I’ve been watching the case of the Jamaican writer who won a literary prize for alleged AI writing. It’s not a big deal but it seems to be an inflection point.
My first thought was: Pick a side. His output isn’t the ‘pedestrian ordinary slop’ that supposedly indicates AI. His output is wild and incomprehensible, exactly like all the human “poets” who have received literary awards for centuries. If ordinary slop is AI, then his stuff isn’t. You can’t have it both ways.
My second response: Instead of judging the output, check the provenance. Has he written other “poems” before the AI era? Did they look the same? If so, AI isn’t relevant. He might be using it for editing but it isn’t replacing his work.
Now it appears that somebody is asking for documentation. Another writer complained:
So apparently we now have to preserve all intermediate drafts of everything we write, so we can prove we didn’t use AI. This is not the way I’ve done anything in years. Sheesh.
My third response: Maybe you should have been doing it this way! Aside from legal requirements, logging and version control are NORMAL in other areas of product development. Version control is also NORMAL in paid publishing where copyright means money. Logging is more benefit than burden. When you keep good records of previous versions, along with comments or worklogs of what you were doing and why, you have a VALUABLE RESERVOIR of previous work that WILL be useful in the future. An attempt might run into a dead end now, but it WILL get you out of a hard spot later.
Amortize, amortize, amortize!
Polistra's Mill 