In March 2016, Alpha Go, the DeepMind AI, beat world champion Lee Sodol at the game of Go [Wired]. One of the moves was so shocking and original — and beautiful — that many saw this as the moment when AI truly moved into the creative realm.
In 2017, the next iteration, Alpha Go Zero, beat the original Alpha Go with just three days of reinforcement learning — with no human programming. [DeepMind] In 2019, Go champion Lee Sodol retired from the game, saying that, “AI cannot be defeated.” [BBC]
In 2020, natural language processing tool, GPT3, was released by OpenAI. It was trained on 100x more parameters than GPT2 released in 2019 and can generate poems, articles, code, and more. [VentureBeat]. You can read some of the written work generated by GPT3 here.
Artificial Intelligence is already embedded in so much of our daily lives and it's increasingly moving into realms that impact authors and other creatives. Ignoring it or denying its potential power will not make it go away. We need to embrace the opportunities and get involved in conversations around the possible threats.
I've always been interested in the intersection between creativity and technology, but the implication of the Go games galvanized my interest in artificial intelligence and since then, I have been following the niche avidly, reading books, reporting on changes in the futurist segment on my weekly podcast, and considering the possibilities — and challenges — ahead.
Here are some of my articles and podcasts relating to how AI will impact authors as well as recommended resources if you'd like to learn more.
- 9 Ways That Artificial Intelligence (AI) Will Disrupt Authors and Publishing in the Next 10 Years (posted 1 July 2019)
- Is Copyright Broken? Artificial Intelligence and Author Copyright — from the Alliance of Independent Authors
- How Artificial Intelligence Will Cause a Seismic Shift in How We Produce and Discover Content Online. Interview with Joanna Penn on Yaro Starak's podcast
- Voice Double: The Development of an AI Voice
- AI and Creativity: An Interview with Marcus du Sautoy
- Creativity, Intelligence and Time Off with Max Frenzel
- Self-Publishing in Translation: Adventures with AI and German
You can also subscribe to The Creative Penn Podcast where I share a regular futurist segment on AI updates that might impact authors and the publishing industry.
Recommended resources
- The Future is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies are Transforming Business, Industries and Our Lives – Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler
- AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order – Kai-Fu Lee
- The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that Will Shape Our Future – Kevin Kelly
- The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity – Amy Webb
- Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow – Yuval Noah Harari
- Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine – Hannah Fry
- The Creativity Code: How AI is Learning to Write, Paint and Think – Marcus du Sautoy
- Singularity Hub blog
- WIRED magazine
- Sleepwalkers Podcast
- Exponential Wisdom Podcast with Peter Diamandis and Dan Sullivan
