From The Wall Street Journal: The best lesson for artificial intelligence may be Thursday’s “rapid unscheduled disassembly” of SpaceX’s Starship rocket, aborted four minutes after launch. With ChatGPT prompting speculation about mankind’s destruction, you should know that techies have obsessed seemingly forever over what’s known as the Paper Clip Theory—the idea that if you told … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: Ours is an age of distraction. The pings, buzzes and chimes from our phones, tablets, laptops, watches and earbuds distract us from giving our undivided attention to whatever task is at hand. So, when writing the first draft of this review, I experimented by turning off all my device notifications … Read more
From Windows Central: A group of AI researchers out of Stanford is putting the “sim” into simulation. The team placed 25 AI-powered characters, referred to as agents, into a virtual world similar to “The Sims.” OpenAI’s ChatGPT backed the bots, allowing the characters to interact with each other in a human-like way. The results of the study … Read more
From Cornell Law Review, Vol. 109, forthcoming 2023: Abstract Recently, advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have sparked interest in a topic that sounds like science fiction: robot judges. Researchers have harnessed AI to build programs that can predict the outcome of legal disputes. Some countries have even begun allowing AI systems to resolve small claims. … Read more
From JDSupra: On March 16, 2023, the U.S. Copyright Office (the Office) published a statement of policy in the Federal Register offering guidance on who is entitled to protection for works generated with the aid of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. AI tools allow users to generate images, audio, and textual works in response to textual … Read more
From Kristine Kathryn Rusch: Here we are—the mess of the mess of the mess. Right now, we’re in one of those technological befuddling moments, where the technology is ahead of the law. What that means, exactly, is this: We’re not sure what the technology can do, so we don’t know if what it’s doing is … Read more
From Bill Gates: I’ve always been a car guy. When I was younger, I used to love driving fast (sometimes too fast). Now, I look forward to my daily commute to work. There’s something so fun yet meditative about driving a car. Despite that, I’m excited for the day I get to hand over control … Read more
From The Art Newspaper: The tension between the opportunities presented by new technology and the need for artists to be able to control the use of their own works and derive revenue from them is all too familiar. Inevitably, cases and/or legislation will draw an artificial line between what is fair and what is not. … Read more
From Wired: AN open letter signed by hundreds of prominent artificial intelligence experts, tech entrepreneurs, and scientists calls for a pause on the development and testing of AI technologies more powerful than OpenAI’s language model GPT-4 so that the risks it may pose can be properly studied. It warns that language models like GPT-4 can already compete with humans at a growing … Read more
From Hyperallergic: The United States Copyright Office recently produced a statement of policy indicating that some artworks generated using artificial intelligence are now eligible for copyright registration on a case-by-case basis. This should go well! Effective March 16, the Copyright Office’s statement of policy indicates that copyright applicants are permitted to submit AI-assisted works (across literature and … Read more
From The Future of Publishing: Like just about everyone in the world who can read and write, and who likes to look at pretty pictures, I’ve been captivated by the developments in artificial intelligence, LLMs, DALL-E, GPT-3 (and -4) and ChatGPT. Tonight I was watching the wonderful Polish film, EO, mostly about a domestic donkey. There’s … Read more
PG has posted quite a number of AI-related items as they impact authors. To make certain that authors don’t feel singled out, the following article discusses the impact AI is having on practicing lawyers and their support staffs. From LegalTech News: With so many antiquated fixtures in the legal industry colliding with new trends like artificial … Read more
From Culture.org: The Writers Guild of America (WGA) has commenced high-stakes negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) for a new three-year contract, as the current agreement is set to expire on May 1. . . . . Representing over 11,000 television and movie writers, the WGA is seeking higher compensation, … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: Since the arrival of chatbots that can carry on conversations, make up sonnets and ace the LSAT, many people have been in awe at the artificial-intelligence technology’s capabilities. Publishers of online content share in that sense of wonder. They also see a threat to their businesses, and are headed to … Read more
I don’t want to really scare you, but it was alarming how many people I talked to who are highly placed people in AI who have retreats that are sort of ‘bug out’ houses, to which they could flee if it all hits the fan. James Barrat, author of Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and … Read more
From Gizmodo: Google announced it’s finally unleashing its generative AI tools Tuesday, bringing a set of features to Gmail and Google Docs that will automatically create drafts based on simple prompts. Google will also add new AI capabilities to its business products, including Google Cloud and a new API for developers Google says it’s rolling … Read more
From CNet: Stomachs gurgle. That’s normal. Sometimes, if there’s a mic nearby, those burbles and gurgles get picked up. AI audiobook narrators don’t have to worry about strange gastrointestinal noises, but Leah Allers and engineer Craig Hinkle aren’t bots. They’re human beings, recording for Nashville Audio Productions in mid-January, fretting about gurgles, discussing where to … Read more
From Publishing Perspectives: Probably predictable, the busiest chatter in pre-Bologna Children’s Book Fair (March 6 to 9) messaging about “artificial intelligence” has a slightly shrill edge to it at times, along with assertions that “AI” is going to “revolutionize publishing.” Just as enhanced ebooks did, remember? And virtual reality. And augmented reality. And Kindle in … Read more
PG loves the world of Artificial Intelligence. As has been reported before on TPV, there is a lot of concern that students and former students will use ChatGPT to write their papers and generally fail to learn how to write on their own. PG received an email from Olive, the CEO of ZeroGPT saying that … Read more
Lawyers are abuzz about the possible uses of ChatGPT. Could the artificial intelligence-powered chatbot write a persuasive legal brief worthy of judicial consideration? Given its limitations, we believe that’s unlikely. ChatGPT, a large language model developed by the San Francisco company OpenAI that launched in November, can draw only on sources available on the web; … Read more
From Publishing Perspectives: Of all the commentary about OpenAI’s model ChatGPT—and who hasn’t commented on it?—some of the more level-headed observations for the publishing industry may come from Thomas Cox, a specialist in computer science and the managing director of Arq Works near Oxford. Cox’s Arq Works focuses on software for the book publishing industry. … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: Nothing has affected, and warped, modern thinking about the pace of technological invention more than the rapid exponential advances of solid-state electronics. The conviction that we have left the age of gradual growth behind began with our ability to crowd ever more components onto a silicon wafer, a process captured … Read more
From Search Engine Journal: In a lawsuit filed on February 3 and made public on Monday, Getty Images alleged that artificial intelligence company Stability AI, Inc., infringed on the visual media company’s intellectual property. The suit, filed in a Delaware US District Court following a separate Getty lawsuit against Stability in the UK, accused the London-based generative … Read more
From The Independent Publishing Magazine: If you’ve spent any time on social media over the last few months, you’ve probably seen plenty of people sharing pictures of themselves that were “created” using Artificial Intelligence (AI). There are several apps currently available that allow people to share a few photos and instantly have them turned into … Read more
From Investor’s Business Daily: Alphabet (GOOGL) tumbled Wednesday after Google’s parent company published a new ad for its Bard artificial intelligence chatbot that offered an incorrect answer. Google stock fell more than 8% after the ad fluke. Google posted a video on Twitter demonstrating the “experimental conversational AI service powered by LaMDA,” the company wrote. … Read more
PG had too much time on his hands, so he decided to use ChatGPT to write an essay about the same topic as a law review article he came upon. For a bit of background, most law schools have law reviews. A law review is a periodical that includes articles that often discuss recent appellate … Read more
From Wired: IN LATE DECEMBER of his sophomore year, Rutgers University student Kai Cobbs came to a conclusion he never thought possible: Artificial intelligence might just be dumber than humans. After listening to his peers rave about the generative AI tool ChatGPT, Cobbs decided to toy around with the chatbot while writing an essay on … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: Kris Kashtanova says doing the art for the graphic novel “Zarya of the Dawn” was like conjuring it up with a spell. “New York Skyline forest punk,” the author typed into an artificial intelligence program that turns written prompts into pictures. Then came the tinkering with the wording to get the … Read more
From Lexology: According to a recent interview in December 2022, the U.S. Copyright Office (the “Office”) signaled that it would focus in 2023 on “legal grey areas” surrounding copyrightability of works generated in conjunction with artificial intelligence (“AI”) tools. While the agency is standing by its conclusion that copyright cannot be registered for a work created exclusively … Read more
From Futurism: An artificial intelligence dubbed Claude, developed by AI research firm Anthropic, got a “marginal pass” on a recent blindly graded law and economics exam at George Mason University, according to a recent blog post by economics professor Alex Tabarrok. It’s yet another warning shot that AI is experiencing a moment of explosive growth … Read more
From Slate: Sanjib Chaudhary chanced upon StoryWeaver, a multilingual children’s storytelling platform, while searching for books he could read to his 7-year-old daughter. Chaudhary’s mother tongue is Kochila Tharu, a language with about 250,000 speakers in eastern Nepal. (Nepali, Nepal’s official language, has 16 million speakers.) Languages with a relatively small number of speakers, like … Read more
From Above the Law: Unless you’ve been living under a law library, it would be hard to not take note of the rapid influx of AI art. Face modifying apps, extended shots of events and people that never happened that uncanny only begins to explain their weirdness, you name it. The figure of AI as artist has … Read more
From Time Magazine: ChatGPT was hailed as one of 2022’s most impressive technological innovations upon its release last November. The powerful artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot can generate text on almost any topic or theme, from a Shakespearean sonnet reimagined in the style of Megan Thee Stallion, to complex mathematical theorems described in language a 5 … Read more
From Demand Sate: Are you looking for the best AI Writing Software available on the internet? Well, you’re at the right place to get the answer to this question. Creating unique content has become more complex than ever in this digital era. The competition is increasing day by day, and it has become really tidy … Read more
From Apple Books for Authors: Empowering indie authors and small publishers More and more book lovers are listening to audiobooks, yet only a fraction of books are converted to audio — leaving millions of titles unheard. Many authors — especially independent authors and those associated with small publishers — aren’t able to create audiobooks due … Read more
From Slate: When Apple quietly launched a catalog of A.I.-narrated audiobooks early in January, it was surprising news, and it wasn’t. Robot narrators are not new: Alexa provides text-to-speech for Kindle content and Google offers a suite of artificial voices of various genders and accents for those wishing to publish “auto-narrated” audiobooks. The difference is … Read more
From Wikipedia: OpenAI is an artificial intelligence (AI) research laboratory consisting of the for-profit corporation OpenAI LP and its parent company, the non-profit OpenAI Inc. The company conducts research in the field of AI with the stated goal of promoting and developing friendly AI in a way that benefits humanity as a whole. The organization was founded in San Francisco in late 2015 by Sam Altman, Elon … Read more
From Dreamstime: Legal uncertainty is still surrounding the work obtained from AI text-to-image generators. AI software is trained on billions of images and afferent descriptions already on the web. Most popular image-generating softwares using artificial intelligence include Dall-E2, MIdjourney, GPT-3, Stable Diffusion by Nividia, Photoshop, Google tools, etc. Such software allows infinite creative combinations of … Read more
From TechCrunch: Artificial intelligence startups, and (thanks to GPT and OpenAI) specifically those helping humans communicate with each other, are commanding a lot of interest from investors, and today the latest of these is announcing a big round of funding. DeepL, a startup that provides instant translation-as-a-service both to businesses and to individuals — competing … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: ChatGPT has some wondering if artificial intelligence will make human creativity obsolete. Released in November by Open AI, the chatbot can quickly write readable prose in response to natural-language prompts better than most people can. When one of my colleagues asked ChatGPT for a 250-word summary of Umberto Eco’s philosophy … Read more
From The Seattle Times: Over the past three decades, a handful of products like Netscape’s web browser, Google’s search engine and Apple’s iPhone have truly upended the tech industry and made what came before them look like lumbering dinosaurs. Last month, an experimental chatbot called ChatGPT made its case to be the industry’s next big … Read more
From Kickstarter: I want to share some of our thoughts on Artificial Intelligence (AI) generated images and AI art as it develops, because many creators on Kickstarter are understandably concerned about its impact on the creative community. At Kickstarter, we often have projects that are innovative and push the boundaries of what’s possible. And that … Read more
From The MIT Press Reader: “Time — a few centuries here or there — means very little in the world of poems.” There is something reassuring about Mary Oliver’s words. Especially in an era of rapid change, there is comfort to be had in those things that move slowly. But oceans rise and mountains fall; … Read more
From The MIT Press: Time — a few centuries here or there — means very little in the world of poems.” There is something reassuring about Mary Oliver’s words. Especially in an era of rapid change, there is comfort to be had in those things that move slowly. But oceans rise and mountains fall; nothing … Read more
From Windows Central: What you need to know The tool ChatGPT is a hot button topic these days. The tool, which uses artificial intelligence to respond to prompts, can be used to create code, respond to questions, or create blocks of text. It’s one of many AI tools that’s taking headlines by storm, due in … Read more
From MIT Technology Review: OpenAI has built the best Minecraft-playing bot yet by making it watch 70,000 hours of video of people playing the popular computer game. It showcases a powerful new technique that could be used to train machines to carry out a wide range of tasks by binging on sites like YouTube, a … Read more
From Wired: PICTURE LEE UNKRICH, one of Pixar’s most distinguished animators, as a seventh grader. He’s staring at an image of a train locomotive on the screen of his school’s first computer. Wow, he thinks. Some of the magic wears off, however, when Lee learns that the image had not appeared simply by asking for “a picture … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: Since Gilgamesh, apocalyptic prophecies have been a staple of human culture. These stories follow a familiar pattern: God will punish man for his sins by ending the world. But as faith has waned, the genre has taken a scientific turn, from Elizabeth Kolbert predicting mass extinction as a result of … Read more
From Publishing Perspectives: Among the two days of B2B sessions programmed for the inaugural season of our Publishing Perspectives Forum at Frankfurter Buchmesse, an October 20 discussion called “What Young Readers Need Today: Children’s Publishing CEOs in Conversation” drew a strong audience of trade visitors and exhibitors. Frankfurt president and CEO Juergen Boos led the … Read more
From The Los Angeles Review of Books: FLAUBERT ONCE SAID, “on ne peut penser et écrire qu’assis” (“one can think and write only when seated”), a statement Rodin seemed to endorse in his portentous statue The Thinker, which makes thinking look like an assiduous bout with constipation. Nietzsche took exception to Flaubert’s dictum, declaring: “The sedentary … Read more