Author Jane Friedman’s reputation was on the line. AI was the culprit.
Back in June, Marc Andreessen, co-founder of tech investment firm Andreessen Horowitz, and my fellow graduate of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (go Illini!), wrote about how artificial intelligence was going to “save the world.”
It is a sweeping cri de coeur against tech skeptics who are concerned about the potential downsides of AI, including doomsday scenarios like the one portrayed in “The Terminator,” where a sentient AI realizes humans are the chief threat to its continued existence and sets out to exterminate them from the planet.
In contrast, Andreessen argues that “AI can make everything we care about better.”
Now, however, when it comes to books, something close to the opposite as true as AI is being used to generate heaps of content masquerading as quality work, but is in reality a giant pile of junk.
Writer and independent publishing expert Jane Friedman recently experienced this when she accessed her Goodreads page one day and found a couple of new books with herself listed as the author, including “Promote to Prosper: Strategies to Skyrocket Your eBook Sales on Amazon.”
While this is the kind of information Friedman may share with her audience, she did not write these books, but here was someone (or something) using her reputation, hard-won over decades in publishing, to try to grab a couple of bucks on AI-produced schlock.
I have to say I took extra offense because Friedman was the editor of my second book many moons in the past. Since leaving publishing and going independent, she has been an example of clear, straight talk that benefits writers. Her book with the University of Chicago Press, “The Business of Being a Writer” is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how to forge a path as a professional writer.
Friedman’s work literally depends on her good reputation, so the existence of this junk under her name had the real potential to do harm. As Friedman documents on her own website, Amazon (which owns Goodreads) first responded with a shoulder shrug, saying that unless Friedman could prove that they infringed on her copyright, because her name is not sufficiently unique, there’s not much they could do.
After using her platform to raise a fuss,
Amazon did remove the books from her Goodreads profile, but Friedman notes that without that platform, it’s entirely possible the books would have remained.
Andreessen’s rosy picture of the potential for artificial intelligence to unleash an unprecedented flowering of human ingenuity fails to take into account that the first adoption of new technology always seems to be by folks trying to make a quick buck.
In theory, it shouldn’t be hard for Amazon to require proof of authorship before uploading books to Goodreads or the Amazon store, but in truth, Amazon’s incentives to block these products are limited. After all, a sale is a sale.
You might also have seen a raft of AI-generated guidebooks promoted through fake reviews showing up online in recent months. Do not buy these, no matter the bargain. Stick with Rick Steves or the like.
Readers are going to have to adopt a caveat emptor approach when it comes to making sure some books are what they’re actually purporting to be. In the worstcase scenario, reams of misinformation could flood the market, looking like legitimate sources, but really just being AI-regurgitated junk.
Of course, another handy solution is to avoid purchasing books in marketplaces that may not have been vetted by trustworthy sources.
Your local bookstore operated by bookseller professionals is like a shield against the torrent of crap, no caveat emptor necessary.