The Prix Pascal is named after Blaise Pascal, a French polymath who helped invent one of the first mechanical calculators and also wrote theological texts, including Pensées, which Pope Francis praised for its “philosophical depth and literary charm”. Read more
Tag: Artificial Intelligence
Horror Novel ‘Shy Girl’ Canceled Over Suspected A.I. Use
Hachette Book Group, one of the largest publishers in the United States, pulled a forthcoming horror novel on Thursday in a decision that followed widespread allegations online that the author relied heavily on artificial intelligence to write the book. Read more
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Federal Judge Sides With Anthropic in Lawsuit Over Training AI on Books Without Authors’ Permission
Federal judge William Alsup ruled that it was legal for Anthropic to train its AI models on published books without the authors’ permission. This marks the first time that the courts have given credence to AI companies’ claim that fair use doctrine can absolve AI companies from fault when they use copyrighted materials to train large language models (LLMs) … In this particular case, Bartz v. Anthropic, the group of plaintiff authors also brought into question the manner in which Anthropic attained and stored their works. According to the lawsuit, Anthropic sought to create a “central library” of “all the books in the world” to keep “forever.” But millions of these copyrighted books were downloaded for free from pirate sites, which is unambiguously illegal. While the judge granted that Anthropic’s training of these materials was a fair use, the court will hold a trial about the nature of the “central library.” Read more
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People Can’t Tell the Difference Between Human and AI Poetry – and Even Prefer the Latter
According to a new paper in Nature Scientific Reports, non-expert readers of poetry cannot distinguish poetry written by AI from that written by canonical poets. Moreover, general readers tend to prefer poetry written by AI – at least until they are told it is written by a machine. Read more
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Literature Machines
The Italian novelist Italo Calvino was unusually optimistic about the invention of a “literature machine.” In his 1967 essay “Cybernetics and Ghosts,” he imagines a computer that would be “capable of conceiving and composing poems and novels,” bringing to the page what humans “are accustomed to consider as the most jealously guarded attributes in our psychological life.” For him, literature is simply “a combinatorial game that pursues the possibilities implicit in its own material, independent of the personality” of the writer. When read today, Calvino’s predictions—“provocative and even profane” at the time, as he admitted—seem eerily prescient. Read more
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AI-Created Art Isn’t Copyrightable, Federal Judge Rules
A federal judge on Friday upheld a finding from the U.S. Copyright Office that a piece of art created by AI is not open to protection. Read more
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Publisher Halts Pitches Amid Deluge of AI-Generated Stories
One of the most prestigious publishers of science fiction short stories has closed itself to submissions after a deluge of AI-generated pitches overwhelmed its editorial team. Read more
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A Robot Wrote This Book Review
In “The Age of AI,” Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt and Daniel Huttenlocher explore how far artificial intelligence has come. Read more
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