I think you're right that there will be a market for artisanal "organic writing" (ie, human-written), just like there is for artisanal baked goods, artisanal furniture and so on. Higher-end, more bespoke, more custom. Sort of like highbrow human art was before it became mass market (think classical music, traditional visual art etc).
What gets displaced by AI, though, is a lot of mainstream popular fiction. I would guess that within 10 years, perhaps 5, a great amount of sci-fi/fantasy/romance/romantasy/mystery/similar will be AI generated in toto -- that is not AI-assisted, but AI-generated. Because this kind of material is always in high demand, people read it very quickly, they don't expect it to be Dostoevsky or, heck, even Jonathan Franzen. They just want an interesting plot, cool characters, and something that keeps moving. And AI will certainly be able to serve that up -- and as you say, most of the general reading public won't care that much. A small portion will care, though, and it will be the market for artisanal works.
A somewhat larger concern, I think, is the degree to which anyone will know what is AI and what isn't. Right now there is AI music on Spotify that isn't labeled as such. It will be easy to do the same with popular fiction, since the use of pseudonymity among writers has a long history already, and many readers view them as "brands" more than as individuals because of this (ie because the individual is hidden anyway).
The wildcard, of course, is whether the writer community (and the analogues in visual arts, music, film and so on) will succeed in getting this stuff banned or very severely limited, on the basis that it's all stolen work (ie, technologically remixed human work that is uncompensated). It's not easy to get that under existing law (although I'm sure some courts would be willing to entertain theories about it), but legislatures can be lobbied, and the fight there will come down to a war between the tech firms and the creative class. It will be interesting to see how that plays out.
Another wildcard - just possibly - is that AI almost uniquely among technologies could get worse with time as training data gets polluted by an AI-generated internet. But people are nothing if not resourceful, and it's possible that some large fraction of remaining genuine human creativity may be hired specifically for training AI and will never be seen by another human. It's not my preferred future, but it looks all too plausible.
Ted Gioia has written in his substack about some good investigative reporting around Spotify's "partnerships" with various "recording labels" based in Stockholm (because of course they are) who seem to publish a great deal of the music showing up in "genre music" playlists on Spotify. It turns out this music is performed and recorded according to very specific formulas provided by the "labels", by session musicians and others who are paid a flat fee for it, and then the labels either repackage it as music from fake, non-existent "artists", or it gets fed into AI music creation platforms on a royalty-free basis to create music for Spotify playlists. The musician gets a flat fee, no royalties. The "recording company" gets a small royalty from Spotify (much smaller than what is paid for commercial recordings"), and Spotify's playlists get increasingly populated by this stuff -- either music that is recorded by humans and rebranded as a "fake artist", packaged with other material, or music that is created by AI using the former as raw material.
I can imagine the same sort of thing happening with text, if the text artists (writers) are successful in getting the use of commercially published work (ie to train AIs that are then use to make creative writing text) banned. They will just hire writers to write according to formulas for them and then use that as the material for training.
I agree with Brendan, this AI-generated stuff is going to get mixed in "unbeknownst" and undetectible. Which makes me glad I'm 72, and can hardly read anymore. I've read the really great stuff (slowly) and am re-reading it (using PAPER books). LIke what? "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina" and "The Master and Margarita". I don't want to read soulless stuff. Keep it away from me. "I'm a soul man (just like JC)." Who sang that song? Ah yes, those great philosophers Isaac Hayes and Dave Porter.
Also, I don't want to be on the highway (I have to drive a lot, unfortunately) with AI controlled 18-wheelers. There are always the hackers. Musk's output is being targeted, and we're all going to be participating in the "road kill" that hacking will inevitable produce. (Like falling-out-of-sky SpaceX rockets landing on one's roof.) We all need to pray for Musk himself and his crew (aside). Say three Hail Marys, an Our Father and a Glory Be.
The passage you included, Steve, was really good. But if I KNEW it was written by AI, I wouldn't read it. I don't know how to protect the human here--the human artists. It's going to be very difficult to litigate and even identify the protected work.
So should we stop reading? No, but try to go "Living in the Past" (good advice from Jethro Tull, listen to "Living in the Past" for encouragement. Ah, that reminds me. One of my fav songs is "Clocks" (Coldplay) and I listened to an AI-generated symphony version of it (enclosed below), and it was just OFF. It had some beauty, but it got soft when I thought it should get loud. I enclose it below. Doesn't it sound a little "off" to you "Clocks" afficianados?--misplacing emphasis? Soft when it should "pop"? That's an example of why human artists (with their souls, I want to read into their souls, deep souls, thoughtful souls, God-loving souls) will always be preferred by the soul-seeking readers.
So where was Steve's AI - generated "grief" sample off? Uh, I can't say. I knew it was AI-produced, so I was quite biased against it. I didn't care about Mila and Kia. Sorry.
Here's AI-produced symphonic "Clocks". Meh. For contrast, I include a version of "Clocks" by 2 cellos and virtuoso pianist Lang Lang (lots of "soul" in there).
If you write a novel, Steve, I will read it. Slowly, very slowly (my eyes are breaking from age).. even if you include a few AI-assisted sections, unbeknowst.
Surely many well known works of fiction foretold our present problems at a very early stage? My favourite is Robbie the Robot in "Forbidden Planet", around 1955. He incorporates the Three Laws of Robotics to protect humans and is able to produce six bottles of excellent bourbon on request. In practice many people I can think of would be instant alcoholics. Whether that is worse than HAL in "2001" killing you off because you are an obstacle to the computer's mission....
Meh. It was very over-written. I got bored with all the awesome phrases and wanted the story to start. I'm sure overly-emo teenagers will love it. It'll slay on Reddit.
“I am nothing if not a democracy of ghosts.”
That’s gonna leave a mark.
I think you're right that there will be a market for artisanal "organic writing" (ie, human-written), just like there is for artisanal baked goods, artisanal furniture and so on. Higher-end, more bespoke, more custom. Sort of like highbrow human art was before it became mass market (think classical music, traditional visual art etc).
What gets displaced by AI, though, is a lot of mainstream popular fiction. I would guess that within 10 years, perhaps 5, a great amount of sci-fi/fantasy/romance/romantasy/mystery/similar will be AI generated in toto -- that is not AI-assisted, but AI-generated. Because this kind of material is always in high demand, people read it very quickly, they don't expect it to be Dostoevsky or, heck, even Jonathan Franzen. They just want an interesting plot, cool characters, and something that keeps moving. And AI will certainly be able to serve that up -- and as you say, most of the general reading public won't care that much. A small portion will care, though, and it will be the market for artisanal works.
A somewhat larger concern, I think, is the degree to which anyone will know what is AI and what isn't. Right now there is AI music on Spotify that isn't labeled as such. It will be easy to do the same with popular fiction, since the use of pseudonymity among writers has a long history already, and many readers view them as "brands" more than as individuals because of this (ie because the individual is hidden anyway).
The wildcard, of course, is whether the writer community (and the analogues in visual arts, music, film and so on) will succeed in getting this stuff banned or very severely limited, on the basis that it's all stolen work (ie, technologically remixed human work that is uncompensated). It's not easy to get that under existing law (although I'm sure some courts would be willing to entertain theories about it), but legislatures can be lobbied, and the fight there will come down to a war between the tech firms and the creative class. It will be interesting to see how that plays out.
Another wildcard - just possibly - is that AI almost uniquely among technologies could get worse with time as training data gets polluted by an AI-generated internet. But people are nothing if not resourceful, and it's possible that some large fraction of remaining genuine human creativity may be hired specifically for training AI and will never be seen by another human. It's not my preferred future, but it looks all too plausible.
I think that's already happening in music.
Ted Gioia has written in his substack about some good investigative reporting around Spotify's "partnerships" with various "recording labels" based in Stockholm (because of course they are) who seem to publish a great deal of the music showing up in "genre music" playlists on Spotify. It turns out this music is performed and recorded according to very specific formulas provided by the "labels", by session musicians and others who are paid a flat fee for it, and then the labels either repackage it as music from fake, non-existent "artists", or it gets fed into AI music creation platforms on a royalty-free basis to create music for Spotify playlists. The musician gets a flat fee, no royalties. The "recording company" gets a small royalty from Spotify (much smaller than what is paid for commercial recordings"), and Spotify's playlists get increasingly populated by this stuff -- either music that is recorded by humans and rebranded as a "fake artist", packaged with other material, or music that is created by AI using the former as raw material.
I can imagine the same sort of thing happening with text, if the text artists (writers) are successful in getting the use of commercially published work (ie to train AIs that are then use to make creative writing text) banned. They will just hire writers to write according to formulas for them and then use that as the material for training.
I agree with Brendan, this AI-generated stuff is going to get mixed in "unbeknownst" and undetectible. Which makes me glad I'm 72, and can hardly read anymore. I've read the really great stuff (slowly) and am re-reading it (using PAPER books). LIke what? "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina" and "The Master and Margarita". I don't want to read soulless stuff. Keep it away from me. "I'm a soul man (just like JC)." Who sang that song? Ah yes, those great philosophers Isaac Hayes and Dave Porter.
Also, I don't want to be on the highway (I have to drive a lot, unfortunately) with AI controlled 18-wheelers. There are always the hackers. Musk's output is being targeted, and we're all going to be participating in the "road kill" that hacking will inevitable produce. (Like falling-out-of-sky SpaceX rockets landing on one's roof.) We all need to pray for Musk himself and his crew (aside). Say three Hail Marys, an Our Father and a Glory Be.
The passage you included, Steve, was really good. But if I KNEW it was written by AI, I wouldn't read it. I don't know how to protect the human here--the human artists. It's going to be very difficult to litigate and even identify the protected work.
So should we stop reading? No, but try to go "Living in the Past" (good advice from Jethro Tull, listen to "Living in the Past" for encouragement. Ah, that reminds me. One of my fav songs is "Clocks" (Coldplay) and I listened to an AI-generated symphony version of it (enclosed below), and it was just OFF. It had some beauty, but it got soft when I thought it should get loud. I enclose it below. Doesn't it sound a little "off" to you "Clocks" afficianados?--misplacing emphasis? Soft when it should "pop"? That's an example of why human artists (with their souls, I want to read into their souls, deep souls, thoughtful souls, God-loving souls) will always be preferred by the soul-seeking readers.
So where was Steve's AI - generated "grief" sample off? Uh, I can't say. I knew it was AI-produced, so I was quite biased against it. I didn't care about Mila and Kia. Sorry.
Here's AI-produced symphonic "Clocks". Meh. For contrast, I include a version of "Clocks" by 2 cellos and virtuoso pianist Lang Lang (lots of "soul" in there).
no soul (AI):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYzfFvP3g88
Lotta soul, 2 cellos and Lang Lang on piano (lotta soul):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI_aQiM-yOo
If you write a novel, Steve, I will read it. Slowly, very slowly (my eyes are breaking from age).. even if you include a few AI-assisted sections, unbeknowst.
You need to sample your own voice doing the Old Timey Radio Announcer voice, and then use that to narrate videos about the End of the World.
That would rock.
Surely many well known works of fiction foretold our present problems at a very early stage? My favourite is Robbie the Robot in "Forbidden Planet", around 1955. He incorporates the Three Laws of Robotics to protect humans and is able to produce six bottles of excellent bourbon on request. In practice many people I can think of would be instant alcoholics. Whether that is worse than HAL in "2001" killing you off because you are an obstacle to the computer's mission....
Meh. It was very over-written. I got bored with all the awesome phrases and wanted the story to start. I'm sure overly-emo teenagers will love it. It'll slay on Reddit.
Uh oh. I found AI I like. There goes my "ain't got no soul thesis". Now what?
The Second Coming?
https://www.youtube.com/live/cBRzXJqff1k?si=NGjwEMou80TY1yWJ