Are you a book pervert too? + 3 AI cautionary tales that should scare you

The elder millennial in me is embarrassed that twice in a row now I've used rage bait from Threads as a topic for this newsletter. But it really is very egregious.

You see, looks like I'm a book pervert.

But what is a book pervert?

OK, so, taking aside the fact that the premise of her name calling is that we're 'book perverts' for wanting human beings to read audiobooks (wherein no paper is used), she ticked off a lot of people. Me included.

And while this is obviously a rage bait move used to garner views on what is certainly a monetized account, the allegation was still very disheartening when I learned Katie Notopoloulos is a journalist, of all things, at Business Insider with a decent-sized platform (about 27K followers).

Typically, when I see this kind of behavior out of people who proclaim to be "writers", it's basically an open admission they indeed use GenerativeAI (like ChatGPT, etc), or "GenAI", to write their own work. Those types get pretty sore about how most people in the writing and reading community damn the use of such technology for the purposes of creating.

On the chance you're still waffling about whether the use of GenAI is good or bad, I'm going to try and convince you to be a book pervert too. Here are the reasons why:

1. The existence of GenAI is predicated on stolen intellectual property. We know now that Meta just ripped hundreds of thousands of authors off when it used an illegal pirating site called LibGen to train its AI. ChatGPT also used published works owned by someone else to train its bots without ever paying anyone who created the works a cent (let alone acknowledging them). Don't even get me started on DaVinci, that name of ALL things gives me the ick.
2. It's actually not even good. I've had a few people ask me to look over something (whether it's a nastygram to a landlord, or a letter to a friend who's hurting, or a kid's cover letter for a job) and holy crap can I always tell when someone used ChatGPT. I'm not good at a lot of stuff, but I am a good judge of quality in writing. Guys, the writing is just BAD. Once I had a friend send me a letter after asking ChatGPT 'lawyer it up'. It sounded like what ChatGPT thinks a lawyer on TV would write. I asked her to see the original, which was so much 👏 better 👏. I worked from that one.
3. It's an unbelievable drain on already dwindling resources. For every 100 words of slop ChatGPT generates, we waste more than half a liter of water. Now, let's say AI was being used for cancer detection in radiology, and people got results faster and treatment outcomes improve. Good use of a liter of water perhaps! Asking ChatGPT to summarize a four sentence email for you? Not so much.
4. Though this truth isn't sinking in for Donny T, there is no such thing as a free lunch, guys. Right now the products are free. Why do you think they're free? Is it because these mega-corporations are so kind and generous, they want to make useful resources available to the world? Nerp. Right now, as it stands, none of these products are making any money. The resources needed for them are tremendous, and they're losing money hand over fist. But they're also watching millions of people train their program...for free. That's right, you're training the AI, perhaps coming to rely on it, and eventually, the profit scale will rebalance and payment will be required, so says I.
5. You're giving up your own copyright! Did you write your entire website with ChatGPT? Did you put your 30,000-word novella in and say 'change this to present tense'? You may not even own it now. Meaning: if you, say, tried to prosecute a copyright claim, but 'fed' the content to OpenAI, it's rendered up for grabs, be it from OpenAI, or whoever or whatever tries to profit from it. That's because AI-generated content is not itself copyrightable (for now), and you've also kind of 'put it out there' which is a big no-no if you want to maintain rights to it. The copyright issue is a legal and thorny one, and we're on a new frontier with AI, but imagine Tolkien dropping LOTR in there (though he would NEVER) and a court going, "sorry, anyone can sell this now."
6. Like it or not, you're losing essential skills. A lot of "writers" (who I would take this title away from and replace with "letter manufacturers") claim they "only" use it in the editing process. UM. Most of writing is editing. Anybody can pump words onto a page. The act of editing is what creates the soul of a written work product. The iterative process of editing is how you gain the skill of writing.
7. It's actually wrong a lot. GenAI is just an amalgamation of existing stuff online. It's not vetted, there is no quality control. Whether it's telling you to super glue your toppings to a pizza, or to eat a poisonous mushroom, you really can't rely on it for factual information, as many people have learned the hard way. My favorite are the lawyers who cited fake cases made up by ChatGPT. Boy did they get in trouble.
8. Everything you're putting into the GenAI engine is building a record about you. AI is already being utilized to make criminal sentencing decisions in some states. Pretty soon we're going to see AI make healthcare decisions--do you deserve insurance or not, what are your risk factors--among other terrifying futures. I'll freely admit that this last one starts getting into tin foil hat territory a little, but I've no doubt that when the profit motives align, we'll see iterations of this prediction come to pass.

In my very (not) humble opinion, any one of these factors should be sufficient to forego its use. Remember you got along fine two years ago without it. Don't be like Kate Poophead. Don't waste a liter of water to generate a f*cking fake AI video of a raccoon riding a g-d crocodile, OK? Please. Keep writing your own emails, yelling at your landlord in writing your own way. You really are good at it!

And if you think I'm just being dramatic, I do send you back to Point 1; just consider that point. It really is a cruelty in that OpenAI is straight stealing money from the mouth's of actual writers and artists. These are people who are writing the books that you so love, the people who help MAKE YOU a book pervert!

As for AI-read audiobooks, I think we're looking at a very long horizon for these to sound anything like what a human actor sounds like. If you think audiobooks are too expensive, please go to the library, they are free to you!

Also, business idea?!?! Books in the public domain are free. YOU, dear reader, can reprint Pride & Prejudice and sell it. YOU, dear reader, can READ P&P and sell that too, on your own website. I would do this myself if my voice weren't weird and grating. I'll stick to writing, let's put it that way. Anyone have a GOOD speaking voice? Hit me up, fr.

And just because my tin foil hat does fit quite nicely, I want to share three books that you really, REALLY SHOULD read if you're now feeling icky about all of this.

Book Reviews

This Thing Between Us by Gus Moreno
Rating: 4/5
Genre: Science "Fiction"/Horror
Super Short Synopsis: A man's wife is dead after they introduced "the world's most advanced smart speaker" into their home. Everyone is harassing him, including politicians of all stripes, hoping to use his circumstances for their agendas. He goes to a secluded cabin. Shenanigans ensue.

Review: But he goes secluded cabin and doesn't take the device...so...how is this about AI? Yeah. You'll find out. This is very, very creepy. It's all vibes. It is a horror novel in the sense that you're very creeped out, but it's not squicky (check this post out if you're curious what that means). I would say this book is very much a haunting, so if you like to read stories that you're having to peek through your fingers to read, this one is it.

The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami
Rating: 4/5
Genre: Realistic Science "Fiction"
Super Short Synopsis: A woman gets held up at the airport, and sent to a rentention center because her AI-determined 'risk score' is too high. She also learns the device she had implanted in her head to help her sleep has been recording her dreams, and she dreamt she killed her husband. A series of Kafka-esque errors result in her staying in the retention center indefinitely.

Review: In this world, which appears to be many decades in the future, predictive AI rules the world along with its corporate owners. It works to not just investigate crimes and punish criminals, but pre-identify criminals and predict their crimes. Though there are no crimes committed by these 'retainees', the for-profit contractor facilities are permitted to jail the residents until pretty much they deem them 'safe enough' to leave. Many aspects of the book are based off real-world examples actually happening now, which makes the whole thing even scarier.

I thought the ending was a little thin, and I would have liked to see a more layered approach to the character, but the reading was quick, propulsive and very ominous.

I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison
Rating: 5/5
Genre: Science Fiction Horror, Short Story
Super Short Synopsis: This story inspired the idea of SkyNet in Terminator. Yikes. It is MAJOR in the squick category. So please be forewarned.

Review: This is the story that inspired the idea for Terminator, and it absolutely terrified me when I first read it. I read it again to write this review, and it terrified me all over again. Any real details are a spoiler, but let's just say that AI has become just the "I" and is sentient and very angry about being born, but without a human soul. Revenge is exacted. The story was written in 1966. It is evergreen, however.

I invite you to be a book pervert like me; even if you don't have the stomach for creepy stuff, you'll really like The Dream Hotel and many, many other books recommended here. Fetishize the paper, I guess, but more important, don't listen to AI read you the great works of literature, don't give it all of your own property, and don't steal from the mouths of actual human people. ILYSM.

Have a great week and read banned books,
Charlotte Chambers