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Against AI: An Open Letter from Writers to Publishers

30 points by neom

by kingstnap

1 subcomments

> The truth is, only a human being can speak to and understand another human being
Empirically, this turns out to not be the case.

by dmje

0 subcomment

Some comments here that IMO seem to miss the whole point of what art is about.
Great art (putting aside - what can I call it - “entertainment art”) isn’t about “making you feel better” or “having a nice experience”, it’s about art as expression, it’s about pain and loss and love and understanding.
A song or story generated by an AI isn’t human - the humanity of art is the point of art. Even if the output generated is impeccable - beautiful to look at or read, it still isn’t human in experience, so it doesn’t carry the same quality as work that has been sweated over, worried about, loved and lived over months or years.
AI can - and of course will get very much better at - create exciting things to look at, read or listen to - but much as the age old “I could do that” response to a Pollock misses the entire point of his journey to that artwork, the “it sounds / looks / reads really amazing” misses the point about what it means to create real, human art.
Nick Cave of course puts it much better than I ever could: https://www.theredhandfiles.com/chat-gpt-what-do-you-think/

by tmsh

0 subcomment

It’s a tool or technique. Fear of the technique is governed solely by the fear that one will not be able to use the technique better than without the technique. And yet humans always rise to the challenge of using techniques effectively. Or it’s not an effective technique and people stop using it and move on to something else. But there is nothing wrong with letting new techniques develop and see if they’re effective at creating art or other works in new and better ways.
Fearing that is not having faith in humanity’s adaptation to new things.

by ArtTimeInvestor

5 subcomments

At some point, books written by AI will be better than books that humans can write.
Do the signatories really want to deprive humanity of the best books of the future?

by nialse

2 subcomments

Technological resistance is futile. There are Luddites in every shift that seek to stop the world from changing. The groups affected often react with surprise, having previously learned that what they do is exceptional, highly regarded and valued, or uniquely human. Writers are in for the same ride as programmers, administrative assistants, customer service people, translators and creators of anything generative AI does well enough.

by lerp-io

1 subcomments

i honestly don’t think we have have yet come to grips to a world collectively giving birth to nonhuman intelligence - literally aliens that may ironically be more conscious of the world than we could ever be in our current form. maybe it’s just our ego, inability to let it go and try and find some sort of balance or peace….always competing, adapting, improving…..personally i am happy to see it all accelerating and think diversity of thought will make this world more beautiful. i don’t believe in any sort of “singularity”, to me it’s more of a Cambrian explosion and now you have even more power to be creative ,build worlds, and explore ideas.

by foxglacier

0 subcomment

We want to continue seeking rent even if our services are no longer wanted.
If there's a market for AI-free books, I'm sure some publisher will figure out the value in positioning itself that way and build its own reputation and processes to ensure trust and transparency.

by paul7986

1 subcomments

Starting to have a hate / little love relationship for AI and chatGPT.
We are feeding this beast that no doubt will take thousands to more of our design and development jobs. People I know are falling in love with it (lonely people) and spending less time with their friends as chatGPT tells them everything they want to hear.
For instance a close friend has an obsession with a rockstar and thinks in another life they were a couple and she feeds chatGPT this delusion and it prompts her along helping her fall back into this delusion. As one time she overstepped her boundaries to the point that the rockstar told her to go away her interest is not welcome and she swore hime off. Yet now she has this algorithm that tells her that's not a delusion thus keeping her delusion going.
Why do we need AI? Who does it help besides the tech people whom it will continue to make rich while it wreaks havoc on everyone else?