6 ms·

NaNoWriMo is in disarray after organizers defend AI writing tools

38 points by Tomte 2y ago

5555624 2y ago
Originally, NaNoWriMo was simple and followed the book "No Plot? No Problem!" and the goal was to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. No editing,just crank it out. If you did it, you could downlaod a .PDF file certificate. Around 2005 or so, they started pushing the social aspect, with message boards, tracking progress publicly on the web site, and people having "write-ins" where people got together and wrote. They were still each working on their own novel; but, they'd gather to do it. (I think December became the "editing" month, so they could keep going in groups.) Not only was there a certificate; but, also all sorts of "badges." As it got more popular, people began to look at ways to "cheat." Outlining and writing some words before November. Not writing fiction. Using stuff they'd written before and expanding it. I've done it (and successfully completed it) a dozen times; but, then I started skipping it. I skipped a couple to 2015, then skipped them until 2020. I was thinking about doing it this year; but, may not.
- nopelynopington 2y ago
  > As it got more popular, people began to look at ways to "cheat." Outlining and writing some words before November. Not writing fiction. Using stuff they'd written before and expanding it. It was the ultimate self deception. You don't win anything. You don't even have to prove you wrote anything. Just log in every day and change a number if you want the silly badge. I think the challenge and fun of trying to write a first draft in a month is a great thing and I'm annoyed that it's become so politicised and monetised. If you want to do it, don't feel like you have to go through nanowrimo. Find a few like minded people to urge you on and do it under your own terms. That's what I do now.
jgordon42 2y ago
This another example of woke religion invading taking over secular groups to convert them to their religion. Nanorimo is a race of humans against humans.improving writing by volume much the same as time limited chess.
mock-possum 2y ago
The whole point of NaNoWriMo is to actually write something - and if LLMs are what helps you do it, then what’s the harm?
Ekaros 2y ago
I don't really see that big issue if someone uses a month to work with LLM to generate somewhat coherent and sensible novel. Generate a chapter a day or something and work with prompting until you get it to flow at least from previous chapter if not all chapters. That itself can be worthy challenge. If you step beyond stapled together outputs.
mindcrime 2y ago
“Generative AI empowers not the artist, not the writer, but the tech industry,” Star Wars: Aftermath author Chuck Wendig said in response to NaNoWriMo’s stance. “It steals content to remake content, graverobbing existing material to staple together its Frankensteinian idea of art and story.” Like the way you stole Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to construct your analogy here? Come off it guys... the NaNoWriMo org already said they aren't endorsing the use of AI to write your entire submission for you. They're just saying they aren't going to categorically condemn AI across the board. Seems like a perfectly reasonable position to me. Especially given that pretty much everything - human generated OR AI generated - builds on "that which came before".
- nopelynopington 2y ago
  > NaNoWriMo org already said they aren't endorsing the use of AI to write your entire submission for you. There is no submission in nano, it's literally just a participation challenge. There's nothing at stake for them. I assume they only brought it up because they got sponsorship from an AI tool
  - mindcrime 2y ago
    There is no submission in nano, it's literally just a participation challenge. Exactly. Which is just one MORE reason why all of this is just a tempest in a teapot.
    - nopelynopington 2y ago
      It's kind of like if the Boston marathon was suddenly sponsored by Uber and said "we're not saying drive instead of run, but it's ok to take a cab some of the way" Who cares? It's just for fun right?
- jrflowers 2y ago
  >Like the way you stole Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to construct your analogy here? This makes sense as an analogy because using your brain to think before you write is the same thing as using a tool that stands in for using your brain to think before you write.
nopelynopington 2y ago
They're up on a pedestal talking about how it's classist and abelist and some people can't afford an editor, but that is not the problem with AI and never has been. Many publishers have had to stop accepting submissions because they're being flooded by AI generated content and can't cope. Nanowrimo is not one of these publishers and has nothing to lose here. It's not classist or abelist to reject a technology that generates a novel for someone who can't be bothered to write one, that floods the market, that stops hard working original authors from having a chance of making it in the already difficult game of getting a book published.
- zug_zug 2y ago
  I'm sure there's a systematic solution to that. If that's the problem, maybe require a $10 submission fee on each writing (or enough to pay for a basic sanity on writing quality). You can even optionally refund it for cases of obvious merit.
  - nopelynopington 2y ago
    Who's classist now
  - mlloyd 2y ago
    You don't even need to charge, just some sort of validation wall before submission. I bet a non-functional AI checker would discourage the great majority of these.
- brendoelfrendo 2y ago
  I mean, sure, not everyone can afford an editor, but that's never been the point of NaNoWriMo! The point of the challenge was to write a first draft and use the time limit to constantly push yourself forward. It was to demonstrate that a finished story that can be improved on can be more important to a writer's career than an exquisitely crafted idea that never gets onto the page. Editors are things that always came after NaNoWriMo.
  - nopelynopington 2y ago
gamblor956 2y ago
TLDR: NaNoWriMo is now sponsored by an AI company, and markets AI writing assistance tools, so they published a blog post to defend this apparent contradiction with their primary goal (i.e., humans writing a novel in 1 month from start to finish). Their nonsensical arguments have resulted in multiple board members leaving, along with blowblack from disabled and poor writers who are insulted that NaNoWriMo justified their marketing of AI tools with the claim that disabled writers and poor need AI to write well.
- dialup_sounds 2y ago
  This is the supposed "AI company" that is alleged to be the end of all human creativity as we know it: https://prowritingaid.com/features https://prowritingaid.com/features
itishappy 2y ago
I'm neither a writer nor particularly familiar with the space, but NaNoWriMo looks like a dying company. Looks like there was a scandal of some sort last year that led to a community purge of sorts including shuttering their forums. Their FAQ still references this event extensively, withholding any details. [0] Add the super obvious cooperate sponsorship blog spam [1] (including the apparently removed promotion of their new AI partner [2]), and this looks like a zombie organization that has pivoted to squeezing the remaining value out of their userbase. [0] https://nanowrimo.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/categories/4403966090900-All-About-NaNoWriMo https://nanowrimo.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/categories/4403966090... [1] https://blog.nanowrimo.org/ https://blog.nanowrimo.org/ [2] https://archive.is/49R8u https://archive.is/49R8u
- add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
  "Our discovery that some spaces were being used in unintended ways" Euphemism for an alleged grooming incident involving one of the mods of their community section for minors.
  - Avshalom 2y ago
    add-sub-mul-div is being downvoted here (probably because of the last couple years of bad faith accusations of "grooming" against the lgbtq+ community poisoning the well) but "alleged grooming incident[s]" is the thing that happened: https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/1ae3038/writing_discords_forums_and_a_decades_worth_of/?share_id=ekCWxk2T4lHNs-Xf6zZmL https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/1ae3038/writing...
- lacker 2y ago
  They aren't a company at all, they are a 501c3 nonprofit. https://nanowrimo.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4403979579412-What-kind-of-company-is-NaNoWriMo https://nanowrimo.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/440397957941...
  - hiatus 2y ago
    That is just a tax classification and says nothing about the entity. They are in fact a corporation (just look at their 990 to see this). https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/651282653/202343049349301414/full https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/651... edit: your own link says "what kind of company is NaNoWriMo"
lovegrenoble 2y ago
Not a good trend...
DazWilkin 2y ago
I think there's no issue with permitting writers to use AI tools to participate in NaNoWriMo. I've participated a three (or four?) times in the annual NaNoWriMo and completed twice. When I first participated, I attended a group to help understand how to approach the project. In the group there were several aspiring writers. The group continued after the year's project began and many of the people who most wanted to be writers were already struggling to meet the daily writing quota (so that they'd reach the goal after 30 days). I think any tools that people use that help them complete NaNoWriMo are fine. People must live with their own decisions and, if the tools write the majority of their submission, that's their decision. Other people using AI tools doesn't impact my ability to complete the year's NaNoWriMo. It doesn't affect me in any way. The group leader told us about a tool that she used that would begin erasing characters if she stopped typing for longer than about 5 seconds during her daily write. That's a tool I wouldn't ever use :-)
- brendoelfrendo 2y ago
  One person using generative AI doesn't impact anyone else's ability to complete the challenge, but it does seem weird to officially condone using AI and partner with an AI company. If the goal of the challenge is to write 50,000 words in 30 days, and you use an AI to write most of that... then you didn't meet that goal. Like, at all. We should be honest that telling an AI to write a story and writing one yourself are very different things. Anyone who writes knows that having an idea is the easy part, and most of the work happens in turning the idea into the story. Writing to meet an aggressive quota like in NaNoWriMo takes work and discipline. I used to like NaNoWriMo for promoting writing as a creative exercise and motivating people to write and finish a project, but the main criticism has always been that pushing people to set potentially unrealistic goals can also be discouraging or encourage bad practices. Saying "AI is fine if it helps you meet the quota" kind of doubles-down on NaNoWriMo as a word factory and misses the point of its own challenge.
  - throwmeoutplzdo 2y ago
    And you could argue the competition is about creating meaning and orchestrating a story rather than individual words. Even if you use AI to actually produce the individual words and still edit the text afterwards to match your meaning, first of all it might be more work than just writing it yourself, and second, it's basically like having a partner to throw around ideas with. So sure, you might be cheating yourself, and at the end I don't think AI is going to produce anything of such enormous original value that it would in itself threaten the value of, say, literature. At the end of the day the results are what count to me. If you're using AI in a disciplined way to help you learn to write better, then all the best to you.
creer 2y ago
AI and AI tools is a very divisive question in all creative fields. Yes. In the short term, I don't see much alternative but to split each such challenge or prize in two. Which also is not much of a problem.
Halian 2y ago
Death to AI slop.
bananapub 2y ago
since no one will read the article, it's being SPONSORED by an "AI writing tool" company.
- dialup_sounds 2y ago
  ...among other sponsors: https://nanowrimo.org/brought-to-you-by https://nanowrimo.org/brought-to-you-by The tool in question is ProWritingAid, which seems...fine? Like maybe it doesn't herald the end of all art and culture. https://prowritingaid.com/features https://prowritingaid.com/features
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
poulpy123 2y ago
According to wikipedia: > National Novel Writing Month, often shortened to NaNoWriMo (/ˌnænoʊˈraɪmoʊ/ NAN-oh-RY-moh),[1] is a U.S.-based nonprofit organization that promotes creative writing around the world. Its flagship program is an annual, international creative writing event in which participants attempt to write a 50,000-word manuscript during the month of November. It makes absolutely no sense to accept stuff written by an AI
- schwartzworld 2y ago
  I did nanowrimo a decade ago. Dunno if it changed, but back then the only prize was the pride of having finished writing a short novel. So why not “accept” ai content? You can’t really cheat at solitaire. You would just be cheating yourself. It’s not like anybody else is going to read it.
  - nopelynopington 2y ago
    Still the same. No prizes.
- dialup_sounds 2y ago
  For who to accept it? It's not a competition. What they actually say is: > 'Winning' is a personal achievement and has always been based on the honor system! If using AI will assist your creative process, you are welcome to use it. Using ChatGPT to write your entire novel would defeat the purpose of the challenge, though.
- mindcrime 2y ago
  It makes absolutely no sense to accept stuff written by an AI Not calling you out specifically here, but this line seems to me to reflect a trend that I see far too often. That being something like a variation of the "fallacy of the excluded middle" where people seem to posit that a work is either A. written by a human OR B. written by AI, with no recognition of possibility C. written by a human assisted by AI. I don't know what it is about this issue that makes people adopt these overly binary positions and ignore the middle ground. But whatever the reason, I think it's harmful to quality discourse on the topic to ignore that middle position.
aaroninsf 2y ago
An exercise for the haters: The following represents a crude history of human verbal communication. Please complete the series with the next term. Take as much time as you need: - speech and oration - written word - paper - the printing press - the word processor - ? PSA their argument about ablism is spot on and is obviously so, if your understanding of what "AI" is goes beyond prompting an LLM to "do your work for you." So many knee-jerk critiques of "AI" are premised and possible on when the critic has little or no understanding of what "AI" is, even today.
- jrflowers 2y ago
  > if your understanding of what "AI" is goes beyond prompting an LLM to "do your work for you." This is a good point. If you ignore the fact that this is the ubiquitous understanding of what AI is and then envision a different, more charitable and far less popular definition of it, their point about ablism becomes more possibly arguable
  - cthalupa 2y ago
    I talk to a lot of "normal" people about AI stuff pretty frequently, as the closest thing in my friend/family group to an expert. Almost all of them have used it and almost all of them understand that you can use it in ranges varying from asking for specific advice on things, to asking it to do portions of things, to asking it to do the whole thing. I don't think any of them would think that "Using AI to help you write a 50k word short story" would necessarily indicate telling ChatGPT to just write the story for you based on a short description.
    - jrflowers 2y ago
      The enormous wave of AI-generated drivel that caused publishers and contests to pause accepting new work stands as evidence otherwise. It isn’t that much of a matter of what you think people think about AI, you can literally just look at the pile of garbage “books” and stories that did not exist three years ago.
Log_out_ 2y ago
Just look at what auto correct does to neologisms and rest easy. Its a machine extrapolating,it cant creat anything truly novel.

38 points by Tomte 2y ago

Originally, NaNoWriMo was simple and followed the book "No Plot? No Problem!" and the goal was to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. No editing,just crank it out. If you did it, you could downlaod a .PDF file certificate. Around 2005 or so, they started pushing the social aspect, with message boards, tracking progress publicly on the web site, and people having "write-ins" where people got together and wrote. They were still each working on their own novel; but, they'd gather to do it. (I think December became the "editing" month, so they could keep going in groups.) Not only was there a certificate; but, also all sorts of "badges." As it got more popular, people began to look at ways to "cheat." Outlining and writing some words before November. Not writing fiction. Using stuff they'd written before and expanding it. I've done it (and successfully completed it) a dozen times; but, then I started skipping it. I skipped a couple to 2015, then skipped them until 2020. I was thinking about doing it this year; but, may not.

nopelynopington 2y ago
> As it got more popular, people began to look at ways to "cheat." Outlining and writing some words before November. Not writing fiction. Using stuff they'd written before and expanding it. It was the ultimate self deception. You don't win anything. You don't even have to prove you wrote anything. Just log in every day and change a number if you want the silly badge. I think the challenge and fun of trying to write a first draft in a month is a great thing and I'm annoyed that it's become so politicised and monetised. If you want to do it, don't feel like you have to go through nanowrimo. Find a few like minded people to urge you on and do it under your own terms. That's what I do now.

jgordon42 2y ago

This another example of woke religion invading taking over secular groups to convert them to their religion. Nanorimo is a race of humans against humans.improving writing by volume much the same as time limited chess.

mock-possum 2y ago

The whole point of NaNoWriMo is to actually write something - and if LLMs are what helps you do it, then what’s the harm?

Ekaros 2y ago

I don't really see that big issue if someone uses a month to work with LLM to generate somewhat coherent and sensible novel. Generate a chapter a day or something and work with prompting until you get it to flow at least from previous chapter if not all chapters. That itself can be worthy challenge. If you step beyond stapled together outputs.

mindcrime 2y ago

“Generative AI empowers not the artist, not the writer, but the tech industry,” Star Wars: Aftermath author Chuck Wendig said in response to NaNoWriMo’s stance. “It steals content to remake content, graverobbing existing material to staple together its Frankensteinian idea of art and story.” Like the way you stole Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to construct your analogy here? Come off it guys... the NaNoWriMo org already said they aren't endorsing the use of AI to write your entire submission for you. They're just saying they aren't going to categorically condemn AI across the board. Seems like a perfectly reasonable position to me. Especially given that pretty much everything - human generated OR AI generated - builds on "that which came before".

nopelynopington 2y ago
> NaNoWriMo org already said they aren't endorsing the use of AI to write your entire submission for you. There is no submission in nano, it's literally just a participation challenge. There's nothing at stake for them. I assume they only brought it up because they got sponsorship from an AI tool
- mindcrime 2y ago
  There is no submission in nano, it's literally just a participation challenge. Exactly. Which is just one MORE reason why all of this is just a tempest in a teapot.
  - nopelynopington 2y ago
    It's kind of like if the Boston marathon was suddenly sponsored by Uber and said "we're not saying drive instead of run, but it's ok to take a cab some of the way" Who cares? It's just for fun right?
jrflowers 2y ago
>Like the way you stole Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to construct your analogy here? This makes sense as an analogy because using your brain to think before you write is the same thing as using a tool that stands in for using your brain to think before you write.

nopelynopington 2y ago

They're up on a pedestal talking about how it's classist and abelist and some people can't afford an editor, but that is not the problem with AI and never has been. Many publishers have had to stop accepting submissions because they're being flooded by AI generated content and can't cope. Nanowrimo is not one of these publishers and has nothing to lose here. It's not classist or abelist to reject a technology that generates a novel for someone who can't be bothered to write one, that floods the market, that stops hard working original authors from having a chance of making it in the already difficult game of getting a book published.

zug_zug 2y ago
I'm sure there's a systematic solution to that. If that's the problem, maybe require a $10 submission fee on each writing (or enough to pay for a basic sanity on writing quality). You can even optionally refund it for cases of obvious merit.
- nopelynopington 2y ago
  Who's classist now
- mlloyd 2y ago
  You don't even need to charge, just some sort of validation wall before submission. I bet a non-functional AI checker would discourage the great majority of these.
brendoelfrendo 2y ago
I mean, sure, not everyone can afford an editor, but that's never been the point of NaNoWriMo! The point of the challenge was to write a first draft and use the time limit to constantly push yourself forward. It was to demonstrate that a finished story that can be improved on can be more important to a writer's career than an exquisitely crafted idea that never gets onto the page. Editors are things that always came after NaNoWriMo.
- nopelynopington 2y ago

gamblor956 2y ago

TLDR: NaNoWriMo is now sponsored by an AI company, and markets AI writing assistance tools, so they published a blog post to defend this apparent contradiction with their primary goal (i.e., humans writing a novel in 1 month from start to finish). Their nonsensical arguments have resulted in multiple board members leaving, along with blowblack from disabled and poor writers who are insulted that NaNoWriMo justified their marketing of AI tools with the claim that disabled writers and poor need AI to write well.

dialup_sounds 2y ago
This is the supposed "AI company" that is alleged to be the end of all human creativity as we know it: https://prowritingaid.com/features https://prowritingaid.com/features

itishappy 2y ago

I'm neither a writer nor particularly familiar with the space, but NaNoWriMo looks like a dying company. Looks like there was a scandal of some sort last year that led to a community purge of sorts including shuttering their forums. Their FAQ still references this event extensively, withholding any details. [0] Add the super obvious cooperate sponsorship blog spam [1] (including the apparently removed promotion of their new AI partner [2]), and this looks like a zombie organization that has pivoted to squeezing the remaining value out of their userbase. [0] https://nanowrimo.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/categories/4403966090900-All-About-NaNoWriMo https://nanowrimo.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/categories/4403966090... [1] https://blog.nanowrimo.org/ https://blog.nanowrimo.org/ [2] https://archive.is/49R8u https://archive.is/49R8u

add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
"Our discovery that some spaces were being used in unintended ways" Euphemism for an alleged grooming incident involving one of the mods of their community section for minors.
- Avshalom 2y ago
  add-sub-mul-div is being downvoted here (probably because of the last couple years of bad faith accusations of "grooming" against the lgbtq+ community poisoning the well) but "alleged grooming incident[s]" is the thing that happened: https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/1ae3038/writing_discords_forums_and_a_decades_worth_of/?share_id=ekCWxk2T4lHNs-Xf6zZmL https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/1ae3038/writing...
lacker 2y ago
They aren't a company at all, they are a 501c3 nonprofit. https://nanowrimo.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4403979579412-What-kind-of-company-is-NaNoWriMo https://nanowrimo.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/440397957941...
- hiatus 2y ago
  That is just a tax classification and says nothing about the entity. They are in fact a corporation (just look at their 990 to see this). https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/651282653/202343049349301414/full https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/651... edit: your own link says "what kind of company is NaNoWriMo"

lovegrenoble 2y ago

Not a good trend...

DazWilkin 2y ago

I think there's no issue with permitting writers to use AI tools to participate in NaNoWriMo. I've participated a three (or four?) times in the annual NaNoWriMo and completed twice. When I first participated, I attended a group to help understand how to approach the project. In the group there were several aspiring writers. The group continued after the year's project began and many of the people who most wanted to be writers were already struggling to meet the daily writing quota (so that they'd reach the goal after 30 days). I think any tools that people use that help them complete NaNoWriMo are fine. People must live with their own decisions and, if the tools write the majority of their submission, that's their decision. Other people using AI tools doesn't impact my ability to complete the year's NaNoWriMo. It doesn't affect me in any way. The group leader told us about a tool that she used that would begin erasing characters if she stopped typing for longer than about 5 seconds during her daily write. That's a tool I wouldn't ever use :-)

brendoelfrendo 2y ago
One person using generative AI doesn't impact anyone else's ability to complete the challenge, but it does seem weird to officially condone using AI and partner with an AI company. If the goal of the challenge is to write 50,000 words in 30 days, and you use an AI to write most of that... then you didn't meet that goal. Like, at all. We should be honest that telling an AI to write a story and writing one yourself are very different things. Anyone who writes knows that having an idea is the easy part, and most of the work happens in turning the idea into the story. Writing to meet an aggressive quota like in NaNoWriMo takes work and discipline. I used to like NaNoWriMo for promoting writing as a creative exercise and motivating people to write and finish a project, but the main criticism has always been that pushing people to set potentially unrealistic goals can also be discouraging or encourage bad practices. Saying "AI is fine if it helps you meet the quota" kind of doubles-down on NaNoWriMo as a word factory and misses the point of its own challenge.
- throwmeoutplzdo 2y ago
  And you could argue the competition is about creating meaning and orchestrating a story rather than individual words. Even if you use AI to actually produce the individual words and still edit the text afterwards to match your meaning, first of all it might be more work than just writing it yourself, and second, it's basically like having a partner to throw around ideas with. So sure, you might be cheating yourself, and at the end I don't think AI is going to produce anything of such enormous original value that it would in itself threaten the value of, say, literature. At the end of the day the results are what count to me. If you're using AI in a disciplined way to help you learn to write better, then all the best to you.

creer 2y ago

AI and AI tools is a very divisive question in all creative fields. Yes. In the short term, I don't see much alternative but to split each such challenge or prize in two. Which also is not much of a problem.

Halian 2y ago

Death to AI slop.

bananapub 2y ago

since no one will read the article, it's being SPONSORED by an "AI writing tool" company.

dialup_sounds 2y ago
...among other sponsors: https://nanowrimo.org/brought-to-you-by https://nanowrimo.org/brought-to-you-by The tool in question is ProWritingAid, which seems...fine? Like maybe it doesn't herald the end of all art and culture. https://prowritingaid.com/features https://prowritingaid.com/features

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

poulpy123 2y ago

According to wikipedia: > National Novel Writing Month, often shortened to NaNoWriMo (/ˌnænoʊˈraɪmoʊ/ NAN-oh-RY-moh),[1] is a U.S.-based nonprofit organization that promotes creative writing around the world. Its flagship program is an annual, international creative writing event in which participants attempt to write a 50,000-word manuscript during the month of November. It makes absolutely no sense to accept stuff written by an AI

schwartzworld 2y ago
I did nanowrimo a decade ago. Dunno if it changed, but back then the only prize was the pride of having finished writing a short novel. So why not “accept” ai content? You can’t really cheat at solitaire. You would just be cheating yourself. It’s not like anybody else is going to read it.
- nopelynopington 2y ago
  Still the same. No prizes.
dialup_sounds 2y ago
For who to accept it? It's not a competition. What they actually say is: > 'Winning' is a personal achievement and has always been based on the honor system! If using AI will assist your creative process, you are welcome to use it. Using ChatGPT to write your entire novel would defeat the purpose of the challenge, though.
mindcrime 2y ago
It makes absolutely no sense to accept stuff written by an AI Not calling you out specifically here, but this line seems to me to reflect a trend that I see far too often. That being something like a variation of the "fallacy of the excluded middle" where people seem to posit that a work is either A. written by a human OR B. written by AI, with no recognition of possibility C. written by a human assisted by AI. I don't know what it is about this issue that makes people adopt these overly binary positions and ignore the middle ground. But whatever the reason, I think it's harmful to quality discourse on the topic to ignore that middle position.

aaroninsf 2y ago

An exercise for the haters: The following represents a crude history of human verbal communication. Please complete the series with the next term. Take as much time as you need: - speech and oration - written word - paper - the printing press - the word processor - ? PSA their argument about ablism is spot on and is obviously so, if your understanding of what "AI" is goes beyond prompting an LLM to "do your work for you." So many knee-jerk critiques of "AI" are premised and possible on when the critic has little or no understanding of what "AI" is, even today.

jrflowers 2y ago
> if your understanding of what "AI" is goes beyond prompting an LLM to "do your work for you." This is a good point. If you ignore the fact that this is the ubiquitous understanding of what AI is and then envision a different, more charitable and far less popular definition of it, their point about ablism becomes more possibly arguable
- cthalupa 2y ago
  I talk to a lot of "normal" people about AI stuff pretty frequently, as the closest thing in my friend/family group to an expert. Almost all of them have used it and almost all of them understand that you can use it in ranges varying from asking for specific advice on things, to asking it to do portions of things, to asking it to do the whole thing. I don't think any of them would think that "Using AI to help you write a 50k word short story" would necessarily indicate telling ChatGPT to just write the story for you based on a short description.
  - jrflowers 2y ago
    The enormous wave of AI-generated drivel that caused publishers and contests to pause accepting new work stands as evidence otherwise. It isn’t that much of a matter of what you think people think about AI, you can literally just look at the pile of garbage “books” and stories that did not exist three years ago.

Log_out_ 2y ago

Just look at what auto correct does to neologisms and rest easy. Its a machine extrapolating,it cant creat anything truly novel.