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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Mark Cuban has 335,000 friends on Facebook and 760,000 followers on Twitter. Monday, the Internet billionaire and owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team will test just how friendly those fans really are. Continue reading at AllThingsD
[ AllThingsD | 2011-11-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Charlotte Williams Publication Date: Thu, 17/11/2011 - 12:18 Sci-fi and fantasy specialist Angry Robot is setting up a YA imprint, Strange Chemistry, with genre blogger Amanda Rutter appointed editor. The imprint will launch in September 2012, with five titles to be published... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-11-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Graeme Neill Publication Date: Tue, 15/11/2011 - 10:12 The US Authors Guild has accused Amazon.com of "boldly breaching its contracts" with publishers by signing them up to its new Kindle Lending programme without permission. It claimed it is doing this to drive sales of its Kindle... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-11-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Charlotte Williams Publication Date: Tue, 15/11/2011 - 15:39 Angry Robot has books by two debut authors following its "Open Door Month", in which un-agented authors could submit their works directly to the publisher. Editor Lee Harris negotiated both deals, each for world rights... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-11-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Barbara Casassus Publication Date: Tue, 08/11/2011 - 09:26 French prime minister François Fillon has announced that the reduced VAT rate applying to books would be raised from 5.5% to 7% from 1st January as part of a fresh economic austerity package to help rein in Frances massive... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-11-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Lisa Campbell Publication Date: Tue, 01/11/2011 - 09:40 Sales and profit for 2011 have slumped at Edinburgh University Press at the same time the company has reported a 40% rise in year-on-year ebook sales. The Scottish academic publisher has reported an 11.6% fall in sales and... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-11-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Charlotte Williams Publication Date: Mon, 31/10/2011 - 08:00 Yale University Press will be nosing around authors' bookshelves with the publication of Unpacking My Library: Writers and Their Books next month, with authors including Philip Pullman, Jonathan Lethem and Junot Díaz... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-10-31 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Charlotte Williams Publication Date: Mon, 31/10/2011 - 08:20 The first official sales charts including ebook sales data have been published in the Wall Street Journal this weekend, with Nielsen BookScan now supplying ebook sales reports to the US paper. read more Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-10-31 00:00:00 UTC ]
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This story first appears on FOLIO: sister site, minonline. Meredith Corp. chairman/CEO (since July 2004) Steve Lacy announced that the board of directors approved a $1.02-to-$1.53 per-share increase in the quarterly dividend paid to investors and authorized the repurchase of $100 million of... Continue reading at Folio Magazine
[ Folio Magazine | 2011-10-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A new social reading app called Subtext today launches on the iPad with a selection of books laden with annotations from authors and researchers. Continue reading at AllThingsD
[ AllThingsD | 2011-10-25 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Benedicte Page Publication Date: Fri, 21/10/2011 - 11:35 Vampirates author and long-time children's book publicist Justin Somper has set up Author Profile, a training company aimed at helping authors navigate the media and social networking. Writers including Damian Kelleher,... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-10-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Simon & Schuster, Random House and the Hachette Book Group said they would allow authors to access book sales data online, a service Amazon began providing last year. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2011-10-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Benedicte Page Publication Date: Thu, 13/10/2011 - 16:12 Around 50 demonstrators, including women with children, are gathering outside Kensal Rise library in Brent this afternoon (13th October) as workmen prepare to board up the door and windows. The library was closed this... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-10-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Katie Allen Publication Date: Tue, 11/10/2011 - 07:50 "Grange Hill" writer Phil Redmond is to pen a memoir and novel for Random House imprint Cornerstone. M.d. Susan Sandon acquired world rights in the two books directly with Redmond, who is best known for creating three of... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-10-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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David Steinberger of Perseus, which will offer distribution and marketing to authors. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2011-10-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Graeme Neill Publication Date: Fri, 30/09/2011 - 08:55 Publishers should not be too quick to write off physical products and should encourage competition between a number of digital players to avoid the mistakes the record industry made, the director general of the Entertainment... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-09-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Philip Jones Publication Date: Tue, 27/09/2011 - 10:33 Quercus saw an inevitable downturn in sales in the first half of 2011 after its Stieg Larsson enhanced 2010 numbers, but still managed to increase profit, improve its cash position, grow digital sales seven-fold and pay its... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-09-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Charlotte Williams Publication Date: Mon, 26/09/2011 - 11:48 Angry Robot has appointed Little, Brown online marketing manager Darren Turpin to the role of marketing and digital manager. Turpin will join the company on 7th November and report directly to Marc Gascoigne, publishing... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-09-26 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Charlotte Williams Publication Date: Fri, 23/09/2011 - 08:35 Marian Keyes is writing a cookery title for Michael Joseph, as the imprint ramps up its spring food publishing list next year by releasing one title every month during the first half of 2012. read more Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-09-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Charlotte Williams Publication Date: Thu, 22/09/2011 - 11:01 Faber is to publish a new detective novel from P D James which combines a murder investigation with the world and characters of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, revisiting Darcy and Elizabeth six years into their... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-09-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
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