AI | The Creative Penn

A Techno-Optimist’s View Of The Creative Future For Authors. Joanna Penn On The Kindle Chronicles Podcast

January 22, 2021 by Joanna Penn Leave a Comment

Podcast: Download (Duration: 54:07 — 44.1MB)

It can be daunting to think about the future for authors and publishing when converging technologies are expanding into the realm of creativity, but there are many opportunities ahead — if you engage with the tools rather than run from them.

In this interview, Len Edgerly interviews Joanna Penn about Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Worlds: The Impact of Converging Technologies on Authors and the Publishing Industry. This episode was first broadcast on the Kindle Chronicles Podcast on 19 December 2020, used with permission from Len Edgerly.

Len Edgerly is a nonfiction author with degrees in business and poetry. He's also the host of the long-running Kindle Chronicles Podcast, where he's interviewed Jeff Bezos, Margaret Atwood, and Dean Koontz among many others.

Joanna Penn writes non-fiction for authors and is an award-nominated, New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller author as J.F.Penn. She’s also an award-winning podcaster, creative entrepreneur, and international professional speaker.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript below.

Show Notes

Writing with Open-AI's GPT-3 and why ‘centaur-writers' might be the future
Why authors and the publishing industry need to engage with this new technology
You don't need to know HTML programming to use the internet to sell books — and you don't need to know the technical side of blockchain to understand how it could transform the industry
How AI might be able to solve problems that are too big for humans, like health care and the environment
How virtual reality could affect the bookselling business
How the pandemic accelerated technological change

You can find Len Edgerly at Kindle Chronicles and his podcast on your favorite podcast app. More on AI and the future of creativity here.

You can also find my previous discussion with Len in episode 505 on Changes in the Publishing Industry Over the Last Decade.

Co-writing With Artificial Intelligence With Yudhanjaya Wijeratne

January 18, 2021 by Joanna Penn 13 Comments

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:01:26 — 50.0MB)

We all use tools as part of the writing process. Other books and internet resources for research, Scrivener for writing the first draft, and a computer for typing or dictating into, as well as editing tools like ProWritingAid. But what if you could use AI tools to help inspire the writing process?

In this episode, science fiction author Yudhanjaya Wijeratne talks about how he used artificial intelligence to co-write his novel, The Salvage Crew.

In the intro, I talk about how I've been playing with Inferkit using my own books to train the Natural Language Generation model. More on AI writing tools here. Google announced a model 6x bigger than GPT-3, and Eleuther.ai wants to create an open-source version.

In publishing news, Amazon and the Big 5 publishers have been accused of colluding to fix ebook prices [The Guardian], and Amazon is being investigated for potentially anti-competitive behavior in its sale of ebooks [Wall St Journal].

I useful stuff, Mark Dawson's Ads for Authors course is open now and very useful if you want to get to grips with paid ads this year, one of the ways in which big tech definitely impacts authors! Plus, you can get 50% off my online courses during lockdown: www.TheCreativePenn.com/learn Use coupon: LOCKDOWN. Valid until the end of this UK lockdown!
Today's show is sponsored by my patrons at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn. They pay for my time so I can think and research the future of creativity and then share it with you. If you find the show useful, please consider supporting for just a few dollars a month and get an extra monthly patron-only Q&A audio. Thank you!

Yudhanjaya Wijeratne is the award-nominated author of science fiction novels including Numbercaste and The Inhuman Race, as well as a Senior Researcher on Data, Algorithms, and Policy for an Asian think tank based in Sri Lanka. His latest novel, The Salvage Crew, features humans working alongside an AI overseer and was written with the help of AI tools.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and full transcript below.

Show Notes

How code is less like math and more like art
Co-writing a book with AI tools
What does it mean for art if art can be automated and humans can't perceive the difference?
Why the fear of machines taking over may be unfounded
How working with AI made the writing process joyful and exciting
How copyright might impact machine learning and ways around that. More in my solo episode on Copyright Law and Blockchain in an Age of AI
How a financial model of authors sharing data might work
Would traditional publishers potentially use the data they have in the copyrighted work they own and control to train specialist genre models?
Why technology is too important to be left to the technologists and why we need to get involved in the conversation and design of the future

You can find Yudhanjaya Widjeratne at www.yudhanjaya.com or twitter.com/yudhanjaya

Voice Technologies, Streaming And Subscription Audio In A Time Of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

December 4, 2020 by Joanna Penn 6 Comments

Podcast: Download (Duration: 17:58 — 15.2MB)

The audiobook market is currently held back by availability and cost of titles, as well as preference for narrators with different voices. The subscription model and AI voice narration will solve these issues — but we need audio rights licensing reform to make it happen.

In this solo show:

Streaming and subscription models
AI voices will narrate mass-market audio content with human narrators producing artisan audio experiences
Audio licensing will expand for different levels of listener experience
Authors and publishers will sell directly from their own platforms to superfans who want to support creators

This is the second in my AI episodes based on my new book, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, and Virtual Worlds: The Impact of Converging Technologies On Authors and the Publishing Industry.

Check out previous episodes and resources on AI at www.TheCreativePenn.com/future

Writing In An Age Of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

November 30, 2020 by Joanna Penn 8 Comments

Podcast: Download (Duration: 39:24 — 32.3MB)

In this solo episode, I discuss the impact of converging technologies, Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Generation (NLG) tools like GPT-3, and more on writing, authors, and the publishing industry.

My last AI show was in July 2019, 9 Ways That Artificial Intelligence (AI) Will Disrupt Authors and Publishing in the Next 10 Years, and although I’ve shared futurist segments on the show since then, I’ve been working on this as an updated view, and a look forward to the rest of the 2020s.

In this solo show, I discuss:

Why this era of technological change, accelerated by the pandemic, is so important
What is GPT-3 and why is it such a big deal?
AI as co-creator: Embrace curiosity and play with artistic collaboration
Impact on the commercial business model for writers, authors, and publishing
What about books?
Will AI tools make authors obsolete?
“Data is the new oil,” the wealth generator of the digital age — and publishers have a lot of it. The publishing industry owns and controls the largest dataset of all.
Why I'm so excited about the next decade of abundance — if we embrace the changes and opportunities ahead!

Check out previous episodes and resources on AI at www.TheCreativePenn.com/future

AI And Creativity Update: A Voice Double Conversation Featuring Joanna Penn And Mark Leslie Lefebvre

August 14, 2020 by Joanna Penn 6 Comments

Podcast: Download (Duration: 34:35 — 28.5MB)

In mid-2019, I shared 9 Ways That Artificial Intelligence Might Disrupt Authors and Publishing, and one of those possible disruptions concerned voice technologies, which I also wrote about in Audio for Authors.

In 2020, we have seen an acceleration of AI with the release of GPT-3 for natural language processing and generation, as well as the development of ever more sophisticated voice recognition and creation. In this episode, Mark Leslie Lefebvre and I share a conversation between our Voice Doubles and our thoughts on the ramifications.

Our Voice Double conversation
Thoughts from some of my Patrons
How we created the Voice Doubles using Descript with just 30 mins of training (reading a story)
What we had to change and edit to get around a few of the pronunciation issues e.g. I could not get it to say ‘creatives' correctly so changed the word to ‘authors.' I also couldn't get it to say ‘mass-market' in my voice, so I changed that text as well.
Our thoughts on the development of the tech and why we think it's important for authors and creatives to engage with the technology rather than avoid it
A warning of deep fakes and why Kevin Kelly's 1000 True Fans is more important than ever

You can get your own Voice Double at Descript.com. You can find Mark at MarkLeslie.ca. Mark also recorded a special episode with more of his thoughts in episode 148 of Stark Reflections.

We'd love to know what you think so please leave a comment or tweet me @thecreativepenn and Mark @markleslie

Joanna Penn and Mark Leslie Lefebvre over the years — London, Charleston, Toronto, St Petes Beach

A Techno-Optimist’s View Of The Creative Future For Authors. Joanna Penn On The Kindle Chronicles Podcast

Co-writing With Artificial Intelligence With Yudhanjaya Wijeratne

Voice Technologies, Streaming And Subscription Audio In A Time Of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Writing In An Age Of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI And Creativity Update: A Voice Double Conversation Featuring Joanna Penn And Mark Leslie Lefebvre

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