What the Dickens! [letter #182]
Meta's AI book heist - what you can do, and the history of hot cross buns
Last week, The Atlantic published a searchable database of over 7.5M books and 81M research papers called Library Genesis (LibGen) – with pirated works allegedly used by Meta to train its AI systems.
They talked about doing it lawfully, but acquiring the text would be an "incredibly slow" process – "They take like 4+ weeks to deliver data" and "unreasonably expensive."
License one book, and you won't be able to lean into the 'fair use strategy.’ I'm not a copyright expert, but surely the 'fair use' exception wouldn't apply here anyway, as this is for commercial gain.
Meta made an intentional choice. It’s cheaper and faster to use stolen work. They had an opportunity to set an example – it's a shame they didn't take it.
Much outrage on social media this week:
Charles Dickens campaigned hard for better copyright laws after much of his work was plagiarised – it drove him nuts.
I'm sad he didn't win the battle in his lifetime, but thank you, Charles! Your efforts were a major influence in the final creation of fair copyright law – see Lucinda's article about him on the ALCS site.
We have that law now, but here we are again. What the Dickens! He'd turn in his grave if he could see what was happening.
If you're on the list, here's what you can do – advice from the Society of Authors.
If you're on WordPress, check out Bob’s 'Block AI Crawlers' plugin.
On Substack, you can block AI Training in Settings. I don't want to do this as it limits discoverability on the platforms (I appreciate ChatGPT can also generate leads), but it’s off for now.
I had a reply about AI & IP from my MP, Helena Dollimore. She’s written to Sir Chris Bryant MP, the Minister of State for Creative Industries, Arts and Tourism, on behalf of Hastings & Rye.
Thanks to James Frith MP for your support, too.
Dickens in Doughty Street: 100 Years of the Charles Dickens Museum
I will live in the past, the present, and the future. The spirits of all three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons they teach.
Must go and see this - his only surviving London home and collection – original manuscripts, letters to friends and family, rare first editions of his books and personal items. [Here’s Camilla’s video - what a smile!]. Runs till 29 June.
This week, someone on the Hastings Creatives e-list asked for VA help. She's struggling with "the lowly life of an artist," and doing all the admin/marketing is taking too much time and sucking all the joy out of creative work. Yup! This is where AI can help.
Food illustrator Aimee Tozer suggested using ChatGPT:
Try to think of it as an assistant to help with the boring life shit, so you have more time to work on what you enjoy. This week, it's helped me write a complaint letter to the vet, analysed trending foods on TikTok, given me the bones of a blog post, written product listings, summarised info I needed, and identified plants in my garden.
You always need to proof things and add a human touch, but it saves me loads of time.
Just reading her blog and came across this delightful post on the history of hot cross buns: A sweet tradition. I can’t get enough of ‘em (my fave - M&S Millionaires!).
Fascinating to hear the practice of marking bread with a cross goes back to pre-Christian Pagan rituals:
Despite the changes in flavour, the symbolism remains strong. Sharing a bun with a friend ensures a lasting friendship — as long as you both remember to say, "half for you and half for me.”
Tech bros, remember that. Be a good egg - and we won’t desert you.
Nika :)
🔗 Link About It
How AI models steal creative work – and what to do about it. - a good explainer by
, CEO of @fairlytrained | TED. [Watch now]What's been advising government on AI policy? Here’s what happened when journalist @stokel made an FOI request for the ChatGPT searches of Peter Kyle, UK Secretary of State for SCIT. [Read now]
I’ve added his new book, How AI Ate The World, to my reading list.
- is hosting a UK conference for Substack and setting up a directory for irl + url events for creatives. [Register your event]
I've just spent the best part of a week using Grok 3β AI for various science projects, having been pushed into it by Musk's X/twitter which now includes that AI system, and was surprised how slow it is to read technical mathematical books and reformulate proofs to order (taking several hours for hard problems). But that may have been due to multi-tasking (other people's requests), and it is nevertheless amazing to get any help at all with really abstruse physics.
It is approximately at the level of a mathematical physics graduate, but doesn't get "glazed over eyes" or fall asleep when asked a "blue skies" question. It digs in and makes an effort to come up with a new approach, although it does make mistakes and needs checking and corrections. The AI weaknesses are analyzing technical visual stuff like graphs and diagrams, which it can't even read from a PDF (had to upload screen prints as image files for it to analyse them).
It has certainly helped me understand some very complex mathematical proofs that were driving me nuts, and to re-formulate some of my own work in a way that you would expect from good peer-review, so my feeling is that AI can at present help to make tremendous rapid progress in quantum field theory. It's also good to see your own mathematical ideas taken apart and reassembled more clearly and simply by AI. If AI is to be let loose simplifying and enhancing all the calculations in all the dusty old books in mathematical physics libraries, bring it on!
Thanks Nika, that's very kind and helpful. At least they failed to nick two of my books. And FB has restored me, just like that! All unexplained and inexplicable, tho also astonishingly fast. But their bot said sorry so that's all right… Fraternals, Phil