I’ve painstakingly written short essays in this blog. Frequent mentions of favorite books by world-class authors are included. Until a couple years ago neither I nor them had benefited from generative AI tools. However, this blogging passion became hopelessly outdated. 🤣

Perhaps, some modern writers unceremoniously lifted their content thanks to the offerings of the World Wide Web. Today, creative compositions can be generated in seconds using the new tools —- from unknown sources.

Brand new books look derivative with authors barely making any effort at all. I picked up recently published fiction and non-fiction books by world-famous writers and stopped reading them after a couple of chapters —- seeing a pattern that looked like insincere page-fillers until the 200 page mark. 🥺

In fact, the deployment of generative AI is pervasive across the book publishing industry: writing best practices

I got into the act myself and generated some blog posts using these tools. I even managed to derive some slides rather quickly, yet was unable to cite where this content came from: AI slides

What has this new age of co-piloted gibberish taught me? It’s made me value older pre-internet books, especially those written before the social media era. I feel badly for anyone who has to write for a living. Things are much worse in the music industry for artists trying to maintain patents and song rights (Link). Nearly everything they produced can be copied in seconds and re-marketed under seemingly untraceable brands. The lack of guardrails and guiderails is having a devastating impact on content creators across the spectrum.

This prescient song by AC/DC aptly captures today’s moment. Who made who? Who made you? Will any original art or artists be left as AI developers transform human existence?