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 #web pages

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Appreciation: For 'Alienist' author Caleb Carr, rescuing a cat meant rescuing himself

Caleb Carr, a military historian and bestselling author of "The Alienist," made his last book a touching memoir of life and love with a feline companion. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times

[ Los Angeles Times | 2024-05-26 19:05:41 UTC ]
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Will Human-AI Partnerships Make Publishing Workers More Innovative?

The journey is just beginning, but we can already see that publishing workflows are especially ripe for AI integration that enables the automation of rote tasks—and AI-driven support for more humans making more complex decisions and judgments. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2024-05-24 04:00:00 UTC ]
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OpenAI and Wall Street Journal owner News Corp sign content deal

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[ The Guardian | 2024-05-22 21:39:09 UTC ]
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BookNet Canada’s Consumer Survey: Rising Book Prices

Despite rising costs for new and secondhand books, surveyed Canadian consumers say they continue buying books but are price-shopping. The post BookNet Canada’s Consumer Survey: Rising Book Prices appeared first on Publishing Perspectives. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives

[ Publishing Perspectives | 2024-05-22 19:37:08 UTC ]
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R.O. Kwon on Writing Her Way Into a Book’s Most Truthful Version

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[ Literrary Hub | 2024-05-21 08:54:03 UTC ]
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Anna Noyes on Writing the Book That Keeps Her Awake

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[ Literrary Hub | 2024-05-17 08:55:10 UTC ]
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CI2024: Authors and Illustrators to Meet

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[ Publishers Weekly | 2024-05-17 04:00:00 UTC ]
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200 authors call on Baillie Gifford to divest from Israel and fossil fuels.

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[ Literrary Hub | 2024-05-15 18:45:43 UTC ]
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The Shark AI robot vacuum and mop drops to a record low of $230 at Amazon

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[ Engadget | 2024-05-15 18:42:59 UTC ]
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[ Publishers Weekly | 2024-05-15 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Nobel Prize-Winning Author Alice Munro has Died at 92

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[ Book Riot | 2024-05-14 16:57:50 UTC ]
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Lit Hub Asks: 5 Authors, 7 Questions, No Wrong Answers

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[ Literrary Hub | 2024-05-14 08:56:57 UTC ]
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[ Literrary Hub | 2024-05-13 18:56:54 UTC ]
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[ Publishers Weekly | 2024-05-08 04:00:00 UTC ]
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On Memoir, Permission, and the Thorny Terrain of Writing About Family

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[ Literrary Hub | 2024-05-06 08:53:35 UTC ]
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[ The Guardian | 2024-05-01 04:02:37 UTC ]
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