What the fuck, NaNo???????
this is a long post, buckle up.
Okay, if you haven't heard anything about NaNoWriMo's statement about the use of AI in writing, I am both jealous of you and here to ruin that for you.
The folks over at National Novel Writing Month have released a statement (which you can read here) that explicitly says that being Anti-genAI is classist and ableist. My gut reaction is that this is a fucking asinine take -- poor and disabled people have been writing for longer than we've even had the electricity that powers AI -- but the more I think about it, the angrier I get about the anti-community sentiment that they seem to be pushing.
The claims that are made in this statement are either non-issues or something that AI does not actually fix. Yeah, not everyone can afford to hire an editor, but that is a large part of why writing communities exist both in-person and online. Exchange works with a friend and help each other out, find a discord server and ask there. Make use of a writing community. The same thing applies to ableism; Yeah, we all have different abilities and not everyone can "see" what might need improvement. So you share your work with another writer and get feedback from your community. Writing is a skill that needs to be honed and in order to do that, you have to be okay with being bad at it sometimes.
I'm not even sure I can say much about their "General access" paragraph because, like... AI is not going to fix the systemic issues with the publishing industry. It just won't. That entire paragraph gets half-way to a point and then falls on its ass into the void.
As if I wasn't angry enough, NaNoWriMo edited the statement about 8 hours ago to say "Note: we have edited this post by adding this paragraph to reflect our acknowledgment that there are bad actors in the AI space who are doing harm to writers and who are acting unethically."
This makes me want to throw my computer out a fucking window. Using AI in writing or any other art is inherently unethical because the language models being used are trained on works by people who did not consent to their work being used to train said AI. It is theft. It is plagiarism. Plain and simple. Chat-GPT was trained using the entirety of the New York Times archive, so when you use Chat-GPT, what it produces is based off of the work of NYT journalists (read about the resulting lawsuit here). It's not that there are "bad actors", the programs themselves are built on stealing writing. We've known this for what feels like ages now. This is such a bullshit edit and a fucking sad attempt at saving their asses.
I am someone that doesn't even use Grammarly anymore because they literally market themselves as an AI writing assistant and I'm not willing to risk my entire degree for an application that can't even handle vernacular and dialect and makes mid suggestions at best. Genuinely fuck off and block me if you support the use of AI in writing. Also, my block button is rated E for Everyone and I will use it liberally if anyone comes into my notes supporting genAI. Unless I am feel particularly combative, then you will feel the full weight of my academic and creative integrity. You have been warned.
