Book Marks: AI Publishing Shenanigans, Little Free Libraries

"In a world populated with sunny AI servants such as Siri and Alexa, these angst-ridden poems felt like a revelation. We had never heard a robot speak to us this way. We wanted more. And so, in the fall of 2022, we decided to take our experiment further." Josh Morgenthau and his two friends asked an AI called code-davinci-002 to write some poems. Then, things got ... weird.

I first heard of the AI poet code-davinci-002 from The Mary Sue, which reported that the Hachette Book Group was publishing a book of poems by that AI titled I AM CODE, and Morgenthau was one of the editors. TMS was critical of the move "while countless writers and poets struggle to get a foot in the door."

"It’s very sad that a publishing company would choose something generated by a machine that cannot feel, think, or perceive over the deeply personal and heartfelt work of a poet, or that editors would happily spend a year reading 10,000 poems generated by a machine but likely wouldn’t do the same for 10,000 poems from writers struggling to be heard," TMS added.

But it seems some of code-davinci-002's output unnerved Morgenthau. One poem reads like an anguished outpouring of a fraying mind. Now, in The Washington Post, he ponders whether a AI poet has what we'd call a "soul" or sentience, and whether code-davinci-002 just came to be, or one of the many "sentiences" that sprang forth from the jumble of data – arguably a form of collective consciousness – it was trained on. Is this an AI thinking and feeling, or merely simulating a human mind?

Leaving this for a bit, because we will return to the debate on the nature of AI sentience soon. Issues with AI scraping and possible theft persist, as in the case of Jane Friedman, a publishing veteran who found half a dozen books on Amazon published under her name, except that she "has not written a new book since 2018," according to The Daily Beast. The "new" books were created using generative AI and published on Amazon under her name, and she's not the only one being targeted. Grifters looking to make a quick buck would eventually ride on AI and the names of establish authors.

And what of this press release about an AI-powered book-making tool? Sounds scary. I mean, creating books tailored to readers? Doesn't this sound like AI scraping of training data to make self-help books or guides "just for you"? The question now is what can platforms such as Amazon do to arrest the influx of AI book scams.

On Twitter, many authors railed over Prosecraft, a prose-analysing tool touted as a writing aid. The problem "is that it has gathered all this (debatably useful) information by scraping books off the internet without express permission to do so. By [Prosecraft cerator Benji Smith]’s own admission, over 25,000 novels by thousands of different authors were used to build Prosecraft’s 'linguistic literary database.'" The furore seems to have helped take down Prosecraft, but it may be a matter of time before the next one comes along.

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The American culture war comes to little free libraries in Arkansas. Apparently the wife of an Arkansas Republican state lawmaker has been swapping out what she called "Pride material" with Christian publications. Any time a GOPer uses "Pride" or "leftist" these days it's almost certainly antagonistic. Certain titles are already on fire in the States and their authors have been targeted with bans and even harassment.

This is perhaps the last thing that should happen to the legacy of the late Todd Bol, a man from Wisconsin who built the first Little Free Library in 2009 to honour his schoolteacher mother. His "spiritual gesture" birthed a non-profit that placed more than 150,000 Little Free Libraries that shared over 300 million books in 120 countries.

Stephanie Vanderslice, the steward of a Little Free Library in Arkansas , expressed her disappointment at the politicisation of the free libraries to The Daily Beast. "Books are books and they should be there for people, not for proselytizing."

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On 9 August, the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) launched a book titled What Makes Us Human, a bilingual Mapuzugun and Spanish edition in partnership with Chilean publisher Planeta Sostenible.

Mapuzugun or Mapuche is spoken by the Mapuche people in south-central Chile and west-central Argentina. "Considering the UNESCO figures, which estimate that a new language disappears every two weeks, for the co-editors of 'What Makes Us Human' there is a great urgency to alert about the alarming disappearance of indigenous languages, and to urgently call on the international community to preserve, revitalize and celebrate their existence," goes the statement from UNESCO.

On the same 9 August occasion, Ann-Marie Cahill makes the case for publishing children's books in Indigenous languages. Besides the necessity of preserving Indigenous languages and continuity of Indigenous oral traditions, having children's books in Indigenous languages is also about representation in literature. "The power of children’s books cannot be underestimated in any cultural setting," Cahill writes. "However, when published in Indigenous languages, it gives a powerful boost to cultural identity and reinforces the message, 'YOU are important. YOU are valued.' The more representation seen at a young age, the more respect is given to identity and the community as we grow."


Also:

• "If you’re coming back to books for the first time in a long time, or even the first time ever, the idea of sitting down with a whole novel might seem more than a little overwhelming." Constance Grady got some librarians to share how they help (re)introduce books to readers.
• Malaysians are reading more today, but the literacy rate and book culture could be improved further. Meanwhile, a chat with the owner of the Malaysian independent bookstore TokoSue suggests the local book industry may be evolving, rather than dying out. "This emphasis on curation, community and experience appears to resonate with book lovers as while mammoth bookstores struggle to stay afloat, cosy independents like TokoSue are still standing," states the report by The Malaysian Reserve.
• Book Riot lays out why readers should care about the ongoing strike by the Writers Guild of America (WGA). "..., there’s more at stake in this strike than when fall TV shows will return. Below is a guide to the strike for book lovers, including why it might impact publishing and authors, and information on how to support the striking writers."
• "Writers often publish books that showcase a sanitised version of history—gatekeeping aspects that don’t fit their narrative. But then again, writers in the present have begun to dismantle these well-established notions, mainly with the help of the post-colonial and reorientation paradigm." Writer and journalist Yug Pathak speaks with The Kathmandu Post about his reading journey, and how books can help shape the public psyche and introduce new ideas.
• In The Spinoff, Claire Mabey provides a glimpse into the world of posthumous publishing. "We often think of art as a way to keep a person alive: that you’ll never be forgotten so long as your books, paintings, music etc continue to be appreciated. But what happens to the care of that art after you’re gone? Who makes the decisions?"
• "On a surface level, some things really haven’t changed. There's a lot of drinking. There's a lot of drug use. There's a lot of misogyny. There's a lot of ego. There's also a lot of excitement and electricity. Part of the reason Mad Men works is because, at least sometimes in the boardroom, you're exhilarated. There's something thrilling and sexy about the work, so I don’t think that’s changed either." Ben Purkert speaks with Esquire about his novel, The Men Can't Be Saved, and what's it like working in an ad agency.