Books Written By Humans Are Getting Their Own Certification (theverge.com) 56
The Authors Guild -- one of the largest associations of writers in the US -- has launched a new project that allows authors to certify that their book was written by a human, and not generated by artificial intelligence. From a report: The Guild says its "Human Authored" certification aims to make it easier for writers to "distinguish their work in increasingly AI-saturated markets," and that readers have a right to know who (or what) created the books they read. Human Authored certifications will be listed in a public database that anyone can access.
Awesome! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Shouldn't be too hard to maintain such a short list yourself.
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I'd much rather that so-called 'social media' just go the way of the dinosaurs, it's a cancer on our entire civilization, a perversion and waste of the potential of the Internet, just a weapon that humanity uses against itself.
True, but also you are here reading and typing, and also I am here reading and typing. Perhaps there is some way to make it better.
Re:Awesome! (Score:4, Interesting)
Prior to "web 2.0" (what we now call social media) there was a built-in filter. Setting up a web page, even for a blog, required at least a little bit of effort, knowledge, and persistence, which put a filter on who was able to join the conversation. Therefore the quality of the discourse was better.
It would be interesting to have a place like that again, where there was some kind of technical barrier to participation. I suppose the diaspora* network might actually be something like that. I wonder if it's any better.
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Different forums have different rules and in addition, different decorum is often expected. Decorum that is lost when you [X] Post Anonymously you fucking scumbag piece of shit.
See?
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Preventing people of low intellect from postion is elitist and discriminatory.
Filtering and ignoring comments by people of low intellect is just being efficient.
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Setting up a web page, even for a blog, required at least a little bit of effort, knowledge, and persistence, which put a filter on who was able to join the conversation. Therefore the quality of the discourse was better.
In other words, a de facto IQ test.
Interesting. I don't disagree, though the courts consider such things racist (like in hiring, for example).
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Depends on the social media. IMHO, Slashdot has been an overall good thing and it either reigns in the trolls or at least there are a ton of followup posts showing why something is wrong.
The problem with social media is that someone can create a ton of accounts, using a bunch of different IP addresses, let them idle for years on end, then fire them up and start blasting the propaganda or shitposts. Sometimes it is to be expected -- shitposting 4chan is an art form, for example.
Probably the long term answe
Hahaha (Score:4, Insightful)
And we're going to trust it because?
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ELZ: Why do you think we are going to trust it because?
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How is this enforced? (Score:3)
I'm curious how this will be enforced... similar to turnitin plagiarism checks, except doing AI checks to check for AI writing? Maybe check the writing style of the author and find a baseline of syntax and grammar, and alert if it deviates?
Maybe have a fine where if it is found out that the book was AI written, but what about sections where part of the characters is AI based, something happy and friendly like A. M., SHODAN, or Marvin?
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You'll vote with your dollars by only buying Authors Guild certified books on Amazon. When the marketing data shows that nobody cares, we'll see Amazon quietly drop the certification from the product description making it difficult to find non-AI books.
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The best of intentions (Score:2)
I believe the Author's Guild to be heading into this territory with "the best of intentions" but we all know what the road to hell is paved with, right? At some point this will turn into a gamified, "Pay to be certified" thing, and then we're right back to square one. A good editor could probably get an AI written text to pass even strident checks today, but good editing on an AI written text would essential require a re-write. That may not always be the case. But the bottom line is, unless this is a human
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More so if there is a $fee to be certified.
Its trying to fix it at the wrong end of the problem.
The players here are the Writers, the Publishers, the Reviewers, and the Readers.
Writers that dont want to produce AI slop can do so by avoiding using AI to write it.
Publishers that dont want to publish AI slop can do their
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This is already obsolete. DeepSeek can write so well it passes with "AI detection" tools with 100% pass rate.
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...Maybe check the writing style of the author and find a baseline of syntax and grammar, and alert if it deviates?
Writers like Dexter Palmer, whose 3 books vary wildly in style and subject matter, would be screwed.
Also, that check would be easily fooled. There have been style checkers for years that had to be trained. I remember when Microsoft announced they were adding a style checker to Word that if it were trained on Hemingway, it would flag anything not written like Hemingway.
How proof? (Score:5, Insightful)
Certification is currently restricted to Authors Guild members and books penned by a single writer, but will expand “in the future” to include books by non-Guild members and multiple authors. Books and other works must be almost entirely written by humans to qualify for a Human Authored mark, with minor exceptions to accommodate things like AI-powered grammar and spell-check applications.
Well, at least they have plans to expand it, but I assume everyone is wondering the simple thing: how is this proven? This certification doesn't seem to be worth much than an auctor simply claiming it.
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Well an author claiming it and being proven to have lied would have his whole career ruined, so there's that.
So, we can expect an explosion in pen names?
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Pen names typically don't work like that when you're talking about professional associations; the writers' union (the one handing out the seal of approval) will not be kind to members who try to deceive in that way.
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Same applies to just putting it on the cover without a certification. “This was made by a human being, not by artificial intelligence.”.
Essentially, I do not understand what this certificate does over simply putting it on the cover.
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It was a failure in the certification process. We are amending the process. Blah blah blah.
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Steven King wont bother to be Certified Human by any guild.
Most authors are barely above Vanity Press where you gotta pay to have your own book printed.
Honor! (Score:3)
Honour, obviously. It is something that the cynical millennials here have probably only heard about in an old history class, as real honour seems so rare these days. Among honourable people a simple statement of claim is enough to trust. And, as has been pointed out, making the claim and then having it discovered to be false would ruin the claimant's career, and reputation.
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Yes, honor is useless for a “certificate”. That's why a “certificate” exists. It says, “You don't need to trust a primary source with a clear incentive to lie, but a reliable third party with no incentive to lie that in fact only has incentive to tell the truth with no further stake in it that went through the process of investing time and money into verifying something.
That's what certificates do; they cut out honor because it indeed turns out that honor has never meant anythi
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Probably looking for gross mistakes that no human would commit.
The people publishing these books are probably not even reading it, and making a pile of hallucinations in paperback form.
A text generation system that has "something that look as much as possible as the correct text" as the primary failure mode is pretty horrible for creating information books.
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Certification is currently restricted to Authors Guild members and books penned by a single writer, but will expand “in the future” to include books by non-Guild members and multiple authors. Books and other works must be almost entirely written by humans to qualify for a Human Authored mark, with minor exceptions to accommodate things like AI-powered grammar and spell-check applications.
Well, at least they have plans to expand it, but I assume everyone is wondering the simple thing: how is this proven? This certification doesn't seem to be worth much than an auctor simply claiming it.
Engineers tend to look for proactive enforcement, but this case seems like it's a better fit for reactive, contractual enforcement, meaning that the publisher signs a contract with the author that spells out the consequences to the author in the event that some discovers, and is able to prove, that the author did not, in fact, write the book. Penalties would probably start with the author losing all future royalties and being obligated to repay already-received royalties, perhaps with additional penalties.
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So you don't read Captain America, or Batman, or Wonder Woman, or Hulk, or Spider Man, or anything Star Trek related.
Got it.
Re: Certification - Human and NOT WOKE (Score:1)
"Woke" has those values in caricature. 2D girl bosses who constantly show up evil white man-villian without meaningful struggle and character development. Black protagonists cast as morally flawless heros in decidedly non-Black historical
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traditional liberal values like justice, liberty, fairness are fine, especially when set in a pro-American context that cautions against falling prey to one's own corrupting desires
Desires like owning slaves, like most of the American founding fathers? Chump.
The typos and grammar mistakes usually do it (Score:2)
At least for me.
Does anyone care? (Score:3)
If A.I. can write a better read or make the information clearer then I'm all for it.
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> Does anyone care
People making money from writing?
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Agreed, I don't care if they make the book using humans, AI, or gerbils; as long as it doesn't suck. I suspect the best books will at least be cleaned up by experienced human editors.
I doubt AI could write a coherent book mostly on it's own at this stage anyhow. Perhaps an LSD-esque Lewis Caroll style. Current AI hallucinates batshit quite well. (Resisting a political joke.)
\o/ (Score:1)
'Certified as written by a human (*)'
(*) Certified by AI :P
Will it be a full list? (Score:4, Interesting)
...or will it be a list of people whose politics the list-maker agrees on?
Over the last decade or so, people who are responsible for "certifying" that something falls into a category (for instance, twitter's blue check mark) are tempted to instead only issue the certification should they approve of the person politically, financially, or both.
Will this be that sort of list? Because that is of limited value.
Hipster books (Score:2)
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Essentially this is where we seem to be going. We are going to an artisanal books market; to an artisanal music market; to an artisanal movie market.
Evo-dilution (Score:2)
"Newspapers, do they still make those?"
"Mailboxes, do they still make those?"
"Dating in person, do they still make those?"
"Humans, do they still make those?"
I don't care ... (Score:2)
There're so much prior works that I need several lives to finish, I've just started Oeconomicus by Xenophon and this baby's just 2400 years old! Oh, same for music, haven't heard anything relevant since '70s-'90s. So ... good luck with your project!
Ghost authors? (Score:2)
Now makes we wonder whether "ghost authors" would be treated as humans for this certification? Quite honestly, I'd prefer they had their own separate certification.
No need (Score:2)
So far, AI cannot compete. If it ever can (and that is a big "if") and it is not due to there not being any good human writers around anymore (which is a possible AI effect), then it there is no need to actually mark anything.
What counts as "written by a human"? (Score:1)
Let's suppose that I wrote a story and then asked the AI to criticize every part. And it criticized the part where the professor looked at the parrot reproachingly, and all feathers on the parrot turned red and then fell off one by one. Allegedly, that's too evil. So, I changed this so that the feathers don't fall off. Does this still count as human-written?