Writers Respond to Survey with a Chasm of AI Mistrust

In Draft2Digital’s 2024 AI Training Survey Results, CEO Kris Austin shared how writers responded with a chasm of AI mistrust.

By: Grant P. Ferguson

Date: September 18, 2024

Can you blame creatives for their “deep mistrusting AI in general and Big Tech AI developers in particular”? In the survey results, Austin cited AI developers’ reckless and willful disregard for:

author copyrights, as witnessed by AI developers continuing to train on unlicensed copyrighted content
the potential harmful impacts of AI on the livelihoods of authors, writers, artists, and other creatives
the negative environmental impacts of AI

I encourage you to get and read a copy of the survey results at Draft2Digtal using this link: https://www.draft2digital.com/blog/2024-ai-training-survey-results/

Why Do I Mistrust AI?

I’m no stranger to Big Tech, including the good, bad, and ugly.

My background includes decades of coordinating the mergers of divisions for large-scale corporations. Those efforts raised many IT related issues, including how employees and customers interacted with technology. Not all mergers resulted in HEA (happily ever after) endings.

Because of those not-so-good experiences with technology, even if people thought of AI as the ‘milk of human kindness,’ I’d ask for a bacteria count! 😉

Efforts to Desensitize People’s AI Mistrust

I’m going to close here and encourage you to read the survey results.

The daily news feeds urge people to discount their concerns and dive into the hyped AI promises. A few mainstream writers admit they mistrust AI, but have embraced the technology to make money. Several AI courses for writers promise to teach you how to ‘game the system’ and make more money by speeding up the writing process.

Efforts to desensitize come before legitimizing the illegitimate, so from my view, D2D’s survey results serve as writers’ wake-up call.

As a writer, what is your stance on AI, especially developers’ concerted efforts to desensitize and legitimize the outright theft of copyrighted works?

Do Human Authors Matter More than AI?

Should Novelists Trust AI?

Cautionary Tales about AI

16 responses to “Writers Respond to Survey with a Chasm of AI Mistrust”

lyndhurstlaura

I don’t trust AI, in the context of creative work, and I never will. @(

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1. Grant at Tame Your Book
  
  Your not alone, Laura! The concern level is high. For example, according to MIT Technology Review, there’s now more than 120 bills floating around the US Congress. https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/09/18/1104015/here-are-all-the-ai-bills-in-congress-right-now/
  
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  1. lyndhurstlaura
    
    Thank goodness an authority somewhere is taking this seriously. I don’t deny that there are many good uses for AI, but trying to mimic the work of creatives–thus taking away their livelihood–isn’t one of them. I want to experience the individual minds of writers and other creatives through their works, not a homogenous and neutral mash-up of them all in some antiseptic piece thrown together by a machine. 🤨
    
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    1. Grant at Tame Your Book
      
      Well said, Laura. Thank you!
      
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DAMYANTI BISWAS

Many scary truths here. I still haven’t been able to trust AI, and the thought of so many creatives’ hard work and years of effort being stolen and undervalued is just abhorrent to me. An excellent post, with a healthy dose of reality.

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1. Grant at Tame Your Book
  
  Absolutely, Damyanti! The impact of generative AI on voice scams, school-age sextortion, and malware creation should be enough to scare us all. For writers, the legal twisting of the ‘fair use’ doctrine should light a fire under every creative.
  
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wordsfromanneli

I don’t like the way my texting prompts are so politically bent, but there is nothing I can do about it. It shouldn’t be allowed to only suggest one-sided prompts.

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1. Grant at Tame Your Book
  
  Another important AI issue, Anneli. For seasoned individuals who have the experience to discern when something is ‘off kilter,’ they can dodge the AI’s erroneous prompts and word-salad answers to simple questions. I am concerned about the newbies. I’ve lost count of the times AI-driven chat-bots have given me false answers to technical problems. Some even reverse course on the initial answer during the back and forth. I’ve learned several methods to engage the right ‘human’ in the dialogue, including going through the market department instead of the traditional tech support. The thrust there was to show how the AI chat-bot problem was having a detrimental impact on the product promotion important to the marketing department. One company recognized the issue and made it easier to get in touch with a human whenever AI hallucinates (yet another issue that happens with great frequency).
  
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  1. wordsfromanneli
    
    Glad you understand, Grant.
    
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Dana at Regular Girl Devos

“Efforts to desensitize come before legitimizing the illegitimate,” good point, Grant, we have seen this happen many times in history. Thank you for sharing this information.

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1. Grant at Tame Your Book
  
  You nailed it, Dana. For creatives, this is a major issue. Many blindly use the AI services with little understanding of the unintended consequences. I urge creatives, especially writers, to realize the AI challenges. Share the need for laws and regulations that provide adequate protection for our creative efforts.
  
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D. Wallace Peach

AI is here to stay, Grant, and it provides numerous benefits to mankind. But like all technology, it needs safeguards to prevent humans from using it irresponsibly (which we’re prone to do, over and over again). One thing I’ve found is that it can’t replace human creativity or emotional complexity. It’s ability to write a compelling story is atrocious – good news for writers.

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1. Grant at Tame Your Book
  
  Thanks for sharing your view, Diana. There’s a significant difference between the AI algorithms. For example, comparative AI has helped to speed the development of vaccines. Some generative AI apps lead to misuse (e.g., multiple instances where AI generated images have resulted in teens taking their own lives). Unfortunately, the limited guardrails and legal restrictions have not kept up with the insatiable greed driving the AI rollout. I’d like more writers to realize the issues and discuss the differences and uses of AI.
  
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  1. D. Wallace Peach
    
    At this rate, I have a feeling that it’s going to deepen and broaden faster than we can keep up, Grant. It’s going to take a huge effort to get our hands around it, and one of the best tools will probably be good AI detection programs.
    
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Priscilla Bettis

I didn’t even know about the negative environmental impact of AI. I just came back from Googling the topic and watching an eye-opening video. Yikes.

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1. Grant at Tame Your Book
  
  Thanks, Priscilla. I want to make more writers aware of the issues, urging them to comment on the potential rulings and changes to copyright law. If the ‘fair use’ argument prevails, and the courts sanction AI screen scraping (i.e., stealing) our work, it’s all over but the shouting.
  
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