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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Written By: Charlotte Williams Publication Date: Fri, 29/07/2011 - 09:30 Penguin reported lower sales and profits in the first half of 2011 as it adjusted to the "unprecedented challenges" afflicting the publishing sector including the loss of high street booksellers in the US and Australia... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-07-29 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Caroline Horn Publication Date: Fri, 29/07/2011 - 14:15 The former DFC comic is being revived as The Phoenix, under an independent company backed by an anonymous investor. read more Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-07-29 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Charlotte Williams Publication Date: Wed, 27/07/2011 - 07:20 The Society of Authors' petition against the cuts to BBC Radio 4's short story programming has now amassed over 5,000 signatures. SoA general secretary Nicola Solomon and assistant general secretary Jo McCrum will present... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-07-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Graeme Neill Publication Date: Wed, 27/07/2011 - 08:17 The Irish Competition Authority has cleared the acquisition of The Book Depository by Amazon after a three week investigation into the deal. In a short statement, the authority said: "[We have] formed the view that the... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-07-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Graeme Neill Publication Date: Wed, 27/07/2011 - 07:40 The Irish Competition Authority has cleared the acquisition of The Book Depository by Amazon after a three-week investigation into the deal. In a short statement, the authority said: "[We have] formed the view that the... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-07-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Graeme Neill Publication Date: Thu, 21/07/2011 - 13:00 British Science Fiction award-winner Alastair Reynolds is the latest author to try his hand writing a Doctor Who novel, after signing a deal with BBC Books. Editorial director Albert DePetrillo bought world rights from Robert... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-07-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Katie Allen Publication Date: Thu, 21/07/2011 - 12:40 Angry Robot is to publish a debut novel by Canadian writer Madeline Ashby. vN is set in a near-future where robots and humans live side by side, and follows Amy, who has grown up with a cybernetic mother and human father. Alone... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-07-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Graeme Neill Publication Date: Tue, 19/07/2011 - 08:55 Former Monty Python star Terry Jones will become the first author to have his project published by the Unbound crowdfunded publishing project. His book, Evil Machines, comprises 13 tales parodying man's relationship with... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-07-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Time magazine is making it easier for readers to subscribe to its digital and print editions. And harder for non-subscribers to read the magazine on the Web. Continue reading at AllThingsD
[ AllThingsD | 2011-07-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Benedicte Page Publication Date: Thu, 14/07/2011 - 08:56 Union Books editorial director Rosalind Porter has bought a book on the intersection of creativity and commerce by Lewis Hyde, author of The Gift. Porter acquired UK and Australia and New Zealand rights in Common As Air:... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-07-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Sheila C. Bair, who ended a tumultuous five-year term as chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation this month, has landed a book deal to give her inside account of the financial crisis. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2011-07-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Charlotte Williams Publication Date: Thu, 30/06/2011 - 15:01 Bloomsbury has acquired three YA books by Irish author, Sarah Crossan. Senior commissioning editor Ele Fountain acquired the trio of titles through Julia Churchill at Greenhouse, with the first title, Breathe, to be... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-06-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Young-adult books are being sold to an audience that can't vote, yet they're being written by people commonly referred to on the Internet as "the olds." We should know. We're two of them. Both of us have made our living writing. One of us in journalism (Grady) and the other in literary fiction... Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2011-06-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Lisa Campbell Publication Date: Mon, 20/06/2011 - 14:31 John Locke has become the first self-published author to sell more than one million ebooks through Amazon. The author used Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing platform to publish and sell his titles. He joins Stieg Larsson,... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-06-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Bookseller Staff Publication Date: Fri, 17/06/2011 - 14:12 Women dominate the first-ever The Bookseller Rising Stars, an annual listing which highlights the people who will shape the British book trade. Two-thirds26 of 39 entriesof Rising Stars 2011 are women. read more Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-06-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Benedicte Page Publication Date: Thu, 16/06/2011 - 09:22 Author Gregor Dallas has accused the Society of Authors of not doing enough to defend its members from large publishers which are cutting back on range and creating a "national scandal" with the declining quality of their... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-06-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Lisa Campbell Publication Date: Wed, 15/06/2011 - 08:21 Twenty-one writers shared £76,000 of prize money at the Authors' Awards last night presented by Joanna Trollope. Among them Anjali Joseph won the £10,000 Betty Trask prize for Saraswati Park (Fourth Estate). As previously... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-06-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Philip Jones Publication Date: Thu, 09/06/2011 - 10:05 Literary agent Peter Cox has offered to review "any" contract given to an author by an agent for free in order to ensure that the author has "impartial advice". The move is a response to agents setting up their own publishing... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-06-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Charlotte Williams Publication Date: Thu, 09/06/2011 - 08:00 Angry Robot is to publish its first "quadrilogy", with publishing director Marc Gascoigne acquiring two further books in Mike Shevdon's Courts of the Feyre series. Gascoigne bought world rights through Jennifer Jackson at... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-06-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Charlotte Williams Publication Date: Tue, 07/06/2011 - 08:10 Avon has acquired three novels by Authonomy workshop author Laurence O'Bryan. Editorial director Claire Bord bought the three books directly from the author, who attended the crime and thriller workshop held by... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-06-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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