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 ]
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O’Reilly Media and Publishers Weekly will hold the first Author {R}evolution Day February 12 at the Marriott Marquis in New York City. Below is a discussion with co-chair Kristen McLean on what attendees can expect at the day-long event. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2013-02-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Penguin-owned Author Solutions Inc (ASI) has opened a self-publishing imprint called Partridge in... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-02-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Waterstones m.d. James Daunt (above) has called on the government to address the issue... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-02-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Pan Macmillan SFF imprint Tor UK is now accepting direct submissions from authors, with editorial... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-02-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Porter Anderson's weekly curation of the best Web postings for authors takes in the UK's growing consternation over 20p ebooks, Amazon's untrustworthy reviews and more. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2013-01-29 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Ten finalists were chosen as finalists from among 150 submitted for the Man Booker Prize International Prize for fiction. The shortlist was revealed at India’s Jaipur Literary Festival. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2013-01-25 00:00:00 UTC ]
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This is an excerpt from Mark O’Connell’s Epic Fail, an original ebook published by The Millions. Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2013-01-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Turkish writer Elif Shafak will be London Book Fair's Market Focus Author of the Day on... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-01-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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More young people than ever are getting involved in reading schemes at their local libraries,... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-01-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Bloomsbury has reported a year-on-year profit boost in the final quarter of 2012, at the same... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-01-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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An award-winning ballet dancer and a French opera director are among the debut authors tipped for success in 2013 by book chain Waterstones. Continue reading at BBC News
[ BBC News | 2013-01-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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There has lately been a rising backlash against the ubiquity of personal writing. Hamilton Nolan’s anti-confessional diatribe in Gawker claims that journalism students are now taught only to write about themselves, which I can say as a full-time faculty member at a journalism school is patently... Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2013-01-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Up-to-date sales and royalties information are to become available to authors and agents via an... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-01-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Porter Anderson curates the best web clips for authors, including Random House's Facebook success, male vs. female genre writing, self-publishing success in the UK and more. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2013-01-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Eoin Colfer has been named as the author of the first of Puffin's eleven Dr Who short stories... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-01-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Amazon has revealed that 15% of its bestselling Kindle books in the UK last year were written by... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-01-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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British writer and two-time Booker Prize winner Hilary Mantel has been named novelist of the year at Britain’s Costa Book Awards for ‘Bring Up the Bodies’. Continue reading at Stuff
[ Stuff | 2013-01-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Piatkus has acquired two debut UK authors, with their works to be published on their digital-... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-12-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
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North London independent The Big Green Bookshop is teaming up with Angry Robot Books to offer... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-12-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Hot Key Books has launched a free interactive writing project, "Fleur Hitchcock's Story... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-12-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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