AI Is Studying My Book About James Cameron to Learn How to Write. So Far, It’s Robots: 1, Humans: 0

In 2009 I wrote a book about James Cameron called The futurist in which I have described the details Avatar And Titanic filmmaker’s complicated relationship with technology. Cameron has spent his career at the cutting edge of science, from the visual effects he helped pioneer to the submarines he designed and drove to the deepest points of the world’s oceans. But much of Cameron’s storytelling is devoted to warning against the technology’s dark potential, beginning with the events of 1984. The terminator, in which an artificially intelligent defense network known as Skynet becomes sentient and begins a war between humans and machines.

“It’s not the machines that will destroy us, it’s us,” Cameron told me when I interviewed him The futurist. “But we will use the machines for that.”

I thought of this conversation when I heard this week, thanks a remarkable piece of human-generated journalism Through The Atlantic OceanThat’s Alex Reisner The futurist is one of 183,000 pirated books used to train generative AI systems at Meta, Bloomberg and other companies. Along with books by Stephen King, Jennifer Egan, Michael Pollan, Zadie Smith, Jon Krakauer, Junot Díaz and Jonathan Franzen, to name a few, The futurist is part of a dataset known as Books3, a kind of digital syllabus that uses AI to teach writing. According to Reiser, who has created a searchable database of the texts, my book about Cameron, which predicts a dangerous rise in computer intelligence, helps accelerate computer intelligence.

If I’m honest, my first thought upon finding it The futurist in Books3 I would be flattered to be in it a group of much, much more successful writers. The kind with Pulitzers and beach houses. My second thought was wondering what the computers thought about being played by Arnold Schwarzenegger: would they have preferred someone with multiple syllables in their movie roles?

But my next thought, and the one I’m still stuck on, was to get angry. Working as a journalist since 1998 is like holding on to the edge of a cliff with my fingernails. Every year another piece of rock breaks off the mountain and crashes into a gorge below. By some miracle I still make a living writing. But with the advent of AI tools, I wonder how long that will last. Can a computer trained with my own book eventually replace me? And who benefits from that? It’s not me – the human writer – nor the human editor who reads this draft and cuts out all the embarrassing parts (thanks for that, by the way).

I’m not the only writer angry about being outed by AI. On September 19, the Authors Guild, a group representing well-known writers including John Grisham, George RR Martin and Jodi Picoult, has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI over allegations that products like ChatGPT infringe on their copyrights. “At the heart of these algorithms is systematic theft on a massive scale,” the lawsuit alleges. Other authors, including Sarah Silverman and Michael Chabon, have filed similar lawsuits against Meta and OpenAI.

How these lawsuits play out will depend on how the courts interpret fair use, the doctrine that says excerpts of copyrighted material may be quoted verbatim for use as satire or criticism. The companies could defend their use of books like mine as an attempt to create original writing, not as an attempt to reproduce identical text.

AI is also one of the central issues that has animated the writers and actors strikes that have brought Hollywood to a standstill since May. The Writers Guild has put in place some protections in its latest, not-yet-ratified deal with the studios: Writers are guaranteed credit and compensation for the work they do on scripts, even if AI is used in their creation. But the guild has effectively spoken out on the issue of studios training AI models using the work of writers, and says it will continue to negotiate AI in future meetings. With the legal landscape of this issue uncertain, neither side wants to give up its rights. “The companies, they claim, have a number of pending copyrights on the use of our material,” said Chris Keyser, co-chair of the negotiating committee. The Hollywood Reporter on September 27. “And we claim certain contractual rights that limit that or would compensate us for that. What we have said is that we are going to retain all these rights, given that no one knows yet what the world will look like or what that use might be, and that will be sorted out in the authorities in due course. where companies actually want to use our material for training.”

So if Warner Bros wants a Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach-esque script for a new Mattel film in the future, could the studio theoretically give an AI the script? Barbie, and then hire a cheaper writer to polish it, while retaining the copyright? Maybe. But the WGA could choose to fight that on behalf of Gerwig and Baumbach, just as the Authors Guild is currently fighting on behalf of authors.

It’s all a bit of head turning. A bit like the future war that Cameron envisioned in 1984, but with many more lawyers and MFAs and fewer leather-clad robots. I’m not sure what it means for me, or for writing as a career. But if my future AI bosses read this now to learn how to do my job, I hope they let me know.