I am more sympathetic to the angry Reddit user. I think their response is valid and could be easily directed at the the anonymous "they" in the screed: i.e. the paper's owners. I have canceled my subscriptions to the WaPo and the L.A. Times over editorial decisions made by their owners. I see the inclusion of AI slop as an editorial error. At least for now, there are still humans who own these media, and I think they bear the full responsibility in the end for what goes into their publications. (edited for minor typos)
Have been for a while now. Several small press and magazines have died in the deluge of machine-written submissions since 2022. It's a struggle for Amazon to keep KU from paying fake writers who rent bots to read their fake books at a scale big enough to profit. One of my clients who was querying agents earlier this year (got one!) noticed that many agents have taken the second-mover position: they wait for someone else in Query Tracker to request a full from a prospect before they do the same, which essentially offloads wading through the bottomless slush pile to their competitors.
That happened to me too when I was querying agents. Nobody replied to my queries UNTIL I got a bite. Then they all got back to me real quick. Query Tracker even has this as a feature, to notify the agent that there's a change in the query status.
As a Sun-Times subscriber (after canceling the Tribune in 2016 when they endorsed Gary Johnson for president and after canceling WaPo during last summer's shitshow), I'm disappointed but mostly just exhausted. I work in book publishing, so I guess this feels especially egregious. While I can sympathize with an overworked staffer cutting corners, I also think that his statement, "I do use AI for background at times but always check out the material first. This time, I did not . . . ," is also a hallucination. There's no way this was the first time. I often hear how AI is a tool that can be useful, and I guess we don't hear about all the times AI doesn't make shit up, but it seems like we're headed to a future where 10 out of 15 books being fake is unacceptable, but 2 out of 15? Not too shabby. The main point of this piece, however, is right on. Disinvestment in and devaluation of journalism has never been more dire. But I also think AI's main function in corporate America today is to save money by replacing human beings, regardless of the loss of integrity.
The description of "The Last Algorithm" gives me a wry sense of amusement. Its supposed plot is literally about AI becoming sentient and controlling world events. A bit on-the-nose, eh?
George Orwell was wrong in one aspect: thanks to the (mis) use of AI (although this instance seems a case of sloppy and rushed work with no fact-checking) there will be no army of human Winston Smiths dutifully massaging the "facts" of current news or human history to reflect the shifting political whims of Big Brother. It will be a computer chip employing AI to fabricate "facts" at-will and controlled by any number of Big Brothers with an agenda. How will future generations know which is the "real truth" when so much of what we "know" is digital and thus alterable? The preservation of physical books, periodicals and other tangible records are of vital importance, not to mention the critical work of archiving and protecting our changeable digital data against deletion or editing.
I am more sympathetic to the angry Reddit user. I think their response is valid and could be easily directed at the the anonymous "they" in the screed: i.e. the paper's owners. I have canceled my subscriptions to the WaPo and the L.A. Times over editorial decisions made by their owners. I see the inclusion of AI slop as an editorial error. At least for now, there are still humans who own these media, and I think they bear the full responsibility in the end for what goes into their publications. (edited for minor typos)
Why don’t they take this one step further and ask AI to write the made-up books? Problem solved!
And then we'll train other robots to actually READ the damn things, because who's got the time, amirite?
Gawd, they're gonna do that, aren't they?
Have been for a while now. Several small press and magazines have died in the deluge of machine-written submissions since 2022. It's a struggle for Amazon to keep KU from paying fake writers who rent bots to read their fake books at a scale big enough to profit. One of my clients who was querying agents earlier this year (got one!) noticed that many agents have taken the second-mover position: they wait for someone else in Query Tracker to request a full from a prospect before they do the same, which essentially offloads wading through the bottomless slush pile to their competitors.
That happened to me too when I was querying agents. Nobody replied to my queries UNTIL I got a bite. Then they all got back to me real quick. Query Tracker even has this as a feature, to notify the agent that there's a change in the query status.
"On me 100 percent and I'm completely embarrassed." That's an AI generated response
"Oh, I'm sorry I went off on that rant about White genocide when you only asked for Reggie Jackson's batting average."
As a Sun-Times subscriber (after canceling the Tribune in 2016 when they endorsed Gary Johnson for president and after canceling WaPo during last summer's shitshow), I'm disappointed but mostly just exhausted. I work in book publishing, so I guess this feels especially egregious. While I can sympathize with an overworked staffer cutting corners, I also think that his statement, "I do use AI for background at times but always check out the material first. This time, I did not . . . ," is also a hallucination. There's no way this was the first time. I often hear how AI is a tool that can be useful, and I guess we don't hear about all the times AI doesn't make shit up, but it seems like we're headed to a future where 10 out of 15 books being fake is unacceptable, but 2 out of 15? Not too shabby. The main point of this piece, however, is right on. Disinvestment in and devaluation of journalism has never been more dire. But I also think AI's main function in corporate America today is to save money by replacing human beings, regardless of the loss of integrity.
The description of "The Last Algorithm" gives me a wry sense of amusement. Its supposed plot is literally about AI becoming sentient and controlling world events. A bit on-the-nose, eh?
Who reads books anymore? Who uses words, when you can use emojis?
😈
George Orwell was wrong in one aspect: thanks to the (mis) use of AI (although this instance seems a case of sloppy and rushed work with no fact-checking) there will be no army of human Winston Smiths dutifully massaging the "facts" of current news or human history to reflect the shifting political whims of Big Brother. It will be a computer chip employing AI to fabricate "facts" at-will and controlled by any number of Big Brothers with an agenda. How will future generations know which is the "real truth" when so much of what we "know" is digital and thus alterable? The preservation of physical books, periodicals and other tangible records are of vital importance, not to mention the critical work of archiving and protecting our changeable digital data against deletion or editing.
just wow.