AI and my Grandfather

iamaikencom on 31 July 2024

Recently, while writing in Microsoft word, I have been frustrated with the AI-based interventions while I write.  It is like a mosquito buzzing while I work. To make it fun, I did screen grabs of the errors that the grammar/spelling mistakes it wanted. No, not every sentence is past tense. And yes, AI you can refer to “stair” as a singular. I thought I captured building blocks for a funny series of block posts. It wasn’t funny. In the recent month, the AI-based interventions escalated.

In July 2024, I observed that Microsoft Word is getting slower and slower with its echo (time between keystroke and display). A few reboots, it is still bad. I whine to a colleague. He says go delete X,Y,Z from W folder.

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\vfs\ProgramFilesCommonX64\Microsoft Shared\OFFICE16\ai.exe

I did and it got better instantly. This was the evidence that what was forecasted to happen had already happened. The rumor was Microsoft would be capturing 100% of keystrokes in their applications and sending them to Microsoft as fodder for their AI engines. As an individual, my writing is protected by copyright. Now Microsoft is scraping all of my work as I type (a nice opportunity for rebellion, y’all). There is a second rumor that Microsoft is (or will be) taking screen captures and sending those back to their AI crap. Therefore, Microsoft is deliberately violating my privacy, your privacy, and violating our copyrights. While privacy is not protected by the United States Constitution, nor protected by many laws, copyright is.

Yesterday, while on the phone with my publisher, we discussed AI. She indicated that many publishers looked to embrace the technology to enhance their daily tasks such as: writing email, writing comments, and the like. Publisher are the artists advocate and defender of our copyrights. In fact, their job is to sell these rights for foreign sales, movie and TV deals, or what ever. It is capitalism and our intellectual property is our product. Their job: sell it and make us all money.

Hey, publishers if you embrace AI to write your documents and email, then you are paying for the destruction of the rights you are contractually obliged to protect. Wait… How’s that?

Let’s step back. How does AI write an email? The first body of email used as fodder in the large language model came from Enron email that landed in the public domain. Free to us. And tech companies did. It wasn’t enough. Limited scope of topics. Limited scope of writers/readers unified by a single corporate culture. Pretty sure that most people would not want their AI-generated email to sound like it came from Enron in the 1990s (Yes, Virginia, there was internet in the 1990s). Therefore, more data was needed for the development of large language models (LLM). LLM are simply repositories of words written by humans (mostly). The next best source for large volumes of data are published works that are out-of-copyright. Once you gobble that up, you recognize that language and style has changed since the 1930s. We need more writing samples. Since we (the tech industry) sits in the middle of the internet every website (copyrighted material) plus every ePub of a book (copyrighted material) plus every email that travels through Microsoft (or Google) servers.

Still not good enough. We need more data says the AI large language model. Our AI needs to be less shitty. Let’s get more data. Now it scrapes all things written in the worlds most populate word processor.

Therefore, when you ask for AI-generated text for a simple work email, you are in fact engaging in AI research and encouraging the violation of copyright. Same thing is happening in music (‘Hey, AI write me a breakup song in the style of Taylor Swift’).

There are times I see the benefits. I work daily with colleagues overseas. The AI-generated emails are often better than the write-natively-translate process that has been common. Cool, we communicate better. I can read-for-content in about six romance languages, but reading messages in my own English is easier.

Today, I spent the first hour of my workday on GoDaddy with the aim of un-breaking an email address. It took 7 phone calls and 2 chat sessions before I figured it out myself. The conversation devolved to ridiculous where I clearly had to battle against the common to find the deeply technical and obscure information that I needed. Every AI chat bot was just wrong. “Are you attempting to setup email on your phone or your computer” it asked at least three times in a row. Sadly, it was neither GoDaddy.

The words of my grandfather echo in my head. He had worked as a syndicated radio news guy during WWII on the NBC Red network. All of his peers and friends were swept up with television and landed jobs that gave them monster careers. My grandfather called TV a fad and opted to stick with radio.

I can not call AI a fad. It isn’t. There are billions invested in it. I embraced network technology in the 1980s as a young IT professional. I knew then that we were not heading towards a fad but something amazing. AI is the next bolt-on to our global internet. It is not a fad.

Some of what it does is funny. And some in scientific fields can happily celebrate huge successes with AI. The fundamental difference between AI for science and AI for creative endeavors is that from the git, science intended to live, breathe, and grow within the public domain. Creating AI models based on public data is legit.

The old rule was that if you paid for a service at Google or Microsoft for hosting your email and your office-like products (word processing, spreadsheets, presentations), then you were protected from your host. When you used their products for free, they used your data as their fee. They harvested your work for their research and you got products and services gratis.

That rule is gone.

I did move my writing to OpenOffice/LibreOffice. That is awkward and likely not much better. My work will be scraped and fed into the AI hopper regardless of my rights, my expectations, my efforts. I don’t even know how to protect myself or advise other on how to protect yourself. Gee whiz, I turned off the AI that captures my keystrokes. But I save the documents on a drive that Microsoft controls on their operating system with backups on their OneDrive. They have 100% access regardless. Yes, of course, I could build a linux based system and start from there. I have no access to Adobe there. Oh, and Adobe, you think that artists using your tools have failed to notice Adobe’s efforts to encourage the use of Adobe’s AI tools. I do NOT wonder where and how it got its data? Oh, right from their own paying customers.

I feared my legacy would be identify this tech as a fad and step away. Instead, I look at this tech for what it is and scream. What is a podcast, but radio?

I bought a fountain pen.

Idea Soup

iamaikencom on 25 July 2024

The 2027 novel sloshes about up there. Holding is like holding soup. Shaping it remains out of reach yet.

In my thoughts, I don’t think much about past stories. Doesn’t do me any good, especially when it was good. I attempted to do a short-form video that shows me writing out the opening paragraphs of the 2024 novel, The Little Ambulance War of Winchester County.

I left public service several years ago. Yet with the perversity of the Fates, I still find myself standing next to dead bodies for hours. I still find myself driving to car wrecks. And like yesterday, standing in a house being destroyed by violence, fear, alcohol, and incurable illnesses. The events echo a life’s work. Someone dials 911, and then I walk in.

In the video, you’d see my hand holding a fountain pen writing these words out. While you guys may not know the story, yet, I do. I am able to see the entire structure of the story in that graph. It has form, structure, and is firm. Not sloshy like soup.

2027 novel behaves like fine beach sand from Cranes Beach, north of Boston, it spills between the fingers. I have this drawing booklet with wee sketches in it. At one moment, I have an elderly New England woman who lives alone in the woods. Grandmotherly, but not. Hansel and Gretel or a small lass in a red cloak? Likely neither, of course. The little treatment, sketch, I did up let me explore my native woods with spring ephemerals that grow on the forest floor just after the snow clears.

Floating in my soupy thoughts is a love story with two teens, and for fun, I think they’ll be straight. Why not? I’ve heard that love can support the arc of a novel, and rather a few dramas.

And of course, I have my normal add-ins: Alex Flynn, Sarah Ann Musgrave, Brighid Doran, and Harry. And this crew bring their own kit-bag of chaos: death, suicides, car wrecks, arrests. My sketchy notes tell me stories of medicine and crime that I can use to season the story.

As I get the characters developed, I need to let the plot and subplots find me and I put fingers to the keyboard. I should not admit that I am impatient to get started. For now, the soup simmers.

Luck versus Money versus Work

iamaikencom on 14 July 2024

You know Rock-Paper-Scissors? The arbitor of childhood disputes, bar bills between mates, and general nonsense. No pick is perfect. Rock beat scissors, paper beats rock.

The three elements dance in a circle each one dependent on the other. They may just be the three in the three/three rhythm. I’d like to thank luck, then I think it was hard work and perseverance that got me this far. But then without a few denars in my pocket, I wouldn’t have the freedom, time, and tools to do the work I love. Rock beats scissors. Paper beats rock. Scissors beat Rock, as the hand wraps a fist.

Luck

I just shipped 3 advance review copies of The Little Ambulance War of Winchester County (boy that is a long name. Of course, Jonas Jonasson has me beat with “The 100 year old man who climbed out the Window and Disappeared”). I thought how lucky I am to be shipping these copies to random strangers (Upstate New York, Illinois, and Missouri).

Work

What hard work it was to get here. I can’t count the failed manuscripts, abandoned manuscripts, the hundreds of rejection letters. The Little Ambulance War earned over 90 rejections letters. The one prior to that, at least 80. My 1995 manuscript you can add another 40 to 50 rejections. Failure after failure after failure. I am very ok with that. I have learned to embrace failure. Point at it, call it by its name. There, that is a flop, a failure. Naming a failure and studying it allows for learning — or dark exploration of the impact of dark matter and the odd behavior of quarks, take your pick, I’d say.

The writing happens. I know every edit just screamed for me. It just does. I write the way other hum or sing or pluck a guitar or drive fast. The thought is there in 800 words or 2000 words or 4000 words. Then I must figure out the tenses, and un-break my typos, my dyslexic spellings, find the missing words, and all my other normal foibles. That’s work for me. It that in the right order? Does that work? Did I say enough? Did I write too much? I don’t know how to go through a week without writing.

With enough failures and rejections, I know my weakness. At least three times since the pandemic I have written myself 60,000 words into a novel only to discover there is no arc and, oops, no ending. Isn’t that rule? “Begin with the end in mind”. Then I think, what visual artist hasn’t taken the time to sketch with the tip and side of a pencil to discover the shape of things, the personality of characters, the focus, and discover how to build tension with a few strokes of graphite on paper. That’s not a failed manuscript or a failed story, it is a sketch. The masterpiece may, or may not, yet come of that render.

I learned my work habits early. My father woke at the same time nearly every day and wrote for the first 4-6 hours of the morning. Coffee and cigarette in his study. I turned 60 today and I see a reflection of my father in my own discipline. No cigarette and no coffee, but yes to tea, thank you. These routines permit the work to flow through me with the regularity one might derive from a healthy diet.

It is work to write. It is work to evaluate your own right. Is this interesting enough? Am I telling a story that anyone cares about. How can I sculpt this to better support the story?

None if this matters, if there isn’t food on the table, a roof over the heads, a place to sleep, clean water to drink and clothing to cover bits of my anatomy (you’re welcome, by the way). Without money, it is hard to push yourself creatively.  Art and creativity don’t pay their own wages.

Have I stridden to deep into gratitude journal? Oh well, it is ok to be grateful. I am grateful. With hundreds of rejections, a digital-draw full of writings, and some measure of hope, I am seeing a novel get published in September. On one hand I want to minimize the accomplishment with mutters about past publications: short stories, technical books and articles. Oh pfft, ain’t nothing about a natural step forward. No, not true. I had luck, work, and money all click together nicely.

Money

Why money?

When emailing a friend, a long-established author, a prize-winning author, a guy with movie and TV credits, he informed me that his publishing company has “asked” him to hire his own publicist. A guy with a mature and successful career just got told that he needs to invest his money in his own marketing efforts. So not just the newbs, but the seasoned professionals find the publishing world shifting under their feet too.

Money is a help. As I am learning this summer of 2024, I must build a brand and sell me to you. Like every other creative person looking to pay the mortgage, I want to scream: “Isn’t enough that I write and tell stories?” The contemporary answer is, “no.” I am a business. I must create the product, market the product, find my peeps, communicate with my peeps, love my peeps, and once I make a connection, keep them engaged. Money helps.

Any monkey’s uncle can publish a book. And for those who haven’t seen it, it is happening daily. Find a topic, find a delightful title, tell AI to write you a novel. You publish to Amazon, and some one will buy it.

Human beings now stand in a digital crowd waving human arms with human shaped hands saying, I am human. We’re standing next to digital facsimiles who occasional burst out with an extra finger or a malformed arm with two elbows. We must reach out to other human beings to say, I am not a cat or I am not AI. I am me, human, writer, etc.

The goal is presales. The goals include thumbs up, likes, hearts, want-to-reads. The goals are digital clicks from real people who will hopefully walk into real bookstores and buy a real book and smile a real person while paying with digital cash.

So, I hired a marketing person to help me. Together, we develop strategies for social media and we work and work and work at it.

Luck & Money & Work

In a week, we (me, Elina, Catalyst Publishing, spousal human behind the scenes) all picking goals that involve interest, presales, units sold, reviewer’s thoughts, social media references. In one week, we went from having nothing to over 3000 folks interested enough in The Little Ambulance War to click a button and say: “hey, maybe?!?”

That is luck. I write in a room surrounded by Vermont forests and hills. In any given month, I see the same 10 humans. The staff at the farmer’s coop for chicken feed and bedding, a few local friends, the counter guy at a local farm stand where we buy two black-and-white frappes (it is not some nonsense from a coffee shop!) What do I know about people beyond this boundary? Nothing. But 3000 people said, “maybe”. That came from luck, hard work, and investment of actual money.

I thank you for your interest.

Birthday 14JUL

My birthday treat to myself on 14JUL 2024, I will deliberately tumble and roll down a hill in my yard. My grandmother did her first somersault at either 60 or 66. I’ve been a reckless idiot most of my life. I have earned my horrible knees, but damn it, I can still take a tumble for fun and walk away (I hope). That’s sixty. Finally knowing better and still acting stupid. Go for it.

The End is just the beginning

iamaikencom on 2 July 2024

Captain Henry is a novel that has a foothold in at least three wars spanning 150 years. Told primarily as first person and present-tense accounts from members of one family.