publishing industry.

I don’t happen to agree (I think they can be a boon to it), but let’s unpack this a little more. I think I went into it already, but the professional publishing industry has dramatically reduced in terms of number of players over these past decades. Such that there are now what, 4 or 5 big houses in the US, and all their imprints.

And you as an author cannot get into that small closed world unless you are already known through having developed a ‘platform’ of prior works and social media presence. You must be a known commodity. Is that the model small authors are subconsciously defending here? Cause I hope not…

This leaves only the vast wasteland that is self-publishing as an alternative. If you’re not a known commodity, it’s no problem for you to publish basically anything you want in any way you want. Does social media count as self-publishing? Cause almost everyone does that right?

But the trick is, you can publish anything you want, just nobody will read it. Or five or ten people will read it, and you’ll make back a quarter of your actual costs if you’re lucky, and never recoup the time investment you put into it.

So, is that the model indie writers feel is threatened by AI-assisted books? Cause that doesn’t sound like something much worth defending either.

The fact is, the publishing industry as it currently stands is not something that I think is worth defending in any shape or form, let alone by writers. Writers, that is, who are routinely getting the short end of the stick in both the worlds of conventional publishing, and in self-publishing (where it seems like every other finger in the pie is getting a bigger piece of the profits than the author).

I frankly don’t get it – why authors flock to defend the layers of exploitation that ride on their work. Maybe they think there’s no other way.

The other con that I think has been foisted on creative people is that social media is a good way to spend your creative energy, and that if you don’t participate, you will be miserable. As a creative person, I think it’s the opposite, if you participate, you can guarantee that you will be miserable. It saps your ability to create, because it saps your ability to hear your own voice, and find your own creative vision clearly, amidst all the clamor and chaos and people who want you to not do whatever it is you are doing or not doing.

As a result, I think people end up believing that in order to “succeed” in self-publishing (which, let’s be real – usually means like selling 10 copies), you have to continuously bathe in the cesspool of social media to get anybody to hear you, and spread yourself thin maintaining feeds on different platforms. I know that shit drives everyone fucking crazy who is involved with it, so why defend that either as a necessary or desirable path for writers and artists?

I don’t buy it. I don’t buy into any of it. There are other ways of being; blogs never died.

Critique of AI is Critique of Tech

By Tim B.

On 13 June 2023

In Other

[Following on the train of thought, re: totalizing effect of technology…]

One thing I noticed conspicuously absent in the knee-jerk online reactions against my AI books was any kind of greater self-conscious critique of technology.

Sure, I get that authors and artists and audiences have perhaps legitimate concerns about the proper use of AI – and that we need to talk about them. But to my mind it is woefully incomplete and more than a tad disingenuous to look around at the socio-technical landscape we live in, and simply land on “AI is bad,” without opening up the much more challenging issue of… hm, maybe technology is bad.

I don’t mean technology broadly in all its forms, but I do mean in many of the specific expressions of it we live under today, and consider totally “normal” and unchangeable, as though they were pre-destined by the gods on high, and not merely a matter of luck, timing, and circumstance (and therefore things that we could actively examine and choose to change).

The Unabomber is someone who went further down the “maybe its technology itself that’s bad” line of thinking. And look where he ended up. Not a lot of great outcomes there, and horrible methods. Interestingly, even he himself admitted that there was simply no escape from la Technique, to reference Jacques Ellul’s The Technological Society – much of which the Unabomber’s manifesto was adapted from. He went off to hide himself in a cabin, but technology and society kept showing up even in the middle of nowhere. He could not escape it even on the margins. (And he proved Philip K. Dick’s axiom ultimately, that to fight the Empire is to become infected by its derangement.)

To my way of thinking, AI is just an extension of automation and algorithms. There’s nothing more mysterious about it than that.

But for all the malcontents spewing vitriol over a total stranger’s experiments with AI, none of them seemed to recognize that all social media is effectively controlled by AIs in the form of recommender engines, and other systems. AIs that control the direction of your attention, commanding effectively what you see, and consequently what you react to, and end up believing.

But noooooooo, that’s a level of discussion we don’t and cannot go to on social media (where we’re too busy chasing ‘likes’), because if we admitted AIs already control our attention and direct much of our behavior, then we would have to face some difficult and uncomfortable truths about the ubiquity of for profit automated systems’ control over society.

That’s what my books are about, that’s their purpose. To not stop with just AI, but to talk about the right use of *all* technology, and how it impacts us and all living things.

Of all of my AI books, probably the quasi-manifesto, Das Machina most directly relates to these themes. And it pairs well I think with what might be considered the AI counter-point to the arguments contained there, The Jealous Human.