But "The primary value of my work now appears to be as fodder for the AI woodchipper" is not the case for readers like me, who continue to read (and buy) books for their intrinsic value. Solidarity.
John, thanks for this thought-provoking piece and the link to The Atlantic article. Many of my academic articles are in that database and it's hard not to feel violated. I've long been fascinated by WWII propaganda art and now I envision the current administration doing something equally ham-fisted: "Create For The AI War On China!" Ugh.
As for "...mediocrity has to happen," I'm reading Adam Moss' terrific Work of Art which features 43 interviews with artists (broadly defined) exploring the evolution of a single piece. A common theme is artists having a period with little pressure that allowed their ideas and craft to incubate and blossom into greatness. I worry about a future in which young artists give up before producing more meaningful work. It's always been challenging for working-class artists to survive and now it's hard for nearly everyone without a trust fund.
That Adam Moss book is awesome, and this is a great connection to what B.D. McClay is talking about. The degree to which pretty much everyone Moss profiles had to literally search for a way into the time and space and experiences that would allow them to do what they've become known for is impossible to overstate. It's just how it works.
My thoughts about compensation for use of copyrighted material in LLMs access to which is sold for profit align with yours. However, Cory Doctorow's point that a better approach is to declare that any output from AI is in the public domain may be a safer and better approach. See https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/22/omnium-gatherum/
I'm aligned with Doctorow as a practical matter on the outputs. I think there's space for that AND for the providers of the data to be compensated on the input side of things. Maybe it wouldn't be much, but if this technology is going to ultimately achieve a kind of infinite value, it might be something.
Always up for a good Doctorow discussion (for those not immediately familiar, he’s the fellow who coined the term “enshittification” to describe the inevitable progressive worsening of online products and services when users’ information is the primary product being sold).
Ah well, once upon a time Alexander Pope translated Homer to make money because, he said at the time, he had no money, “not even to buy books.”
(I’d look up the citation but I confess I’m too lazy to pore through my dad’s dissertation—which I’m holding in my profile photo—to find it. But the line has stuck with me ever since I read it as an 18 year old planning to major in… Ancient Greek.)
Ah, The Known World. It’s so good. Maybe I should revisit it. So many good books though! Which reminds me, do you still have a lot of requests from new people? When are we eligible to “double dip?”
Good piece today. I’m a Chicago Tribune reader and enjoyed your story of the late John Feinstein. I read several of his books and they all told an interesting story in a well developed way. His journalism will be missed. Thanks for reminding me.
John, it's articles like this one that make me like, follow, and subscribe to you, to use the popular YouTube phrase. It's not particularly the content, or the attitude, but maybe a mix of both, or else just a certain je ne said quoi. You get the idea, I know. Also BIG snaps for The Known World. Omigosh.
For an author this must be sickening.
But "The primary value of my work now appears to be as fodder for the AI woodchipper" is not the case for readers like me, who continue to read (and buy) books for their intrinsic value. Solidarity.
John, thanks for this thought-provoking piece and the link to The Atlantic article. Many of my academic articles are in that database and it's hard not to feel violated. I've long been fascinated by WWII propaganda art and now I envision the current administration doing something equally ham-fisted: "Create For The AI War On China!" Ugh.
As for "...mediocrity has to happen," I'm reading Adam Moss' terrific Work of Art which features 43 interviews with artists (broadly defined) exploring the evolution of a single piece. A common theme is artists having a period with little pressure that allowed their ideas and craft to incubate and blossom into greatness. I worry about a future in which young artists give up before producing more meaningful work. It's always been challenging for working-class artists to survive and now it's hard for nearly everyone without a trust fund.
That Adam Moss book is awesome, and this is a great connection to what B.D. McClay is talking about. The degree to which pretty much everyone Moss profiles had to literally search for a way into the time and space and experiences that would allow them to do what they've become known for is impossible to overstate. It's just how it works.
My thoughts about compensation for use of copyrighted material in LLMs access to which is sold for profit align with yours. However, Cory Doctorow's point that a better approach is to declare that any output from AI is in the public domain may be a safer and better approach. See https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/22/omnium-gatherum/
I'm aligned with Doctorow as a practical matter on the outputs. I think there's space for that AND for the providers of the data to be compensated on the input side of things. Maybe it wouldn't be much, but if this technology is going to ultimately achieve a kind of infinite value, it might be something.
Thanks for the link! Doctorow discusses this in greater detail here: https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/20/everything-made-by-an-ai-is-in-the-public-domain/
Always up for a good Doctorow discussion (for those not immediately familiar, he’s the fellow who coined the term “enshittification” to describe the inevitable progressive worsening of online products and services when users’ information is the primary product being sold).
Thank you.
Ah well, once upon a time Alexander Pope translated Homer to make money because, he said at the time, he had no money, “not even to buy books.”
(I’d look up the citation but I confess I’m too lazy to pore through my dad’s dissertation—which I’m holding in my profile photo—to find it. But the line has stuck with me ever since I read it as an 18 year old planning to major in… Ancient Greek.)
Ah, The Known World. It’s so good. Maybe I should revisit it. So many good books though! Which reminds me, do you still have a lot of requests from new people? When are we eligible to “double dip?”
Good piece today. I’m a Chicago Tribune reader and enjoyed your story of the late John Feinstein. I read several of his books and they all told an interesting story in a well developed way. His journalism will be missed. Thanks for reminding me.
John, it's articles like this one that make me like, follow, and subscribe to you, to use the popular YouTube phrase. It's not particularly the content, or the attitude, but maybe a mix of both, or else just a certain je ne said quoi. You get the idea, I know. Also BIG snaps for The Known World. Omigosh.