At first, I felt relief that Meta felt like one of my books was important enough to train its AI software. Then I got mad.
Not long ago, I came upon a story in The Atlantic reporting on how Meta’s developers scraped a database of 1.5 million pirated books in order to train their artificial intelligence (AI). Which was terrifying enough. But then things got worse. At the end of the story, it was possible to search a specific book title to see if it was among those 1.5 million books. I’ve written some books. I’m also vain. So I typed in my name. And sure enough, my first book was among the 1.5 million. For a moment, I felt relief. At least one of my books had made it in. Then, of course, the relief passed and I got mad.
In the court documents surrounding the case, it’s clear that the chat-happy Metaworkers assigned this morally dubious work knew it was morally dubious:
Xavier M: fair use, no?
Moya C: legal gray area
Xavier M: my opinion would be (in the line of “ask for forgiveness, not for permission”): we try to acquire the books and escalate it to execs so they make the call
Peter A: so what is the idea here? To buy ebooks from barnes and nobles? [sic]
And later…
Melanie K: difference is we have more money, more lawyers, more bizdev help, ability to fast track/escalate for speed, and lawyers are being a bit less conservative on approvals
And yet, while some significant portion of me wanted to John Wick these monsters, I quickly moved from anger to apathy. Because what could I do? Meta is worth a cool $1.7 trillion. Last year, their revenue was $165 billion. And aside from its chameleonic founder, no one really knows who works at Meta. There’s no point of contact. We can’t go down to the local Metashop and shake our fists at anyone.
This – apathy – is where most people stop. Have stopped. Will stop. They throw up their hands and say, whether out loud or in their brains, “Ah well, whadderyagonnado?”
Which is what ushered me to a third emotion: dismay.
Because we’re giving up, because we aren’t madder, because these Metamonsters were gleefully trampling on some of the concepts that humanize humanity: creation, innovation, and the right to be rewarded for both. And because nobody cares.
*****
I understand that part of the reason people aren’t madder is the ephemeral nature of the phenomenon that is AI. People think AI is going to make their lives easier or better without actually understanding what AI is and this makes their affinity for AI take on the characteristics of worship. This is odd for several reasons, one of them being that there is no “thing” that is AI; it’s not a comprehensible something that people can worship.
People also don’t get mad about what is effectively sanitized plagiarism because no one wants to be the lonely guy in that meme—the angular, middle-aged man who stands up at the town hall and says, “I think this shit is stupid.” Somehow, someway, our techlords have convinced us that we should embrace every new bit of digital technology, even while every new bit of digital technology makes people less and less happy.
Then there’s the legal argument. A woman I know asked me about all this, vis-à-vis my book being stolen. She’s studying law and, when she asked, was prepping for a final on copyright law. We went back and forth a bit, possibly more back than forth because I also want to sleep with this person, and she mentioned that, in terms of copyright law, it’s not like Meta (or any AI) can technically reproduce one of my books. (Or any of the books stolen.) Which is to say that by the letter of the law, Meta may be in the clear.
But here’s what I have to say about that:
To start, fuck that.
To continue: the “law” isn’t some set of proscriptions handed down from on high, in the style of Hammurabi or Moses; it’s a fluid set of guidelines based on what’s good for culture. Historically, copyright law (and similarly, patent law) has existed to reward and encourage people to invent, innovate, and otherwise be creative. Which is pretty cool! These sorts of laws help humans push ourselves to our limits for the betterment of our fellow man, whether because we’ve whipped up a new album, a new medication, or a new steam engine. The only reason these laws have existed is because we (as a society) value invention, innovation, and creation.
Which brings me to the central question and the source of my dismay: what if we no longer care about invention, innovation, and creation?
All manner of information is obviously overwhelming us. This is in large part because our techlords have done such a good job of flooding the zone, keeping us addled and confused, unable to parse out what’s right and wrong, what’s good or bad, what’s prosocial or antisocial and what’s acceptable and what’s abhorrent. I’m not saying this is a concerted effort, that there’s a Wizard and our version of Oz is a constant barrage of distraction. What I am saying is that there is an entire class of craven, callous middlemen who are unreachable, unfindable, and unbeholden to you, me, and the crowd of righteous, pitchfork-clutching do-gooders that should exist but doesn’t.
If this sounds like I’m being curmudgeonly, like I’m standing on my porch waving my fist, like I’m tilting at windmills, congratulations. You’re paying attention.
Big take coming: I want people to create. I want people to try new things. I want people to be rewarded for making art and starting businesses and hacking through the Amazon to seek out new drugs, whether they’re those that treat cancer or those that’ll make them want to take each other’s clothes off. Creation, invention, innovation: I think these are undoubtedly, indubitably, and indisputably good.
I don’t think this is actually a big take. That was sarcasm. But it’s becoming one. I fear we’re forgetting that creation is its own reward. And I further fear that we’re going to have to find some kind of cultural bottom before we remember this. I fear that we’ll numb ourselves so thoroughly with pablum that our only hope will be some tribe of Luddites that crawls out of their caves to say, “This is art. You should try it.”
When I was a kid, at my grandmother’s house there was a cross-stitch portrait on the wall. There was a tiny boat and a raging sea and a quote: “Dear Lord, the ocean is so wide and my boat is so small.”
We’re in the boat now. But we’re also the ocean, too, afraid or unable or just too tired to weather the storm. Or the pirates it’s hiding.
