It is certainly true that it is not going to be possible to get the AI genie back in its bottle. But a second truism is "just because we can, should we?" I am firmly in the second camp.
Mainly, so far, the impact of AI on authors has been the endless (eerily similar) unsolicited praise-slop, ending with a suggestion that the author might pay to have their book, in some way, placed before more readers.
We can take as read, perhaps, the initial content-scraping of books that has got us to where we are now with AI.
But, the above negativity aside, I do now use Google AI multiple times a days as a quick-and-dirty research tool (eg 'what proportion of the current world population is related to Genghis Khan'). Although, it is easy to be misled by the offered answers.
We tend to think that if it is AI, trained on all the information in the world, it must be right - and this is a dangerous assumption. It can be really, really wrong in what it says. I think that the biggest danger of AI - apart from content slop - is the imprimatur it gives to iffy fake news/iffy information.
One thing it has not absorbed (and thus cannot regurgitate) is knowledge. At best it may gather information into a succinct reply to a request for information.
Mainly, so far, the impact of AI on authors has been the endless (eerily similar) unsolicited praise-slop, ending with a suggestion that the author might pay to have their book, in some way, placed before more readers.
We can take as read, perhaps, the initial content-scraping of books that has got us to where we are now with AI.
But, the above negativity aside, I do now use Google AI multiple times a days as a quick-and-dirty research tool (eg 'what proportion of the current world population is related to Genghis Khan'). Although, it is easy to be misled by the offered answers.
We tend to think that if it is AI, trained on all the information in the world, it must be right - and this is a dangerous assumption. It can be really, really wrong in what it says. I think that the biggest danger of AI - apart from content slop - is the imprimatur it gives to iffy fake news/iffy information.
One thing it has not absorbed (and thus cannot regurgitate) is knowledge. At best it may gather information into a succinct reply to a request for information.