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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Authors, agents and publishers have helped raise £180,597 through the Authors for Grenfell auction - £30,000 more than when it closed two weeks ago - with a David Walliams tea experience going for £12,000 and a lunch with Jonny Geller scooping more than £3,000. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2017-07-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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From Quill & Quire: A part of this discussion among food book authors has to do with Canada’s deep multiculturalism and ‘What am I actually entitled to write about?’ By Dennis Abrams | @DennisAbrams2 How Canadian Is It, Really? t Quill and Quire, Sue Carter hosts a discussion with authors on... Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2017-06-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Former President Barack Obama might be getting all the attention for that reported $65 million book deal, but former President Bill Clinton is soon coming out with an unusual book: He's writing a novel with prolific thriller writer James Patterson. Continue reading at Stuff
[ Stuff | 2017-05-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The Society of Authors in Scotland has been awarded a grant in the latest round of funding from Creative Scotland to host ScotsWrite, a three-day event for authors in Glasgow. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2017-04-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Mark Halperin, left, and John Heilemann on a panel about their series on Showtime, “The Circus,” in January 2016. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2017-03-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Stine is achieving a "lifelong dream" by writing the comics, a five-issue series that debuts in February and will feature plenty of interdimensional weirdness. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2016-12-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Lydia Cacho is one of two writers who were recently named the winners of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2016-04-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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As part of its ongoing effort to raise writers’ income, the Authors Guild is sending an open letter to members of the Association of American Publishers. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Yes, book publishers have a problem with writers of colour – it’s just not the one Man Booker prizewinner Marlon James describesThere are so few ethnic minority voices in publishing and the media that when one criticises another it has come to be regarded as a form of strike-breaking. Knowing... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2015-12-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Lately, lots of traditional book authors have been writing comic books. What author do you wish would write a comic? Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2015-09-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Computer-generated fiction might seem a tipping point for artificial intelligence, but it could help us to understand the world we live inIn 1983, William Chamberlain and Thomas Etter released a book called The Policeman’s Beard Is Half Constructed, described as the “early fiction” of a computer... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2015-08-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The Book Doctor goes right back to beginnings of YA and teen fiction in the 1950s and 1960s to investigate whether author age has anything to do with reader experienceI saw several really young writers at the Young Adult Literature Convention (Yalc) who seem to know just what their readers are... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2015-07-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A group of children’s authors, including this year’s Carnegie winner Tanya Landman, is preparing a letter to the education secretary protesting against the way writing is taught in schools. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-06-25 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A book review of Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future, by Martin Ford. The post Rise of the Robots: How Far Will They Go? appeared first on WIRED. Continue reading at Wired
[ Wired | 2015-06-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Three writers share their thoughts and concerns about sharing deeply personal secrets in a memoir. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2015-05-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The bestselling young adult author wrote her first published novel on a BlackBerry while commuting. Now she has a fan base ardent enough to complain about the way she ended one bookLauren Oliver, a bestselling young adult writer whose latest book, Vanishing Girls, was published in the US last... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2015-03-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Newsflash! Divergent fans, sit down, take a deep breath and get ready to read Veronica Roth’s new duologyAttention all you Divergent fans! Put down your books, pick up your calendars and rejoice at some really exciting news.It has been announced that Veronica Roth, author of the bestselling... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2015-03-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Jon Krakauer's upcoming book 'Missoula' will center on stories he was told by those who said they experienced sexual assault at the University of Montana. Krakauer is also the author of 'Into Thin Air.' Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2015-02-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Angry Robot has signed an author previously published by its now closed YA imprint Strange Chemistry. Danielle L Jensen first released Stolen Songbird with Strange Chemistry, which Angry Robot will now republish, followed by Hidden Huntress in June 2015, the second title in the planned... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2014-11-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Group representing Donna Tartt, Stephen King and others says Amazon tactics have driven sales down by at least 50%Some of the worlds most famous authors escalated their heated dispute with Amazon on Monday, publishing a letter to retailers board warning of the ugly history of blocking book... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2014-09-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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