Recently, my publisher told me that a major technology company involved in the development of artificial intelligence (AI) wants to use my book, \u201cStories from Montana\u2019s Enduring Frontier,\u201d \u201cfor AI training purposes.\u201d<\/p>\n
I would earn, the representative explained, $340 for \u201cthis one-time use.\u201d Is that one-time use like a wet wipe \u2014 disposable, expendable, easily sacrificed?<\/p>\n
\u201cStories from Montana\u2019s Enduring Frontier\u201d collected 20 years\u2019 worth of my essays to argue that 20th-century Montanans developed unique views of how nature worked, as captured in the wilderness-adventure and resource-extraction connotations of \u201cthe frontier.\u201d The book felt particularly foreign to anything in the world of AI.<\/p>\n
All the writers I know feel particularly vulnerable to AI. Most of today\u2019s commercial AI programs are \u201clarge language models,\u201d with skills not in logic, reasoning or math but merely in generating text. That directly threatens writers\u2019 jobs.<\/p>\n
Worse, replacing a human writer with today\u2019s generative AI is like replacing a wild raspberry with an artificially flavored Crystal Light. The error-filled, uncreative products of AI threaten not only writers but also the joy and usefulness of reading.<\/p>\n
While most people fulminate abstractly about AI, this query about buying my book presented a clear choice, sharpened by the specificity of \u201c$340.\u201d If I took the offer, would the knowledge I poured into these essays become available from an AI, decimating my book sales? If my royalties thus fell to zero because I had signed a death warrant for a book-that-is-like-a-child-to-me \u2014 was the $340 worth it?<\/p>\n
Perhaps $340 was better than nothing. Many technology companies train AI models by stealing from authors. Stories from Montana\u2019s Enduring Frontier was among four of my books pirated for the \u201cLibGen\u201d database, which was used to educate AI programs from Anthropic and Meta. Although Anthropic recently settled a resulting lawsuit, Meta and others may yet escape punishment.<\/p>\n
What is the proper value of my book? Although $340 is not much compensation for all the work I put in, neither is a royalty of $1.19 per book sold. If my main goal was adequate market compensation for my writing, I probably shouldn\u2019t have published a book in the first place. The book is now 12 years old. At current sales rates, it would take a few years to make $340 in royalties.<\/p>\n
When I talked with friends about this dilemma, it felt like none of us knew how to think about the situation. Maybe, as with previous technologies, making the book more widely available will stimulate sales \u2014 or maybe not. Maybe AI will thwart young people\u2019s ability to engage in intellectual careers \u2014 or maybe its perils are overhyped.<\/p>\n
Maybe AI will swallow my entire output without fair compensation \u2014 we know that Anthropic and Meta have already tried.<\/p>\n
My publisher wouldn\u2019t say which AI company made the offer, how it arrived at that take-it-or-leave-it price, or how it would use my book. Would I feel differently about the deal if AI contributed to the world\u2019s knowledge rather than merely helping students cheat?<\/p>\n
As I thought about this, I realized I was reflecting a distinctly human desire, rather than an AI desire. A large language model consumes a book as data. Its model requires ever more data to predict what the next word in a sentence should be.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s certainly ego-deflating to think of the product of my research, extensive reading, interviewing, thinking and finally writing as \u201cdata.\u201d I\u2019d prefer it to be \u201cknowledge\u201d or even \u201cwisdom\u201d that the AI wants to suck from me. I\u2019d prefer to think that it needs my well-told stories, my keen insights, my brilliant larger points.<\/p>\n
But AI doesn\u2019t think in such big-picture terms. It just predicts a word, and then another word, and then another. I realized that this is also a model for how nature works. There\u2019s no grand plan. No knowledge. No story with a satisfying ending. There\u2019s just a single cell reproducing. One leaf reaching for sunlight. A predator seeking its next dinner.<\/p>\n
John Clayton writes in Montana and is a contributor to Writers on the Range, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West, writersontherange.org. Read his newsletter at naturalstories.substack.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Recently, my publisher told me that a major technology company involved in the development of artificial intelligence (AI)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234248,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[223,88,2558,1767,55607],"class_list":{"0":"post-234247","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-latest-headlines","11":"tag-opinion","12":"tag-opinion-columnists"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}