The rise of robot authors: is the writing on the wall for human novelists?

Artificial intelligence can now write fiction and journalism. But does it measure up to George Orwell – and can it report on Brexit?Will androids write novels about electric sheep? The dream, or nightmare, of totally machine-generated prose seemed to have come one step closer with the recent announcement of an artificial intelligence that could produce, all by itself, plausible news stories or fiction. It was the brainchild of OpenAI – a nonprofit lab backed by Elon Musk and other tech entrepreneurs – which slyly alarmed the literati by announcing that the AI (called GPT2) was too dangerous for them to release into the wild, because it could be employed to create “deepfakes for text”. “Due to our concerns about malicious applications of the technology,” they said, “we are not releasing the trained model.” Are machine-learning entities going to be the new weapons of information terrorism, or will they just put humble midlist novelists out of business?Let’s first take a step back. AI has been the next big thing for so long that it’s easy to assume “artificial intelligence” now exists. It doesn’t, if by “intelligence” we mean what we sometimes encounter in our fellow humans. GPT2 is just using methods of statistical analysis, trained on huge amounts of human-written text – 40GB of web pages, in this case, that received recommendations from Reddit readers – to predict what ought to come next. This probabilistic approach is how Google Translate works, and also the method... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2019-03-25 00:00:00 UTC ]
News tagged with: #big thing #statistical analysis #web pages

Other Publishing stories related to: 'The rise of robot authors: is the writing on the wall for human novelists?'

The rise of robot authors: is the writing on the wall for human novelists?

Artificial intelligence can now write fiction and journalism. But does it measure up to George Orwell – and can it report on Brexit?Will androids write novels about electric sheep? The dream, or nightmare, of totally machine-generated prose seemed to have come one step closer with the recent... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2019-03-25 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #big thing #statistical analysis #web pages

Don’t write what you know, write what you feel: bestselling authors offer tips on World Book Day

Malorie Blackman advises budding authors to pick up on news stories, but Julia Donaldson warns of pitfalls – and Alan Moore says you should read terrible books as well as good onesThe key to being a good writer? It’s being a good reader, authors including Carol Ann Duffy and Alan Moore have said... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2023-03-02 15:43:52 UTC ]
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Struggling as an author? Stop writing only what you want to write

Earning a living as a writer is as likely as winning the lottery. Instead of writing books and persuading others to buy them, find out what people want to write, then do it for themPhilip Pullman: professional writers set to become ‘an endangered species’ due to low wagesI left school with a... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2016-01-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Everyone’s Reading Books About Hot Faeries Now. This Bestselling Author Has Been Writing Them for Decades.

The Prisoner’s Throne author Holly Black reflects on the rise of “romantasy” novels, explicit sex scenes, and BookTok. Continue reading at Slate

[ Slate | 2024-03-18 21:31:31 UTC ]
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‘There is joy, and there is rage’: the new generation of novelists writing about motherhood

From the shock and awe of labour to domestic isolation, a wave of recent novels captures the transformative nature of being a motherThey say nothing prepares you. Before having my baby, I approached the literature of motherhood as though I were about to sit an exam. If my studies tempered the... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2024-01-20 11:00:01 UTC ]
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Novelist Celeste Ng: ‘There was a period when I thought I’d never write again’

The award-winning author on how Trump, Covid and anti-Asian rhetoric inspired her latest novel, digging her way out of ‘post-book fatigue’, and learning to touch type using UlyssesCeleste Ng, 42, is the award-winning author of three novels, including Little Fires Everywhere, which was made into... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2023-04-22 17:00:15 UTC ]
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Struggling authors know writing is a rich person’s hobby | Letters

Stephen Carver, Guinevere Glasfurd, Brian Needham and Jo McMillan respond to Joanne Harris’s article about horribly low pay in the publishing worldRegarding Joanne Harris’s article (Horribly low pay is pushing out my fellow authors – and yes, that really does matter, 7 December), I guess I’m a... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2022-12-11 17:07:25 UTC ]
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‘The Boys’ author Katie Hafner on her path from journalist to novelist

Going from nonfiction to fiction can be both liberating and paralyzing, Hafner explains. Continue reading at The Washington Post

[ The Washington Post | 2022-08-12 10:00:26 UTC ]
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Erika L. Sánchez Wishes More Authors Would Write About Money

“I grew up working class and money was a factor in everything we did,” says the poet and novelist, whose new book is the memoir “Crying in the Bathroom.” “That’s why I always write about the financial realities of my characters.” Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2022-07-07 09:00:11 UTC ]
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Jim Murphy, children’s author who humanized U.S. history, dies at 74

His books about the Great Chicago Fire and America’s first epidemic were Newbery Honor winners. Continue reading at The Washington Post

[ The Washington Post | 2022-05-19 22:43:48 UTC ]
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Author of 'My Monticello' on Writing a Debut Book With Buzz

Jocelyn Nicole Johnson, at 50, is not the average age of a debut author. But the public school teacher describes herself as a “literary debutante” with the October publication of “My Monticello.” Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2021-09-28 13:06:03 UTC ]
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Octavia Butler’s 1979 bio is an object lesson in writing author bios.

Over the weekend, the Los Angeles Review of Books published a fairly wild essay by Miguel Esteban who, at the tender age of 14, commissioned a now-famous essay on race in science fiction from Octavia Butler. The whole piece is worth a read (the gall of teenage boys! the grace of Octavia!) but... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2021-07-26 13:40:52 UTC ]
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Rise of 'hybrid authors' as writers buy back their rights

The “rise of the hybrid author” was discussed at London Book Fair, with the prediction that writers will increasingly buy back rights to their own books from publishers.  Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2021-06-24 22:00:58 UTC ]
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The Rise of Virtual Foreign Author Tours

The shift to virtual author events during the pandemic has prompted booksellers and publishers to put together events for overseas authors who would not traditionally tour the U.S. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2021-05-07 04:00:00 UTC ]
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How an acclaimed author decided to write fiction for Black women like her

Deesha Philyaw talks about the long gestation of her collection 'The Secret Lives of Church Ladies,' a Times Book Prize finalist for first fiction. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times

[ Los Angeles Times | 2021-04-06 16:30:19 UTC ]
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In Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘Klara and the Sun,’ a robot tries to make sense of humanity

Ishiguro’s first novel since winning the Nobel Prize in 2017 is a delicate, haunting story, steeped in sorrow and hope. Continue reading at The Washington Post

[ The Washington Post | 2021-03-02 16:46:21 UTC ]
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Novelists are writing for TV more than ever. How it's changing the industry

Over the past 20 years, industry shifts have funneled more novelists into TV rooms than ever. It's salutary in many ways — beginning with health insurance. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times

[ Los Angeles Times | 2021-02-11 15:00:05 UTC ]
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Crime novelists dish on writing about cops in a moment of reckoning

Writers Rachel Howzell Hall, Attica Locke and Ivy Pochoda talked with Times reporter James Queally for a 2020 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books event. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times

[ Los Angeles Times | 2020-10-24 16:06:42 UTC ]
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Poets and novelists have been writing about life under COVID-19 for more than a century

From 'islands of pain' to the 'peril of exposure,' writers have captured the fear, emptiness and despair that characterize life during the current pandemic, writes a poet and English scholar. Continue reading at The Conversation

[ The Conversation | 2020-08-17 12:24:39 UTC ]
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Where are the hotshot British male novelists? BAME authors may know

Ashley Hickson-Lovence, Abir Mukherjee, Courttia Newland, Guy Gunaratne, Paul Mendez and Okechukwu Nzelu on why British writers of colour are left out of the conversationAfter this week’s Booker prize longlist was announced, the Times asked “Where are the new male hotshot novelists?” I was... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2020-07-31 14:10:18 UTC ]
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