Today has been a little hectic. Then it smudged into tonight, and here I am trying to put one word in front of the next. I do not think very many words will end up making it into this blog.
However, there is a little news, and that is that I am trying to put together an audio episode based on a short story, in an attempt to get it competition ready. It might happen, but timings are tight. I’ll keep you posted. Apologies for this ramble in the meanwhile.
I’ve just sat in on a fascinating talk hosted by the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain (WGGB) looking at how writers might get along in future with ChatGPT and all its cousins. Not sure there were any answers, but it made me think.
These are a rough outline of the main points that I took away from the talk:
Many of the artificial intelligence tools are being created in America.
The capability of these tools (whether intelligent or not) is improving rapidly.
They mine open source data voraciously, without being particularly mindful of copyright.
Their appeal to ‘bottom line’ enthusiasts is enormous.
They require considerable resources to run, both human and environmental, which jeopardises both their ‘ethical’ and their ‘sustainability’ credentials.
How should the creative industries respond? We all pondered this, not quite sure about the answer, but cheered by news that apparently an American court had ruled that content created solely by artificial intelligence could not be copyrighted. This should link to a piece in The Guardian giving more context to this ruling.
So how then to value the work created by humans? Perhaps one way forward might be for individual writers to apply for something equivalent to a trademark to provide assurance that work carrying the mark has been created by an idientifiable individual, and that no ChatGPT or its like have been used. Use of such tools would disqualify use of trademarks. In other words we would be certifying ourselves and our work as ‘organically human’ (and, ideally, sustainable, ethical, and perhaps listed as originating from a particular region).
I may be a bit late with this idea but I thought I’d put it out there.
Heavy rain was forecast about a week ago, so I put on my biggest, most waterproofest hat and rushed this little prima donna/primo uomo indoors, and its lived there ever since.
It seems to me that it’s loving the indoor life, one of its ‘love apples’ going cheerful as Aperol almost instantly. The others still look a bit shy, but I’m hopeful.
Meanwhile it turned out that the day of heavy storms was not as bad as I thought it would be, at least not over us. So, perhaps my panic was a bit over primed, but maybe that’s what comes with being responsible for a star guest – in fact, this year, the only star guest on this blog, the only celebrity even. No idea who else would stand in … and we’ve got an interview scheduled for later in the year.
The Phraser 