For centuries authors have been breathing life into pages and creating worlds that the ‘mango-man’ (regular person) doesn’t even fathom. And in one fine swoop technology wants to change it.
Or atleast make them think they’ll be losing it all.
When I read about the editor, Maxwell Perkin, of The Great Gatsby contributing significantly to the book, it seemed like a dream come true. Who wouldn’t want a staunch supporter with a creative mind right from the start.
So today when I came across this post I paused:
The idea of technology stealing from authors has been around since many of us discovered AI could write and write well. But we have been on it case ever since the mechanism behind that learning was disclosed.
AI is not going anywhere, but legislation for new tech keeps popping up… it has to or the human nature of profiting from unequal gains would take over. However, in this case, it feels like an unequal game.
Technology fighting for existence and learning at the expense of human profits (those from creative endeavors) is a new concept. In the past, technology advanced with a significant human element intact, but this time there would be less and less of it.
Is that alarming? Quite frankly, yes. At the point of writing this post, I don’t know of any financial standpoint that allows for distribution of profits from tasks that humans have less and less participation in.
But human participation is being reshaped.
Do we need new accounting systems? Maybe.
Will it make work free? Maybe. Some part of it already is.
If AI could write and get better at it exponentially, then ‘work’ as traditionally defined; the act of producing written work, may become less and less synonymous with monetary gains.
And if that happens- what do we attach monetary value to?
In some cases, publishers have decided to charge AI companies for scanning published work- which would eventually add to the royalties of authors too.
But wouldn’t ‘learning’ eventually lead to producing something that resembles creative work in the end by the AI? And wouldn’t legislation become cumbersome if it had to be updated and changed frequently?
It’s still a developing scenario.
In the mean time, I think AI is the creative buddy, the Perkins, we can use based on its current abilities. Since it is already trained on authors’ books, why not use it to flesh out plots and characters.
Fun Note: I thought I’d ask AI what is Don’t Steal This Book and if it would really steal the work of authors. Here is what it had to say.
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