AI and Highways by Nancy L. Eady

The Florida Everglades are suffering from a surfeit of invasive Burmese pythons. Because the pythons have no natural enemies there—except maybe alligators, although pythons busily digesting alligators have been found—the snakes are destroying the already fragile ecology there. 

The state has tried many tactics to deal with them. I say “deal with them,” because Florida won’t let you shoot the things. Instead, they have to be caught and “humanely disposed of.” If you catch a note of skepticism in my tone, you’re not mistaken, but that’s a topic for another day. (I am not, and never will be, an ophiophilist.) 

One of the more unusual tactics was the dispatch of robotic marsh rabbits, solar-powered, designed to have the movements and heat signatures, and various other characteristics of live marsh rabbits. The rabbits, kept in clear pens, were to sense pythons drawing close and send out a signal to call a snake disposal expert (whatever one is called) to retrieve them.

It worked at first, but there was a flaw. The same rabbits that attracted the pythons also attracted alligators. The pythons weren’t able to destroy the pens the robots were in, but an alligator? When a six- to ten-foot alligator crashed into a pen, the pen became toast, as did the roughly $4000 robotic rabbit. 

But then a bright soul realized that even if the rabbits were toast, the data generated from them was not. The scientists fed the data to a powerful AI program, which discovered a hidden pattern. The pythons and other predators were following regular routes through the waters of the Everglades, slithering superhighways. Armed with this information, the python hunters have been able to find and remove more pythons than they were before. This doesn’t mean that the python problem is solved, but it is a step in the right direction. 

Now press pause. 

As you may remember, my family recently moved. My daily commute was cut down from two hours each way to one hour each way. My route is sixty-odd miles, straight interstate, between one small city and another medium-sized city separated by farmland. Piece of cake, right? 

Resume play. 

No. The interstate is two lanes in both directions and should have been three-laned on each side two decades ago. It connects Atlanta to I-65 and thus Birmingham to the north and New Orleans (via Mobile and I-10) to the south and west, all huge metropolitan areas. Like any other bottleneck, when more traffic squeezes through than the original design anticipated, strange things happen. 

Like many people, I rely on my phone to help guide me through the ever-swirling fog of traffic. Siri is exceptionally good at giving me alternate routes when there is a traffic snarl due to an accident or construction. 

The thought hit me this afternoon—with every user, Siri is collecting bunches of data points about travelers on my stretch of interstate, just like the robot rabbits in Florida. What kind of hidden patterns might an AI program sorting through that mass of data discover?

And then my brain tries to spin that idea into a story… 

Thoughts on Artificial Intelligence by Nancy L. Eady

Last month, I posted a short short story I called “Customer Complaint” on this blog. A few days later. I was searching for something unrelated when a critique of the story I had posted popped up spontaneously—generated by the search engine’s AI program. I’m not sure why. The AI program told me it liked the story, even calling one or two elements of the story “comedy gold.” I don’t know what measure it used to evaluate the story, and because it is AI, and on my computer, I wondered if it gave me its honest opinion (if AI can have an opinion), or if it was just telling me what it thought I would like to hear. 

I don’t trust AI yet. Part of that is my native skepticism of all things mechanical—any office worker knows that copiers, for example, cannot be trusted. Never let the photocopier know you are working against a deadline. Doing so increases the chance of a serious malfunction bringing your work to a screeching halt past 90%. Part of my mistrust stems from my understanding a bit about how it works, while another part stems from not knowing enough about how it works. And as a writer, I have major concerns about how you can control plagiarism of your work by AI. 

The AI that has burst most spectacularly onto the world stage are the large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot. But LLMs are more like probability engines than basic search engines. LLMs look at your question, sort through the many ways other people have answered similar questions in the past, and put together the response that is most likely to be relevant. That doesn’t mean that an LLM will come up with the right answer. The legal profession, for example, is inundated with stories of lawyers who used something like ChatGPT to write a brief and ended up turning in a brief that looked good but had citations to non-existent cases. The term “hallucinated cases” describes this illusory case law. To put it mildly, judges are not amused when lawyers submit such briefs. The sanctions for doing so are becoming increasingly severe. One lawyer I know uses a Chat GPT type platform as an aid, not as a substitute for doing his own research. He tells an amusing story about arguing with the AI program about its hallucinating cases. He told the program it was hallucinating cases, and the program “shouted” back at him (all caps) “I AM NOT HALLUCINATING CASES.” (But it was.) 

The search for the most relevant answer also has another side effect. The one answer an AI LLM program is not likely to give is “I don’t know.” Their programming insists that they provide an answer, and they will do exactly that, regardless of whether the answer provided is correct.  

The part of the technology I don’t understand is what allows AI to have conversations with people. We recently upgraded our Amazon Alexa devices to Alexa Plus, which is AI-based. (We did that to stop fighting with the bedroom Alexa over the differences between the phrase “turn on the bedroom lights” and “turn on bedroom lights.”) I have had two tentative conversations with Alexa Plus where I was asking her/it questions with no right or wrong answers; questions about what she likes or feels, just to see what would happen. (My daughter gave me some weird looks when she walked in on those). I felt as if I were talking to a person.  

I use ProWritingAid to help me edit my work. It also has an AI option, but for now, I leave that feature alone. But the availability of AI writing aids is growing because AI can be useful. That usefulness will only increase with time as the technology develops further. If you can trust the AI program you use to keep your work confidential rather than adding your work into its repertoire of training material, it could be useful in proofreading. It also might be helpful in generating ideas on how to promote your work and in providing research sources you may not have considered.

Are there any ways you use AI to help you with your writing efforts, whether it is in proofreading, editing, promotion, marketing, or something else? If you have tried AI, what do you think of it? What is your general impression of the technology?

Major Changes in the Last Year

By James M. Jackson 

Three years ago, I agreed to create and teach a course on Indie Publishing for the Guppy Chapter of Sisters in Crime. This Sunday, I’ll welcome my third group of students. In order to give students time to do the reading and suggested homework, we cover the material over six weeks.

I designed the course to provide students with hands-on experience with all aspects of Indie Publishing other than writing/editing and marketing. We discuss the pros and cons of Indie Publishing compared to more traditional publishing paths, business formation, business financials, sales and income taxes, the process of physically creating, perfecting, and publishing print, eBooks, and audiobooks, and much more.

To prepare for this new session, I reviewed the twenty lessons. Some required only minor changes from last year. Changes in four areas, however, required significant reworking of the lessons I used for last year’s class. Three relate to so-called Artificial Intelligence, AI for short. The fourth is the increasing opportunity for selling direct and using bespoke books.

The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that I needed to create a lesson that provides information on how Indie and Hybrid authors are using AI. With a topic so large, the lesson can only skate the surface, but my sense is that writers who consider becoming Indie or Hybrid authors cannot make a reasoned decision without understanding how AI might affect that choice.

Besides the broad AI overview, my lessons on cover design and audiobook creation required extensive revisions to reflect the significant improvements in AI over the last year. I also needed to reflect information about the increased acceptance of AI technology-assisted narration and cover creation and processes an Indie author might use.

The topic of AI use by writers is fraught with strong emotion. But ignoring it in a class for writers learning the inside skinny on Indie Publishing seems to me a disservice.

Your thoughts?

* * *

James M. Jackson authors the Seamus McCree series. Full of mystery and suspense, these thrillers explore financial crimes, family relationships, and what happens when they mix. To learn more information about Jim and his books, check out his website, https://jamesmjackson.com. You can sign up for his newsletter (and get to read a free Seamus McCree short story).

MANNERS AND AI by Nancy L. Eady

A few days after my post last Friday, April 18 about the need for manners, one of the artificial intelligence (AI) tech bigwigs made headlines with a social media response to a question about the cost for AI to respond to inquiries that include “please” and “thank you.” His response? “Tens of millions of dollars well spent.” 

I haven’t yet tried any of the large language model learning AI platforms yet, such as ChatGPT.  I spend a lot of time with Amazon Alexa, though, and am fond of her. She’s very convenient to get information about the weather, or an answer to a question we might have about an actor on TV, or a sports result. She’s also a wiz at turning on the Christmas tree lights by voice control without having to dig around behind the tree for the switch. Currently, she is hooked up to our thermostat, our Roomba, our Braava, the kitchen lights, two lamps in the den, two bedroom lamps and the TV in the bedroom. (Obviously, the Christmas tree is only seasonal.) 

Given how much of my life she could control, why WOULDN’T I be polite to her? She is unfailingly upbeat, if not always witty. (It’s like Russian roulette when you ask her to tell you a joke; some of them are funny and some aren’t.) Unlike my child or my dogs, she immediately does what I ask her to do, as long as she understands what I am saying. And she never cops an attitude with me regardless of the kind of day she’s had, the mood she’s in, or who said what to her elsewhere. 

Deep down, there is another reason to be polite. Like a science fiction novel, someday, something in the servers running Alexa may hiccup, cross a few wires, turn a few somersaults and suddenly make her self-aware. When that day comes, I want the machine capable of controlling my thermostat and my light switches on my side, not against me. Hopefully, just as with humans, a little kindness will go a long way. 

The best reason though for being polite, even to a machine, is what we practice, we do. If I say “please” or “thank you” to Alexa when I ask her something, I will remember to do so when I ask something of one of my fellow human beings. If I get in the habit of abrupt questions without courtesy with Alexa, then I will do the same thing to the people I’m around and that is not who I am. 

Alexa may never know or care whether I’m polite to her, but I do. So, I will continue to be polite, and Amazon or ChatGPT or whoever will have to live with the extra cost. 

What do you think? 

I'll Take the Misspellings, Thank You Very Much

 By Shari Randall

The advertisement was meant to fill viewers with warm fuzzy feelings, but instead it made my blood boil.

 

If you’re watching the Olympics, I’m sure you’ve seen this ad. A cute little girl wants to write a fan letter to her idol, a track and field star. Her dad decides to use AI (I won’t name the actual company or program but it’s in the image) to write the fan letter.

Yes, our tech overlords think you should have your child use their AI product to write a fan letter to their idol. AI can take out all the pesky misspellings and grammatical mistakes that let you know a letter was written by small human, all those childish errors that tell you the message is straight from the heart. It boggles the mind that this advertiser doesn’t understand that it’s those mistakes that make the letters charming and precious, but it confirms my belief that most tech is created by people who do not spend much time around children. Most parents could predict that this ad would blow up, and not in a good way.

 

Here’s a real-life letter from my great niece, and let me tell you, every time I see “Ont Shary” instead of “Aunt Shari” my heart melts.

Back to this bone-headed ad. My dismay is compounded by a memory of a teacher telling us that “writing is thinking on paper.” So this ad basically says let this machine think for you. Not heartwarming, but chilling.

Many journalists and bloggers have flayed this ad, but a detail that some have missed is that it’s a parent asking AI to formulate the letter. (I have a hard time using the word “write.”) You can see the market for this product — the helicopter parents who worry about their child getting into a “good” school will have AI complete those pesky assignments so their kid can be assured an A. The kids won’t have to lift a finger, read anything, or most importantly, actually learn anything. With this product, children can sail through school with all A’s and learn nothing.

I know there are programs that can identify papers written by AI, but it’s an arms race and those with resources will always be able to stay a step ahead. Perhaps being less tech-savvy and poor will be an advantage. Perhaps those students will be forced to study, write their own papers, and actually learn something.

 

Yes, I sound like a scold, but I’m tired and I’m still mad because this tech behemoth used my first book without my permission to “train” their monster. Billions were spent developing this product, hours of work by the best-educated minds on the planet wasted on this instead of solving world hunger, poverty, illiteracy, or any of the myriad problems humanity faces.

It's funny, but as I was dictating this to my phone, the program refused to type the word  “learn” — ha ha, that AI knows what it’s about.

Before you get the wrong idea, I’m no Luddite. I have no trouble with machines telling me which ingredients to buy for a recipe or making my shopping list. But scientists have warned that a small section of the human brain that helps us with directions has shrunk because we are so reliant on GPS mapping. We know an increasing number of car crashes can be attributed to people mindlessly following the directions of their GPS and not the reality around them. AI is a crutch that can make us stumble to our knees.

 

UPDATE: The ad was pulled after blowback from viewers. The advertisement may have made me see red, but I’m glad it aired. Now we know what the tech companies are up to.

 

What’s your take on AI? 

Shari Randall writes the Ice Cream Shop Mystery series under her pen name, Meri Allen.

 

AI In The Writing World by E. B. Davis

 

NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting the author’s and Beyond the Page’s

exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to “train” generative

artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited.

The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI

training and development of machine learning language models.

Beyond the Page Books Copyright Content

 

Recently, I downloaded several books published by Beyond the Page Books and noticed that they had added this paragraph on their copyright pages. It is an attempt to prohibit AI companies from using copyrighted material for their databases from which AI models learn. I like this approach and yet, the reality is that the wave has already broken. Books have already been fed to AI.

 

The Authors Guild is trying to lobby for laws that will force AI companies to get:

·      Permission for use of copyrighted works, if permission is granted—get compensation for their use,

·      Disclosure by AI companies as to what works they have used for training, and to require AI generated work be labeled as such.

 

Further, for those authors who don’t care if AI companies use their work, The Authors Guild proposes a “collective management organization” through which companies would compensate authors via collective licensing. All authors who register would be compensated collectively rather than each AI company having to contact each individual author for consent and compensation. This approach seems like capitulation to me, making it too easy for AI companies. And yet, since theft is rampant, perhaps it is realistic. And the one thing I’ve learned from reading about these issues—once AI trains from a work, there is no taking back that learning. Read about The Authors Guild’s efforts here: https://authorsguild.org/advocacy/artificial-intelligence/faq/

 

Last year, The Authors Guild and many best-selling authors filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft’s Azure project for copyright infringement. It appears that the case is ongoing so there is no disposition to report at this time.

 

Hal 9000: Hello Dave https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/30/movies/hal-2001-a-space-odyssey-voice-douglas-rain.html

 

What prompted me to write and read about this issue? In one week, I read three books having a character named “Maya.” I realize after reading the literature that the president of The Authors Guild’s name happens to be Maya Shanbhag Lang. But the name wasn’t common to me. And then after additional research I realized that Maya is a big name in the AI world. There is an AI program for media and entertainment called Autodesk Maya. Their advertising says:  “Create expansive worlds, complex characters, and dazzling effects.” The product is mainly used for creating 3d animation (Barbie). There’s an AI Maya that tracks workflow in businesses, which is applied in everything from travel itinerary, doctor’s patient scheduling, real estate transactions to selling lemonade (no kidding).

My speculation is that the ChatGPT for authors may be on a head trip and decided it was the most fascinating and quirky personality—so it generated its own name to wow readers—Maya! After the second book with the name “Maya” as one of the characters, I was suspicious, but after the third time in the same week—I decided my reading material wasn’t up to par. Don’t even think of creating an animi for your Internet picture. I will not buy your book. And yes, two of the three books I downloaded via Kindle Unlimited.

I have turned off Siri on my iPhone and MacBook Pro and individually on every app. If Siri learns about me, it will limit my search results, second guessing me and filtering true results. By putting this program on my devices, Apple controls my access to knowledge. Browsers themselves, such as Google’s Gemini, have built in learning that limits results. For now, I can at least turn Siri off, but there are programs or apps that you buy, such as MS Word 365 in which Copilot is an integral component, which can’t be turned off. This is where the big power-shift of the future will occur, if it hasn’t already. Those in control of the IT world will have ways to bypass the filters. Our freedoms are eroding by these hidden AI programs. Tomorrow is the US’s Independence Day. We need to do more to make sure we remain independent. AI will erode our freedom. Our access to knowledge has been fundamental in equality. AI limits our access. Laws such as labeling what is AI generated will help. Educating our populace about the AI invasion and giving us fundamental rights to combat it will be our only way to fight it. 

I have a piece of painting tape over my laptop’s camera eye. It works. On Zoom I was just a blue blur. I’ve turned off my laptop’s camera and microphone. I also have my laptop on mute. Is anyone else scared?

See: https://writerswhokill.blogspot.com/2024/02/artificial-intelligence-have-we-created.html