In a fascinating article on a new job category called prompt engineering, having to do with interacting with and, I think, training of various artificial intelligence engines, I ran across this consequence:
But tapping the AI tools’ power through text prompts can also lead to a flood of synthetic pablum. Hundreds of AI-generated e-books are now sold on Amazon, and a sci-fi magazine, Clarkesworld, this month stopped accepting short-story submissions due to a surge in machine-made texts. [WaPo]
This presents a real problem for publishers who’ve gone over fully to the Web for accepting submissions; some may revert to requiring all submissions to be on actual paper – and maybe an accompanying blood sample. I suspect story magazines will have to put themselves into one of three categories:
- Story markets. These don’t care about authorship; for them, the story is the thing, and its originating entity doesn’t matter.
- Human originated stories. These markets demand the stories they publish have an immediate author of a human (or more than one). I word it in this way to shutdown the argument that knowledge based AIs are working off human stories, of course. The point here is that a human demonstrating storytelling skills is an important element of the market and, indeed, of the endeavour of being human.
- AI originated stories. These markets demand AI authorship.
Say “hi” to Torg, your new robot overlord. Your previous overlord, Yarg, has been consigned to the junkheap.
Each may have its devoted fans. I suspect, in terms of reader churn, AI originated stories may be highest, as the AI can write stories tirelessly, good, bad, and indifferent, and wear out readers who can discern good from bad stories, followed closely by story markets, which will get the overflow of the AI originated stories markets, and then, trailing far behind, human originated stories. Why last?
The best of the two authorship groups, head to head, will be humans. Indeed, the AIs may turn out be vulnerable to sabotage, if I’m understanding the article properly. Secondarily, there will be a value placed on the skills displayed, as previously mentioned.
But there’s going to be a time period in which AI authored works will cause a ruckus.
