NaNoWriMo gets AI sponsor

[issybird]

The article below is a tad biased, but it's got a honking huge point just the same.

NaNoWriMo was gutted to an extent when the forums shut down and it has a new sponsor this year, ProWritingAid, which offers an AI functionality. To what extent is AI just one limited tool in a varied kit box and to what extent is it the onlie begetter? Is it true that "not writing your novel with AI is ‘classist and ableist’ "? Has NaNoWriMo has run its course?

https://pivot-to-ai.com/2024/09/02/n...6HhaEeTSQauGWA

[Critteranne]

Originally Posted by issybird

The article below is a tad biased, but it's got a honking huge point just the same.

NaNoWriMo was gutted to an extent when the forums shut down and it has a new sponsor this year, ProWritingAid, which offers an AI functionality. To what extent is AI just one limited tool in a varied kit box and to what extent is it the onlie begetter? Is it true that "not writing your novel with AI is ‘classist and ableist’ "? Has NaNoWriMo has run its course?

https://pivot-to-ai.com/2024/09/02/n...6HhaEeTSQauGWA

Saying that being anti-AI is "classist" makes no sense. ProWritingAid costs at least $7.50 a month -- and that's if you get the yearly option (with limited use of the GenAI features). Writing the story on your own is free.

Disabled authors have also been furious about this stance. They have been pointing out that they don't need AI to write. It's one thing to use AI for text-to-speech or for grammar checking, but this has been about GenAI.

Anyway, I think NaNoWriMo truly fell apart last year -- when it was marked by a grooming scandal on the forums. Here is some coverage of it in a Medium article by a former Nano Municipal Liason. For some reason, most of the coverage of the grooming scandal was in forums or posts rather than in news articles.

[Dr. Drib]

Unfortunately, one must become a member of Medium to read the whole article.

Does anyone have a non-member link to a different article that tells a very complete story of the incident(s)?

[issybird]

Here’s a gift link to the article in the WaPo.

https://wapo.st/4eghamM

[arjaybe]

Would there even be a point in participating in this thing now?

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by issybird

Here’s a gift link to the article in the WaPo.

https://wapo.st/4eghamM

I don't know that much about AI or how it works, but I'm guessing it would be feasible to outline a story and tell an AI application to write a 50,000 word "novel" based on your notes. What would be the point? I thought the object of NaNoWriMo was to get you (the participant) writing. How does telling an AI "bot" to write for you achieve that?

That said, I don't know exactly what is allowed or disallowed with AI help in the contest, so I may be way off. I see NaNoWriMo has issued a note of "clarification" on their use of "classist and ableist."

We apologize that our original message was unclear and seemingly random. Our note on ableism and classism was rooted in the desire to point out that, for people in certain circumstances, some forms of AI can be life-changing. We certainly don’t believe those with concerns about AI to be classist or ableist. Not being more careful about our wording was a bad decision on our part.

No mention, however, of their AI sponsor.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by arjaybe

Would there even be a point in participating in this thing now?

Agreed. I actually thought of entering last year. Letting AI do your work seems to gut the whole point of the event. (But, again, I may not completely understand what's going on here.)

[arjaybe]

Originally Posted by rcentros

Agreed. I actually thought of entering last year. Letting AI do your work seems to gut the whole point of the event. (But, again, I may not completely understand what's going on here.)

Maybe they could have two streams: one AI and one non-AI.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by issybird

Here’s a gift link to the article in the WaPo.

https://wapo.st/4eghamM

Thanks.

I'm anxious to read this.

[Mike Hobart]

I was playing around on one of the AI sites, and out of curiosity, I wrote out a sentence for it to turn into a 500-word story. I had been watching news out of Ukraine, so I asked for a story about a man making his way home in a war-torn city while friend and foe battled in the skies with their fleets of drones. To say I was surprised would be an understatement when it produced a story titled "Echoes of Steel" (their title), which was all that and more. I'm not saying I couldn't have written it myself, but it would have taken me a couple of weeks. "What brave new world is this?" I muttered to myself.

[Mike Hobart]

I forgot to say that about 15 years ago (from memory) I took part in NaNoWriMo for five consecutive years, meaning I wrote 250,000 words of fiction I would not have otherwise written. The most bizarre part is that when I ceased participating (because I felt I was no longer physically able to type 50,000 words in four weeks), I found that for a couple of years my mind would throw up possible plots and characters every October!

Without realizing it, I had trained my brain to prepare to write a story every November.

http://www.mediafire.com/folder/yufb...c64xksl/shared

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Mike Hobart

I was playing around on one of the AI sites, and out of curiosity, I wrote out a sentence for it to turn into a 500-word story. I had been watching news out of Ukraine, so I asked for a story about a man making his way home in a war-torn city while friend and foe battled in the skies with their fleets of drones. To say I was surprised would be an understatement when it produced a story titled "Echoes of Steel" (their title), which was all that and more. I'm not saying I couldn't have written it myself, but it would have taken me a couple of weeks. "What brave new world is this?" I muttered to myself.

How do you know it's not pieces simply assembled from existing stories?

Actually it is, because that how LLM works. That's why they insist they have to be able to "so called train" it on copyright works inc pirated content.

[Graham44]

Originally Posted by Quoth

How do you know it's not pieces simply assembled from existing stories?

Actually it is, because that how LLM works. That's why they insist they have to be able to "so called train" it on copyright works inc pirated content.

I was going to say the same, all you are doing when using AI to write anything is telling it to scrape other websites and basically steal other peoples work. I really hate AI with a passion

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Quoth

How do you know it's not pieces simply assembled from existing stories?

So the AI story is not a sui generis and wholly original work with no ties to the past like Star Wars was?

Actually it is, because that how LLM works. That's why they insist they have to be able to "so called train" it on copyright works inc pirated content.

This rant of yours is pretty tiresome.

You make it sound as if the A.I. story took the phrase "he turned around" from an Asimov story, a comma from Heinlein and then the following "then he fled" from a Stephen King story. Every word, phrase and character copy/pasted from an existing work. It is ludicrous.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

You make it sound as if the A.I. story took the phrase "he turned around" from an Asimov story, a comma from Heinlein and then the following "then he fled" from a Stephen King story. Every word, phrase and character copy/pasted from an existing work. It is ludicrous.

And yet oddly correct. When I played with AI writing in the style of, the entire story may not be a pastiche but much of it is along with some very strange bits that I prefer to think of as AI attempting to be 'original'. I then played with the output for several authors styles and their ebooks I own and 4 of the 6 inputs were listed as plagiarism. What are the chances of a phrase such as 'If this gets any more cloying, I think I'll vomit,' in a 500 word story being other than copied from the original work? A quick Google search on "If this gets any more cloying, I think I'll vomit" managed to come up with several links.