I don't do NaNoWriMo because every month is novel-writing month for me. (I like to think of it as being akin to the vampires and monsters on Buffy having a night off for Halloween).
But I do vaguely follow NaNoWriMo from a distance, the same way an MMA fighter might stop to enjoy a punch-up between two drunks in the car park of Guzman e Gomez. And last week things got super punchy.
From The Verge:
The organization behind National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is being slammed online after it claimed that opposing the use of AI writing tools is “classist and ableist.” On Saturday, NaNoWriMo published its stance on the technology, announcing that it doesn’t explicitly support or condemn any approach to writing.
“We believe that to categorically condemn AI would be to ignore classist and ableist issues surrounding the use of the technology, and that questions around the use of AI tie to questions around privilege,” NaNoWriMo said, arguing that “not all brains” have the “same abilities” and that AI tools can reduce the financial burden of hiring human writing assistants.
It’s pretty fucking weird, to be honest. The classist-ableist stuff sounds like po-faced 4Chan trolling. I mean, I understand that we’d all like to ‘reduce the financial burden of hiring human writing assistants, ’ but… actually, no, that’s not even a real thing.
As for “not all brains” have the “same abilities”, well duh.
But what I really don’t understand is why these guys would lead with the chin like this. Why open yourself to a flood of AI sludge? I don’t think there’s a prize for Nanowrimo, so it’s not like anyone has to wade through billions of words worth of submissions. But I don’t really see the point of running an event to encourage human writers (professional or amateur) to lean into their writing if what they’re going to lean into is writing prompts for ChatGPT. And I say this as someone who has no trouble using AI to do basic data management on manuscripts.
I think it’s probably just a symptom of the derangement that’s coming for everything with this stuff.
I think of music. For years now, there has been a lot of music being created just on laptops. This has taken away the dreadful tyranny of music making being confined to people who have actually learnt to play a musical instrument. Still, some musical sense had to be used to compile the computer sound elements to create a song. Now, there are 1000s of songs being uploaded daily produced entirely by AI. No human skill required except for those included in the plagiarised data base.
This is certainly the full democratization of recorded music making. On the other hand, most of the history of recorded music is now available virtually for free.
Apparently, someone asked ChatGPT about AI software and got this response.
“Creative AI tools can be seen as sophisticated plagiarism software, as they do not produce genuinely original content but rather emulate and modify existing works by artists, subtly enough to circumvent copyright laws.”
Yeah. These days, the lead disclaimer in my books, along with groveling about how all f*kups are mine, states that my book is not an AI-generated product. What is the point of creativity if you need an AI to generate it? This post was originally followed by a screed lambasting ripped-off work, but for clarity, I deleted that drivel. Suffice it to say that if you want to write a book, write it, and then take legit heat or praise. AI-generated copy is not yours- it is skimmed from tens of thousands of real human authors.
The suggestion that objecting to tolerating AI in a challenge to write a novel in month is classist or ableist is quite remarkable. Unless I'm sorely mistaken, the class and ability barriers in writing have always been around getting works published, not actually writing them. And I would have thought that it's those that are more privileged that would have access to AI tools. So how does this erase the barriers for the less advantaged? It's all very odd.
Over on the platform formerly known as Twitter it's gone down like the proverbial lead balloon. People are PISSED, and authors are cutting all ties and associations with the NaNoWriMo organisation in protest. Considering all you need to get started on your writing journey is a notepad and a pen if you have nothing else, the argument that AI will in any way 'assist' or 'enhance' the act of putting words on a page is laughable.
"And I would have thought that it's those that are more privileged that would have access to AI tools." - Can confirm, as someone who writes off multiple AI tool subscriptions on his tax.
I think the classist/ableist point here is partly, it takes a high degree of literacy to write a book. Literacy levels are strongly correlated with socioeconomic status. Therefore, denying people access to available tools tends to restrict authorship to people of higher socioeconomic status.
If you didn’t allow people to use power tools, you would tend to limit construction work opportunities to physically strong men.
Huh re: literacy levels/socioeconomic status. I am the child of a long line of non-high school educated people, let alone college. I've written nine long-form novels to date. I was taught to read in a rural grade school, and then I discovered fiction via a pile of discarded dime store sci-fi/action-adventure books in a box in the barn thanks to my dad, who barely made it out of high school with a trip to Vietnam soon afterward. Long before I attended university on the GI Bill, I was an avid reader. This explains why I never read Chekov or Austen, but I was able to craft a yarn because I've seen so many examples of compelling fiction with no high-level instruction involved. I made a deal with Uncle Sam: I don't get killed, I get an education, and eventually a pension maybe. So I'm not seeing the high-economic status thing regarding writing. Literature, perhaps, but not writing writ large.
There is parkrun and then there are actual marathons. Anyone can join in a parkrun: that's the point, but the just-joiners have no expectations of placing or even qualifying for the state championship. However I'm pretty sure that golf buggies aren't permitted in parkruns.
True, but it's not like NaNoWriMo is the sole purveyor of access to writing a book or becoming an author. There's absolutely nothing stopping someone who feels they need the support of AI tools to get their book done using them to write a book outside of the NanNoWriMo framework, or even in a different month of the year. Nothing stopping them from quietly "doing" NaNoWriMo in their own time with no one's permission or oversight.
Until this controversy erupted I had no idea there was an actual NaNoWriMo organisation; I figured NaNoWriMo was one of those random internet things that became an actual thing where people just committed to trying to write a novel in a month. I was surprised that it was a thing that is run, and that there was an actual organisation running it.
OH NO. This is where the Finishers come in, isn't it?
Hmm the response from this organization defending the use of AI sounds suspiciously like a response that would be given from Chat GPT to do just that . There in lies the conundrum eh ?
Why would you want to encourage that? I thought it was some sort of (human) challenge, like a daily word count. Even I can do a daily 2000 word count if it involves typing "this is so shit", and copying and pasting 500 times.
This may be the wrong place for nitpicking, but it's GyG, not GeG. e è italiano and y es espanol.
I was wondering what writers thought about spicy clippy and NaNoWriMo smack down. You take seems pretty reasonable. I on the other hand don't do NaNoWriMo because every month I'm a reader not a writer.
I think of music. For years now, there has been a lot of music being created just on laptops. This has taken away the dreadful tyranny of music making being confined to people who have actually learnt to play a musical instrument. Still, some musical sense had to be used to compile the computer sound elements to create a song. Now, there are 1000s of songs being uploaded daily produced entirely by AI. No human skill required except for those included in the plagiarised data base.
This is certainly the full democratization of recorded music making. On the other hand, most of the history of recorded music is now available virtually for free.
Apparently, someone asked ChatGPT about AI software and got this response.
“Creative AI tools can be seen as sophisticated plagiarism software, as they do not produce genuinely original content but rather emulate and modify existing works by artists, subtly enough to circumvent copyright laws.”
Yeah. These days, the lead disclaimer in my books, along with groveling about how all f*kups are mine, states that my book is not an AI-generated product. What is the point of creativity if you need an AI to generate it? This post was originally followed by a screed lambasting ripped-off work, but for clarity, I deleted that drivel. Suffice it to say that if you want to write a book, write it, and then take legit heat or praise. AI-generated copy is not yours- it is skimmed from tens of thousands of real human authors.
The suggestion that objecting to tolerating AI in a challenge to write a novel in month is classist or ableist is quite remarkable. Unless I'm sorely mistaken, the class and ability barriers in writing have always been around getting works published, not actually writing them. And I would have thought that it's those that are more privileged that would have access to AI tools. So how does this erase the barriers for the less advantaged? It's all very odd.
Over on the platform formerly known as Twitter it's gone down like the proverbial lead balloon. People are PISSED, and authors are cutting all ties and associations with the NaNoWriMo organisation in protest. Considering all you need to get started on your writing journey is a notepad and a pen if you have nothing else, the argument that AI will in any way 'assist' or 'enhance' the act of putting words on a page is laughable.
"And I would have thought that it's those that are more privileged that would have access to AI tools." - Can confirm, as someone who writes off multiple AI tool subscriptions on his tax.
I think the classist/ableist point here is partly, it takes a high degree of literacy to write a book. Literacy levels are strongly correlated with socioeconomic status. Therefore, denying people access to available tools tends to restrict authorship to people of higher socioeconomic status.
If you didn’t allow people to use power tools, you would tend to limit construction work opportunities to physically strong men.
Huh re: literacy levels/socioeconomic status. I am the child of a long line of non-high school educated people, let alone college. I've written nine long-form novels to date. I was taught to read in a rural grade school, and then I discovered fiction via a pile of discarded dime store sci-fi/action-adventure books in a box in the barn thanks to my dad, who barely made it out of high school with a trip to Vietnam soon afterward. Long before I attended university on the GI Bill, I was an avid reader. This explains why I never read Chekov or Austen, but I was able to craft a yarn because I've seen so many examples of compelling fiction with no high-level instruction involved. I made a deal with Uncle Sam: I don't get killed, I get an education, and eventually a pension maybe. So I'm not seeing the high-economic status thing regarding writing. Literature, perhaps, but not writing writ large.
There is parkrun and then there are actual marathons. Anyone can join in a parkrun: that's the point, but the just-joiners have no expectations of placing or even qualifying for the state championship. However I'm pretty sure that golf buggies aren't permitted in parkruns.
True, but it's not like NaNoWriMo is the sole purveyor of access to writing a book or becoming an author. There's absolutely nothing stopping someone who feels they need the support of AI tools to get their book done using them to write a book outside of the NanNoWriMo framework, or even in a different month of the year. Nothing stopping them from quietly "doing" NaNoWriMo in their own time with no one's permission or oversight.
Until this controversy erupted I had no idea there was an actual NaNoWriMo organisation; I figured NaNoWriMo was one of those random internet things that became an actual thing where people just committed to trying to write a novel in a month. I was surprised that it was a thing that is run, and that there was an actual organisation running it.
OH NO. This is where the Finishers come in, isn't it?
Hmm the response from this organization defending the use of AI sounds suspiciously like a response that would be given from Chat GPT to do just that . There in lies the conundrum eh ?
It's almost as though they have some interest in exposing AI training models to the data/copy generated by the competition.
Why would you want to encourage that? I thought it was some sort of (human) challenge, like a daily word count. Even I can do a daily 2000 word count if it involves typing "this is so shit", and copying and pasting 500 times.
This may be the wrong place for nitpicking, but it's GyG, not GeG. e è italiano and y es espanol.
Or should it just have been zambrero?
Isn't that what they use on ice rinks?
I was wondering what writers thought about spicy clippy and NaNoWriMo smack down. You take seems pretty reasonable. I on the other hand don't do NaNoWriMo because every month I'm a reader not a writer.