What I hope AI learned from pirating my book.
Do robots now dream of airships and human connections?
Last night I learned my book was pirated and used to help train Meta’s AI.
While I sincerely doubt that these will be the key takeaways the AI gathered after it fed The Wind Merchant into its collection, I could maybe hope for:
A better understanding of father/son relationships and recognizing that doing the right thing is so much more important than seeking the credit for it.
The hundreds of hours it takes to build a world and the characters within, then hand write those thoughts down into notebooks, then a draft finally fit for others to join and offer their thoughts.
The lifetime of influences and interests built up from deeply caring about stories you’ve shared with you family and friends.
How incredibly challenging it is to re-read and type up your handwritten first draft when you cram ~1,000 words on each page.
Seriously though… why did I do this to myself?
The short answer is that I was afraid I would run out of pages and I wanted to contain the first draft in a single notebook… but I did learn how to better pace my dialogue and descriptions by getting a look at 4 pages at a time (a single page in a printed book is usually about 250 words).
A bonus lesson was slowing down and jotting down my thoughts into notebook after notebook clarified the world around me and forced me to investigate (and work through) whatever turmoil was going on inside.
Because if I’m being honest with what I struggle with in these stories (and I am), my hope is that someone out there who is dealing with the same problems will feel a little less alone when they read them.
Do I expect AI to understand or appreciate any of that?
No.
I believe at its deepest level, story is about connection, not paint-by-number entertainment spat out from a prompt.
I’m not special in this mass theft.
Just about every author I know personally had their books stolen and fed into that AI for training. But I’m sure even when $40 BILLION was spent on the Meta technology last year and this year they’ll pump in another $65 BILLION, it’s more about cutting corners for speed to get to the top of the competitive heap and deal with the class action lawsuits later.
I do sincerely hope that when people decide to dive into using AI, they consider where and how it was trained.
But I fear that horse has left the barn.
So where do we go from here?
I go back to writing with my kids.
Because I believe it’s important now more than ever for them to learn how to do the deep work of diving into the wells of their own thoughts and emotions and wrestle with what is going on in their lives to make sense of the world around them.
I don’t want to let that skill atrophy and have them decide to let the answer to an AI prompt be satisfactory to solve their problems.
The easier road is more tempting, but it doesn’t often take you where you need to go.
It’s yet another reason Fictionsmith Family exists.
Come mid-May, I’ll be sharing here the things I’ve learned and activities that have helped me to better connect with my kids over stories.
I’d love for you to join us.
And welcome to all of the new people who have joined us after supporting our efforts to get this project off the ground.
It will be worthwhile, and I’m grateful for everyone taking this journey with us.
All the best,
-Ryan (half of C.W. Task)