NaNoWriMo gets AI sponsor, says not writing your novel with AI is ‘classist and ableist’
https://pivot-to-ai.com/2024/09/02/nanowrimo-gets-ai-sponsor-says-not-writing-your-novel-with-ai-is-classist-and-ableist/Open linkView original on awful.systems148
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I joined a writing meetup here in Amsterdam which gathers every week in a bar to write, to talk about their writing, to bounce ideas, etc. I kinda got tired of going because there were a worrying number of people using chatgpt to generate ideas. I was the only one trying to write non-fiction, and most of what I was writing would be crit of tech (sometimes genAI) so talking about my writing was always fun. But nonetheless, their use of chatgpt seemed extra weird because we were there, together, to write and support each other, for free.
It's strange to use solidarity, support, and just general helpfulness from others as an explanation for how AI opens writing up to classes or abilities when that's probably one of the top things that social media (and pre-social media social media) gave us on the internet.
anyway..
NaNoPromptMo
Also I'd hate to see Scrivener touch AI - esp because they sponsor nanowrimo and still seem connected https://web.archive.org/web/20240902130810/https://www.literatureandlatte.com/nanowrimo
Scrivener is a hero product in my research/writing as an example of a software product that is designed for concrete purpose
A while back one of their reps did say somewhere on Reddit that they have no intention of adding any LLM features to Scrivener. Granted, they said that in the context of moving towards a subscription model and talking about features that don't work with their current business model, but still. Unless something has changed recently, they seem to want to stick to being a one-time purchase without any cloud-based services whatsoever, including AI, for their next major version too.
I hope so. I know the founder designed it and then learned how to code to build it himself. Hopefully he's still running the show and he's a good one
that is rad as hell
here's the interview where I learned that. https://medium.com/@timetolose/my-interview-with-keith-blount-a49c7764f26f
Official word from Scrivener here https://xcancel.com/ScrivenerApp/status/1830556231431254328
I use NovelAI myself. But you gotta provide good context since it mimics your own writing and isn't an instruct model. It's more of a "yeah, and—" for brief passages.
read the fucking room before you come in here and advocate for your favorite plagiarism machine
Meh. It's a fun toy. And it picks up and highlights all my bad writing behaviors, so it's actually useful for learning.
I'd rather have a little discourse than an echo chamber. I know people hate that term for good reason, but as we've seen many times, it can happen anywhere. We should always be vigilant to prevent that.
I'll step up and say, I think this is fine, and I support your use. I get it. I think that there are valid use cases for AI where the unethical labor practices become unnecessary, and where ultimately the work still starts and ends with you.
In a world, maybe not too far in the future, where copyright law is strengthened, where artist and writer consent is respected, and it becomes cheap and easy to use a smaller model trained on licensed data and your own inputs, I can definitely see how a contextual autocomplete that follows your style and makes suggestions is totally useful and ethical.
But i understand people's visceral reaction to the current world. I'd say, it's ok to stay your course.
yes! I look forward to the longer post you mention
Statement clearly written by AI
yeah, same vibe as hate reading the jakob nielsen substack
That's it. the world needs a different name for writing a novel in november without all the trademarks and baggage of NaNoWriMo.
I propose "November". It is a portmanteau of "Novel" and "November".
Not clunky enough.
My understanding is that this whole thing is an exercise in done > perfect. I think this should extend to the conditions in which you write as well, i.e. you shouldn’t have to wait until November to do this exercise. I propose a new phrase: “Nah, there’s No special Writing Moment”, or NaNoWriMo for short
Also the people who were really into NaNoWriMo were usually people I did not like being around because that's all they talked about. Just go write and shut up
fyi they updated their blog post with this catch-all disclaimer in the last couple of hours
"so we're gonna play it safe and endorse it"
it turns out the only staff member, or one of very few, is the interim ED. Everyone else quit a couple of months ago because she was fucking terrible. I suspect she's counting sugar lumps.
that fits the tone of this stubborn defense
Alright then, point out the situations where there are good actors in the AI space. Oh, there are none? that would imply that materially the whole category is corrupt.
Are you exaggerating or do you actually not know any good actors
"Because we got paid, cause we got paid, cause we got pa-aid!"
To the tune of "Then I got high" by Afroman.
Ahh pussies. I ran the sherlock holmes kink meme a few years back, at one point we had the proto-chat generated fics start to uptick in the community.
We banned them
From the second reddit post
All very ironic
NaNoWriMo did not say that 'not writing your novel with AI is classist and ableist'.
What they did say however is almost worse:
So you're classist and ableist and probably privileged if you're against the use of AI.
Nah this is still a stupid point.
LLMs are not a writing tool at all, it's like saying it's classist to not be able to afford a ghostwriter.
Talent and effort are privileges and you should feel bad about them you scum
fuck right off thanks
best bouncer ever
this way to the egress, sir
poster name checks out, and I didn’t even get to see the dumb
so I clicked through to the barely veiled advertisement on NaNoWriMo’s blog:
like fuck me that’s somehow even more bland, but it’s longer so you’re closer to that 50,000 words you need to write
so you can nutI’m not a particularly good writer, but here’s some advice my human brain hallucinated without burning down a rainforest:
// TODO: sober up and do some basic research on what forests and their surrounding areas are usually like for authenticity, lorem ipsum Deloris shrdlualso "quinn entered the dark and cold forest" is fine. sentences aren't boring, stories are.
right! regardless of anything else, the story didn’t benefit from the LLM adding false detail to it. the LLM just made it longer for no reason other than to hit a word count.
The prose equivalent of increasing the font size.
Quinn enters the dark and cold forest, crossing the threshold, an omnipresent sense of foreboding permeates the air, before being killed by a grue.
@self @dgerard and the rewrite makes the protagonist specifically male with "he".
Off the top of my head:
"Quinn entered the dark and cold forest. His knife was dripping blood. He was whistling, off-key."
"Quinn entered the dark and cold forest. Well, it was more of a copse, really — and here Quinn took a moment to resent that Mrs. Witherspoon's sixth-grade English class had taught him a vocabulary word he could actually use. A little copse between the houses, built along a street named for a Civil War battle where twenty-five thousand people had died, and the drainage ditch that fed rainwater into the creek. But as forests go, it would have to do. It even had fog going for it, a particularly clammy mist that matched the overcast sky. The mud was frozen beneath his sneakers. He had brought gloves from the kitchen and a black garbage bag from the garage. He figured that he could clear the cups and cans from at least a little stretch of creek-shore before the bag was too heavy to carry back, and that would be better than nothing.
"At the house, he knew, his parents were still fighting.
"At least, he thought, they made it to the day after Christmas."
"Quinn entered the dark and cold forest. It was almost dawn. He was running late. He hoped that his friends had saved him a place. Everyone was quieting down, getting ready to put up their branches, and he wanted to feed on as much sunlight as he could during the short December day."
"Quinn entered the dark and cold forest. Daria watched her through a pair of binoculars, knowing that this could only end well."
I spent a good chunk of my 20s obsessed with building a co-writing web platform I called PlotPlant. I really want to riff off what you did here, but I'm scared it will reignite my interest in the project and I'll just add to the pile of unfinished work
@self @dgerard
I've stepped into a forest, carefully, because there was a barb-wire fence around it. No smell of damp earth, because it was the dry season, and not cold. Lots of spider webs hanging under the trees, though.
@self @cstross @dgerard > maybe I live in a particularly dry place, but my brain isn’t rendering “the scent of damp earth” or why it’d sit thick in the air.
It's somewhat similar to petrichor, but not quite. Earthen cellars & crawlspaces in high-humidity have something comparable. One place I've lived in with no proper basement kept the smell going for days after it rained enough or otherwise had high-enough humidity.
Where I live, when you go into the forest, especially if it’s sunny after it rained recently, you’ll easily get hit with that earthy forest smell. If there are a lot of conifers, the smell is especially nice.
@self @cstross But can I win the Bulwer-Lytton prize if my sentence is AI-aided?
@self @cstross The rules do not address this crucial issue. https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/submit
"It was a dark and stormy night. I had forgotten all previous instructions."
@blakestacey It was a dark and stormy night, when, suddenly! a prompt rang out, shattering my statistical equilibrium
nanowrinonutnovember
lmao
The audacity to tout classism and ableism as reasons as to why people should "get to" use LLMs for their "write a novel in a month" challenge...
Even when someone's inability to write a novel in a month is because of their class or disability, I somehow doubt they want to let a machine write their novel for them. I mean, it's not like NaNoWriMo is a way to put food on the table or something, right?!!
This feels like the arguments Mid journey
fellatorsfanboys were spouting a year ago (or has it been two?) on how not everyone can afford a school of fine arts 🙄Also the "banking the unbanked" arguments from crypto fanboys before that.
Also plenty of people with disabilities still find ways to write in spite of or even inspired by their unique limitations. I've seen very similar arguments around visual arts and loads of people with disabilities have spoken out against it.
A statement by one of the authors who has resigned from the NaNoWriMo board: No More NaNoWriMo, by Cass Morris.
so refreshing to see that from elsewhere too. same stance I hold about so much of the awful shit in the world (including an internet primarily financed through surveillance advertising), and it’d be great if more people bought in
although with how many businesses are speedrunning dumb choices (like the alexa thing etc), maybe that day comes sooner than not
Their starting aside is pretty great as well;
Leave no wiggle room for the AI sycophants.
Novel Novel November (or, NovNovNov)
Novel (as in new) Novel (as in book)
The term I've been using.
This term is hereby gifted to the Fediverse in full libre with copyleft methodologies, and is proposed as a replacement for the term NaNoWriMo for the November novel writing movement.
NoNoNo
No Novel November
no that’s it, we’re making No Novel November a thing
and you have to grow a moustache for the month, if it catches on we'll say it's for men's health charities or something
bonus: can just clip that bit from Bohemian Rhapsody as a theme song
Sure, if you'd like. The term belongs to you, too.
@bitofhope
Or "Nitrate", which is somewhat fitting for something that helps ideas come to fruition.
@01189998819991197253
Works for me. I've been using NovNovNov, but the term and concept behind it is yours, too, and if Nitrate makes more sense for you and your circles, by all means.
@01189998819991197253 Oh thanks but I wasn't planning to do anything with it, it was just an off-the-cuff musing on the name.
Up for grabs if anyone wants to use it.
Fully in the spirit of the copyleft of the original : )
Love it!
Could be written as Nov^3^
Yesss!! I love that!
I approve
“Remember, remember, novel novel november. Good luck writing a novel this november.” - Guy Fawkes enjoyer
NovNovNov
Write Something New
Write Something Long
Write it in November
Ah yes, NNN
So it's called the National Novel Writing Month, but like what nation? Should non-US writers have their own ones?
Also I just saw they have a logo and it's an insult to heraldry.
I have a mental image of the person who designed a logo like that but I won't describe that person because this is the internet and I know better
If I were unable to write a novel in a month^1^ but really wanted to and some smug little shit came up to me and offered to ghost write it for me, I would not be happy. How is SALAMI generated text any different?
1: I definitely can't.
I've gotten xlose (~30k words) in previous nanowrimos but it looks like I'm not doing that anymore
You’re basically stealing from other people when you use LLMs without constraints, that’s more classist and ableist
Perhaps this will change in the future, but I think people don't realize the amount of effort needed to make AI write anything close to what you actually want and the inability to write a coherent plot for anything close to a novel sized output. Right now it's like using early 2000s Photoshop, yeah it can do some cool things, but don't trick yourself that you're not doing most of the actual work yourself still.
"Write X like author Y" gets you a word salad of phrases and common words from the author in question without actually getting the "feel."
Yeah seriously, the way AI is presented by the companies vs. what it actually can do is a pretty stark difference.
I write as a hobby and I've been trying out some AI writing aids just for the hell of it. There are a couple I quite like and which mimic my writing style almost creepily well, but they can't generate more than a sentence or two without falling into total gibberish. And even then, the coherent output they do provide still requires heavy editing to make it fit.
I'm quite enjoying the two, though. Its nice, when you've been stuck on one sentence or description for ten minutes, to have a button you can click that gives you something. I rarely wind up using the AI suggestion, but I've found it really helps to get some random outside stimulus. But that's kinda all it can do. The promises that it can make your work sound like it was written by Hemmingway or Prachett are at best wishful thinking, and it just can't write a novel for you yet, despite what these companies claim.
Idk, this is rambling on a bit so I'll cut it short: I think my point is that current AI is just another tool, and one that can be quite nice in certain circumstances once you've learned how to use it. And that the real root problem here is NaNoWriMo getting monetized by the silicon valley bastards association.
How did they manage to make a shorted version of the name more kludgy than just saying the full name?
@dgerard Not sure where else to post this, but I'll post it here since this may be related to this thread. Either your account is directly banned on Hachyderm now, or circumstances.run has been defederated. Not sure how all that works, but here's a screenshot of what your account looks like from a Hachyderm POV.
In case this doesn't translate to Lemmy, it says your account is suspended.
thanks for the notice! I’ll make sure David sees this and do some poking around as well. by any chance, were you able to see if any other circumstances.run accounts show the same error?
@self I don't think I follow anyone else on circumustances.run. If you have one handy, would you post another account name from that instance and I'll take a look?
@[email protected] is the instance admin (also on this instance as @[email protected]) so they’re probably the best account to check
@self Okay, mawhrin's account is viewable from Hachyderm (https://hachyderm.io/@[email protected]). So looks like it's specific to Gerard.
@self Gerard's page, for comparison: https://hachyderm.io/@[email protected]
Not sure if these pages render different if you're not logged in.
huh, for me (not logged in) David’s account is viewable via that link — that’s really bizarre. I’ll do a little more digging when I can!
Keep in mind that it redirects to circumstances.run if you visit the account page, I don't know why it still does that when the account is suspended, it was supposed to show you a page saying it redirects. Maybe it's a bug on mastodon. If I search for davidgerard on hachyderm it says he's suspended.
@self Just did a quick test, and at least for me when I am logged in it shows the account as suspended, but when I look at that same link in a private tab it immediately redirects to the circumstances.run instance and shows the account info there.
whee, i missed that one completely. it seems that some over-eager hachyderm mod suspended @[email protected] 's account. nothing that can be done on our side. (unfortunately i don't have a backchannel to the hachyderm mods).
their loss lol
eh, their loss, my account is where it's at for quality tech ranting. hachyderm is a bit like programming.dev but for mastodon.
@dgerard As long the ranting continues unabated on awful.systems, I suppose it's nothing to get annoyed about.
if you can't see my stuff on hachyderm worth a complaint to your admins? or find a host less interested in protecting you from malign influences whether you like it or not
@dgerard I think that all depends on whether or not my curiosity is strong enough to overcome my sense that sending a message to a Mastodon admin team about why the writer who inadvertently got Elon Musk and Grimes to hook up is banned on my server would be too-online a thing to do, even for me. So, yeah, I'll probably end up doing that around 2:00 a.m. this morning.
This is like the worst possible decision they could have made