00:02:33.760Of Under the Influence, because, you know, I'm just going to set up what we had learned today and how freaked out we both are by it.
00:02:43.480The Atlantic, in their wonderful reporting on AI and what it's doing to the writing world, posted a database of 183,000 books that companies like Meta and Bloomberg have been using to train their AI robots.0.96
00:02:59.220Isn't that sentence fucking creepy?0.93
00:03:01.180it i like have no words i think i'm still processing it just freaks me the fuck out0.95
00:03:08.520and also to learn this information right on the heels of this writers guild strike that like just
00:03:18.640settled and their final thing that they were negotiating over was ai and then for this to
00:03:25.800come up right after is just like this tech is coming for every industry yes it's it's they
00:03:34.020want to replace us all with the robots literally they really we're living in the matrix they want
00:03:39.160to replace us all with the robots by using our brains by using our words yes and so there was
00:03:46.420this database and you could search it to see if your book was in there and i was like yeah i don't
00:03:52.160know my books probably aren't in there but then five of them were in there and then you messaged
00:03:58.940me and you're like oh where's this like and then you're like oh my god i'm in there too
00:04:03.300yeah i was shocked i also was like oh my work's not important they're not gonna go for mine
00:04:11.080nobody cares about my words no one cares about my words no um i guess the robots are learning
00:04:44.920yeah the robots the robots need to learn all of that stuff i saw that amanda montell's book
00:04:52.000on feminist linguistics word slut is also in there yes yes and my book my book if if nuns0.85
00:04:58.140ruled the world so we're learning about feminist nuns we're learning about word sluts and we're0.93
00:05:03.280learning about young feminist activists um again all good things good for the good for the robots
00:05:09.900I guess, but so terrifying for authors. And I want to say really quick why we're talking about
00:05:17.540this on Under the Influence, because I think that writers are now put in a very weird position
00:05:23.120because Meta is doing this. And Meta is obviously the company that runs Instagram and Facebook,
00:05:31.060and they're doing this behind authors' backs, and authors are some of the biggest
00:05:36.200content creators for them and also cute like really big influencers and celebrities have0.99
00:05:42.920books that are also being used so meta instagram facebook i hate calling them meta like fuck you0.99
00:05:50.020you don't get to decide that you have a new name you're not facebook okay you're normie and lame0.99
00:05:55.180you're not meta you're facebook come on we know who you are we know who you are we know who you
00:06:01.600are you are not met at old p diddy can change his name and you mark zuckerberg are no diddy
00:06:08.440certainly not and and so that but this creates a problem for us because we post on social media
00:06:17.680because we have to reach an audience as writers as content creators and so it's not like we can
00:06:23.820boycott them it's not like i can stop posting on instagram tomorrow i have a book coming out
00:06:29.200in five months, that I need to reach readers. And so the fact that it's these companies that
00:06:37.040are stealing our words and our original thoughts is not surprising when we post on their websites,
00:06:44.160but it's surprising when we're writing a book that they have no ownership over.
00:06:48.920Exactly. And I think it is such a frustrating position to find ourselves in because we are
00:06:53.680stuck in this really fucked up constant relationship with these platforms where as you said
00:07:00.800you know i the landscape is so different even from when i entered media in 2010 20110.85
00:07:09.120which was 10 years after i entered media right we're we're from two distinct media generations
00:07:16.780Yes. And the way that the landscape has changed, it has been so rapid. And when I first started working in this industry, it wasn't a necessity for me to spend a good portion of my professional time and energy into building a public platform, promoting my own work, doing my own PR, becoming an influencer of some kind.
00:07:43.120And now if you write a book, if you write an article, if you have a podcast, it is on you to promote that work to an audience. And I think all of us that work in these fields, yes, of course, we want to create great art, but we also want people to engage with our words and the conversations that we're having. That's why we're doing it in the first place.
00:08:06.060And so where are we going to do that? Well, we have to do it on Instagram. We have to do it on Twitter. We which I refuse to call X.
00:08:13.680You will not call it X. I will not. We will never call you. We will never. Yeah. Screw you, Elon Musk. We will. Yeah, we have to do it on on now TikTok. And it's just adding all of these other jobs onto our already, I think, like mentally taxing job.
00:08:32.440And then to find out that on top of that, the work that we've done separately from these platforms, like we are already giving them so much free content and so much of ourselves, that to be like, you just took this without our consent, without our knowledge, and you are training your machines to do tasks that will replace human minds and feelings and brains.
00:09:02.440that is that is very disturbing yeah yeah it's the not yeah it's the not well i mean all of it
00:09:09.460disturbs me i'm so i just i really do feel like i'm living in a science fiction movie right now
00:09:15.820and part of me just wants to grab the sicilian inheritance which is on its way to you by the
00:09:21.040way i'm really excited to read it no it's so good such a such a romp but just wants to grab it and
00:09:26.740be like my precious my precious what if i don't release you into this big bad world what if i
00:09:32.420I hold you back until I can protect you. And so is that an answer? Is it that we
00:09:37.800pause on releasing content until we have some agreement that this content has protections
00:09:44.220from these companies? Because what I also find so interesting, and I don't think in any other
00:09:52.100industry that you could get away with this, is the doing it without permission and then not even
00:09:58.360apologizing later. They haven't admitted they've done anything wrong. They just took it. They just
00:10:03.100took it instead of doing what could have been a more right thing and saying, hey, could I pay you
00:10:12.080an option to use this? Because some writers, because writers need to be paid more, writers
00:10:17.800are very underpaid, may say yes. They may say, absolutely. If my book is being developed for
00:10:26.120television, I get paid an option. And that option period lasts for six months to a year to 18 months.
00:10:33.680I have control over that option. It's the fact that they just took without asking, without even
00:10:39.920thinking that they should compensate writers. That's what's insane to me. Exactly. I'm not such
00:10:48.000a Luddite that I'm saying no AI should ever exist. I don't think that, frankly, I am an authority
00:10:54.340enough in that space to make that call but at bare minimum creatives should be compensated for
00:11:02.000their labor again that is what we've been talking about with the writers guild with sag and the fact
00:11:09.200that they did this under cover of darkness essentially tells me that they knew that it0.92
00:11:14.180was fucked up they knew that they were stealing our work and our our research and our words and0.93
00:11:20.740our thoughts and our analysis and our stories and that they didn't want us to know because they knew0.99
00:11:28.940that that would be a violating and upsetting thing and that perhaps they would need to pay some money
00:11:36.200and and if these companies want anything it's to hoard money they love hoarding money they're horny
00:11:42.760for it they're they are so horny for it i know it's true it's true and yes it's much i i keep
00:11:50.620Going back to the idea that we are all convinced that our phones are listening to us all the
00:11:55.880time, which we know we know that they are right.
00:11:58.280But the companies are constantly like, we would never do that.
00:12:20.020Ever, ever, ever, because we're so busy hoarding our money and just like jerking off with a thousand dollar bill is what we're doing.0.75
00:12:28.860Exactly. And I think it's interesting what you bring up about should we be withholding labor in some capacity, because it does seem like in this moment in this country, the only power that workers have.
00:12:42.120And, like, you know, the two of us are not celebrities who can ring, like, you know, expensive lawsuits against men.
00:13:08.160it's like no exactly because i would i i'll go on strike i would love to withhold labor
00:13:17.560i don't think that my power my celebrity i have no celebrity to speak up sitting here in my
00:13:24.160underwear shooting this interview um but my power alone will do anything but also i need to feed my
00:13:32.200family. And so I have to do work that will do that. So while I would love to hoard the Sicilian
00:13:40.240inheritance and be like, no one could have it. I'm also like, and pre-order on Amazon, please.0.97
00:13:46.080We're all compromised by virtue of the fact that we live in a society and we need to make money
00:13:51.780and we need to be compensated for our work. And I think that is why, again, these like collective
00:13:57.660actions are what make a difference because I think it's a lot harder to be like I personally
00:14:03.140am just going to go out on a limb and not publish my book like obviously you wouldn't do that if
00:14:08.460there was a larger labor movement of thousands of authors for a period of time withholding their
00:14:15.400labor that becomes a different calculus for people to make um and I think that's that might be that
00:14:22.040might be where we have to go right honestly i you know i haven't i'm talking to my agents later this
00:14:29.560week i don't even know what we could put into a contract to protect us from ai because i don't
00:14:37.740think the publishing houses are feeding them our books so it's it's we're not who are we in a fight
00:14:43.980against we're not in a fight against our publishers we're we're in a fight against a nameless
00:14:51.300we're not a nameless we're you know we're in a fight against a corporation that has been stealing
00:14:55.600things and i think that we just have to keep talking about it in those kinds of terms
00:15:00.420this is theft this is theft this is theft this is a violation um of a very intimate nature and
00:15:09.040we do have to constantly be standing up for our rights even if we don't know what our rights are
00:15:15.280or who we could even go after because they're just I'm so in the dark about how it all works
00:15:23.980did was same did they did they grab the books scan them and then feed them to the robots because
00:15:32.420in my head it's like R2D2 munching on pages I think in my mind it's like they I don't know did
00:15:40.560they just buy all of the books on kindle or something i i don't know yes but i assume it's
00:15:48.780something like that but even then it's not easy to just scan them right right so they must have
00:15:56.100created a machine like again this is so beyond my pay grade we have no idea what we're talking
00:16:01.160about to be clear that's why we're writers and not engineers exactly exactly but we do know it's
00:16:09.520wrong. We know it's wrong and we know that they know it's wrong because, again, if they didn't
00:16:15.100think it was wrong, they would have told us they were doing it. They would have asked. They would
00:16:19.520have asked. They would have said, hey, we're going to do this thing. Does everyone feel good about
00:16:24.280this thing? But they knew that we would say, we don't feel good about this thing. So don't do it.
00:16:29.860And it's hard to know what is the recourse now. Like, these AI programs already have our words and our ideas and our stories. Like, how do you unring that bell? And I think that's the part that feels really hopeless to me.
00:16:48.160Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. They already they already have all of your ideas about creating a young female activist, which I just I do.
00:16:59.240I just love that image now of our hilarious of R2D2 in a pussy hat.0.99
00:17:04.920But I they he's calling his senators. OK, and I love that for him.0.78
00:17:09.800writing postcards is what he's doing to his senators right now but i i don't want the things
00:17:17.600that i'm writing right now the things that i'm actively making right now and not just my books
00:17:21.080but my sub sacks and right my but i i also know that there's nothing i can do about the things
00:17:27.960that i read on instagram because they clearly own that it is their platform that is their right
00:17:31.560that is it is uh no matter how i feel about it but i don't want my new books to get in their hands
00:17:37.240and so i just want to figure out i need to figure this out before april 2nd friends so if you have
00:17:44.380any thoughts uh i have any thoughts uh on how my campaign to protect the sicilian inheritance
00:17:51.620which i i really joe i am so excited to read i've been waiting for this one and it's it just sucks
00:17:59.840i want like for any author to be able to put something out in the world and just revel in
00:18:05.360that like it is such it can be such an isolating and exhausting experience to write a book you
00:18:11.820always feel like no one cares about your work as much as you do you have to email everyone you know
00:18:18.340and be like please say something about this book like it is so many pieces of the process are not
00:18:24.880fun and so to have to add this like I just want an author to be able to put something out in the
00:18:30.680world and be like, I did it. I fucking did it. I made something and I'm proud of it and it can0.95
00:18:35.820stand on its own. And now it belongs to readers, not to meta. Not to meta. Yes. Because I'm not
00:18:43.940saying I'm like, I don't think that my work, once it's in the world, belongs to me anymore. It
00:18:49.100doesn't. It belongs to readers and it belongs to book clubs and it belongs to even other authors