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From: Gary McGath <garym@mcgath.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.fandom
Subject: Re: Ansible 447 -- October 2024
Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2024 20:23:00 -0400
Organization: Mad Scientists' Union
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On 10/1/24 12:49 PM, David Langford wrote:
> RANDOM FANDOM._NaNoWriMo_  (National Novel Writing Month, every November)
> was widely criticized for suggesting that it was fine to achieve the goal
> of writing a novel in 30 days by having AI software churn out the words,
> and indeed that it's ableist and classist to expect would-be writers to do
> their own writing. Is it coincidence that they have an AI-linked firm as
> sponsor? Three board members promptly resigned. [F770]

They may have been criticized for that, but it's not what they 
suggested. Their statement (at least in its current form) is: "NaNoWriMo 
neither explicitly supports nor condemns any approach to writing, 
including the use of tools that  leverage AI. We recognize that harm has 
been done to the writing and creative communities at the hands of bad 
actors in the generative AI space, and that the ethical questions and 
risks posed by some aspects of this technology are real. The fact that 
AI is a large, complex technology category (which encompasses both 
non-generative and generative AI, applied in a range of ways to a range 
of uses) contributes to our belief that AI is simply too big and too 
varied to categorically support or condemn."

AI covers a lot of different tools, and many style and grammar checkers 
claim to use AI. I run a lot of what I write through Grammarly, so I use 
"tools that leverage AI." NaNoWriMo's statement is unnecessarily vague, 
but it's not an endorsement of "having AI software churn out the words."

-- 
Gary McGath    http://www.mcgath.com