Teacher-Authors: What’s Happening on my Writer’s Blog

A lot of teacher-authors read both my education blog (this one–Ask a Tech Teacher) and my writer’s blog (WordDreams). In this monthly column, I share a popular post from the past month on my writer’s blog, WordDreams 

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I’ve started a new collaboration over there with an exciting writer’s blog called Story Empire. My column is: What’s happening in the literary world?

This series will spotlight what writers are talking about as well as literary-focused monthly events. I’ll keep the posts brief though I may return to one or more later in the year depending upon world events.

January’s topics:

• AI-powered writing tools
• AI-generated fiction
• Copyright and ownership
• AI training from internet content
• AI–ethics and bias
• AI–loss of creativity
• Calendar of literary events

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Writing–Part 1

Story Empire writer, Nicholas Rossi, posted an excellent article on this topic (Can You Use AI in Fiction Writing) so I’ll take my discussion a level wider  and cover general AI concerns today’s writers face:

• AI-powered writing tools

Generative AI programs like ChatGPT and Bard generate text, scripts, and poetry based on material they’ve scraped from the internet. Though they claim answers are not copied word for word, this raises concerns about plagiarism, quality of content, and ‘dumbing down’ our art. These can’t be answered yet, but are on writer’s minds. I’ll keep an eye on them, let you know when/if something significant develops.

• AI-generated fiction

So far, AIs can’t write from experience or with human emotion so their content is limited to internet-available facts and an interpretation of emotions and experience. At least, that’s my opinion as a freelance journalist, fiction writer, and non-fiction textbook author. The field as of this date is too new to be definitive so I don’t yet feel threatened.

I may be naïve. What do you think? Have you read AI fiction that makes you cry?

• Copyright and ownership

ChatGPT (and maybe the other generative AI platforms) and its sister platform for art DALL-E2 (both from Open AI), claim they don’t own the copyright to material generated, nor can users. Maybe, though I’m not convinced that will hold up when tested in a court of law. Those lawsuits have started and opinions differ based on country and nuances of the situation. I can’t wait to see how this-all comes out.

• AI training from internet content

Before generative AI’s were launched for public use, they had to be ‘trained’ by algorithms telling them how to access every bit of available internet content, copyrighted or not. I don’t want them using my material even for ‘training’ so you’ll now see at the bottom of my blog posts (and in the front piece of my fiction) a disclaimer forbidding them trolling my creative content:

“The content presented in this blog [or book] are the result of creative imagination and not intended for use, reproduction, or incorporation into any artificial intelligence training or machine learning systems without prior written consent from the author.”

I don’t know if it’ll stop them, but it might make them pause or move on to easier webpages.

This is a big topic. I’ll cover more in future months. For now, let’s look at what happened around the literary world in January:

Here’s January’s calendar:

• January 1: International Public Domain Day a.k.a. Public Domain Day (here’s my post on that)
• January 2: National Science Fiction Day (here’s my post on that)
• January 3: JRR Tolkien Day
• January 9: National Word Nerd Day
• January 11: T.S. Eliot prize for poetry announced
• January 12: Poetry at Work Day.
• January 12-15: Arisia in Boston, Mass–A haven for science fiction and fantasy enthusiasts,
• January 16: Book Publishers Day
• January 18: National Thesaurus Day
• January 18: Winnie the Pooh Day
• January 24: Library Shelfie Day
• January 29: National Bible Sunday

General January Literary Events

• National Braille Literacy Month

This post is longer than I will usually write. Thanks for your patience! Now, what do you think? Are you worried about AI’s impact on your writing? Did I miss an event in the literary world? Let’s talk!

Here’s the sign-up link if the image above doesn’t work:

https://jacqui-murray.aweb.page/p/46e8c9bf-eaed-4252-8aad-3688e233a4cc

Copyright ©2024 worddreams.wordpress.com – All rights reserved.

“The content presented in this blog are the result of creative imagination and not intended for use, reproduction, or incorporation into any artificial intelligence training or machine learning systems without prior written consent from the author.”

Jacqui Murray is the author of the popular Man vs. Nature saga, the Rowe-Delamagente thrillers, and the acclaimed Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy. She is also the author/editor of over a hundred books on integrating tech into education, adjunct professor of technology in education, blog webmaster, an Amazon Vine Voice, and a freelance journalist on tech ed topics. Look for her next prehistoric fiction, Endangered Species, Winter 2024