A word about "theft"
I want to get back to Sudowrite’s feedback function because we’ve only scratched its surface, but given recent news about Anthropic’s settlement with authors, I wanted to say something. I am one of the affected parties, after all.
Yes, three of my novels, plus my work with James Patterson, were part of the massive training data set that Anthropic, OpenAI, and others used to build their models. And you know what? I couldn’t care less.
I’m pretty sure I’ve said this before, but I consider it very cool to have been part of the foundation of this transformative technology. I’m happy to take Anthropic’s money as part of the settlement, but I wouldn’t have been resentful if I had never been paid.
And don’t think this has anything to do with anything but money. Authors talk a good game about the tragedy of AI replacing original writing, and such, but they’re more than happy to hold their hands out to take these AI companies’ cash. Oh, they’ll scold and disapprove, but they’ll spend that windfall without hesitation.
The thing is, all our work becomes public property once it’s published. Getting paid is something of a small miracle considering how easy it is to distribute electronic copies. And people will read our stuff, pass it on, remix it, copy it… whatever strikes their fancy. And all without giving a dime to the author.
All I’m saying is this: don’t get hung up on money. That’s not why we do this.