For the love of God I hope you used your favorite AI to highlight the article and produce this post!

The 370 a year is a bizarre extreme but there’s always been slop. Decades ago I was briefly an editor in the hardcover division at a big six and there was a whole mass market paperback division of romance books being endlessly churned out, one famous “author” was actually a married couple with a pseudonym. I think it’s transformative and sort of like discovering flight or electricity. But there will be risks, misuse, slop, and lots of jobs lost along the way to AI doing it better and faster. Go on X and read what people are doing with their Grok bots (I don’t pay for or have Grok bots.)

My kids’ homeschool co-op was going to teach the high schoolers a class on using AI. I don’t know what it was going to cover, but as soon as the students found out, they pitched a fit. NONE of them wanted a class on “super intelligent” artificial stuff. When asked what they wanted instead, they suggested choir, cooking, art, games…basically the opportunity to learn how to create something real. Gen Z and Gen Alpha seem pretty disgusted by AI, at least in the homeschooling world.

This is very silly anecdotal example, but perhaps somewhat to the point. I was hosting a part Friday evening for 23 middle school kiddos and had a scavenger hunt planned. I did not have the mental fortitude to think of them myself, so I gave AI my detailed locations I had planned and asked it to create clues from one place to the next. I went through six prompts and each time it created the most uninteresting bizarre confusing clues. I hadn’t realized before that how hard it is for AI to be creative.

I think about these passages from 1984 almost every day. "Here were produced rubbishy newspapers containing almost nothing except sport, crime and astrology, sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means on a special kind of kaleidoscope known as a versificator." "The words of these songs were composed without any human intervention whatever on an instrument known as a versificator. But the woman sang so tunefully as to turn the dreadful rubbish into an almost pleasant sound."

Marche is correct, and not just about formulaic action movies (I’m looking at you, Disney). Perhaps now there’s just more slop? At the end of the day, we need to continue to be discerning. And do whatever we can to fight AI.

I think if you don’t like AI slop, don’t consume it. I don’t care for it, so I’ll look to buy books where publishers curate for the type of books I prefer to read. I won’t judge the people who get sucked into the AI slop; I read one of those interminable facebook stories, and while I was annoyed with it, the plot was juicy. If someone thinks the best use of their time and talent is creating the slop, who am I to judge their decision? I don’t believe it’s what I am created to do, but there are an infinite number of paths for people to pursue with their lives. The market will sort it all out in time.

There's on AI author who has been doing this for years. It's just a lot more widespread now. He actually stopped after Amazon imposed a limit on how many books can be published a week (due to this very problem).

Kindle Unlimited is a subscription service - so people aren’t paying for individual books but rather for the ability to download unlimited numbers of items from a menu. I think the analogy to highly processed junk food is apt: some people will read what makes them feel good in the moment without regard to how it affects their life. It seems that folks are encouraged to think of Kindle Unlimited the way some approach an all-you-can-eat buffet. They try to read/eat all they can, rather than savor what’s truly delicious and nourishing. But still the sad point is that Amazon pays the “authors” of AI slop the same as it pays authors who spend time researching, writing, rewriting, and editing. There’s no profit in hiring a five-star chef to cook for an all-you-can-eat chain restaurant. (Maybe one of the favors the Covid-19 pandemic did us is to get rid of such places. But it probably accelerated demand for digital books that can be downloaded in the safety of ones own home.)

Who buys the kindle books from authors who write 370 in a year? I mean I don’t have time to read all the good, reputable, acclaimed books on my list. Who is actually buying no name AI slop in enough numbers to make it profitable?

I keep talking to my artist and author friends about this. How are we supposed to trust anything produced after, say, 2024? Do we need to document our writing and artistic processes with real time video recordings and screen captures? Do I need to video myself writing and editing by hand? It's a social-epistemological problem: how do we know what we know? On what foundation do we have any reliable certainty that the media we're engaging with was created on purpose by a human? To an extent, this has always been a problem: forgeries and questionable artistic practices and plagiarism have always existed. But the *means* to do all of that has now been diffused to everyone with a device and and Internet connection. That's the new part that makes everything scary. The scale of fakery is global. And I'm only talking about the realm of art, leaving aside the potential effects on news and current events, which is just as bad if not worse. How do we know what we know? Pandora's box has been opened.

One point I think is important yo make is the risks associated with a continued use of AI for anything. The environmental impact, the dangers inherent in AI agents going rogue, which we know has been happening more frequently than anyone realized, even the creators. So as bad as the death of creativity and actual human thought is, it does not compare with the damage to our planet and the end of all humanity. The issues are so monumentally huge that you have to look at it as two separate issues, but they both result in destruction. Use of AI, even in the most innocent of cases, is the same as acquiescence of a life filled with the artificial, and a certain step towards the end of many things. It has to be stopped. There is literally no reason to continue the experiment.

AI art is the digital equivalent of processed food. Yeah, it ticks all the boxes of "art," but it's just an echo of the real thing and doesn't nourish us the way the real thing does.

Gen Z is sick of AI. My kids want nothing to do with it. Boomers are having a hard time learning to use it, and more and more are skeptical of it. Gen X, my gen, is a small generation which leaves mostly Millenials to use if heavily. I suspect that the bubble is going to burst with a vengeance. There is a pretty big resistance growing, and now some corporations are moving away from it. GM fire a huge number of software engineers thinking AI could do all the work. The stuff it writes is a joke, doesn't meet their needs, constantly needs rewriting by the remaining programmers, and the subscription prices just keep going up exponentially such that only one year later, it costs more to use the AI than the entire salary and benefits packages of the employees they let go! It is nuts. So I suspect that in the next few years, there will be a big about face. This is why Sam Altman came out against the general public owning computers. He knows if there is independence from Anthropic, the company will tank. He needs to force everyone into having no computing ability except a machine provided by his company and whatever subscription the household can afford. But I do not see that happening. Our son, a professional writer, is actually keeping an air gapped laptop for his writing needs. One of his high school students asked him, "Well how do you look up words and spellings?" His answer, "I use magic things, a thesaurus and dictionary. They are like books from Hogwarts." 😂

My thoughts are simply that the sooner we reject AI in creative use and to destroy the world in various ways, the better. Artificial intelligence has been around for a long time, just not in its modern form. A Google search is AI. But ChatGPT and Claude are new and likely here to stay. But we need to put down a hard no in its use for children and in certain fields. Why this is even a question beggars belief. It's truly painful to read what's happening out there! I just posted this on a homeschooling page, and it applies here, too, except that, sadly, many adults are showing their inability to resist the monster, too. Lord have mercy! We blithely gave children phones, in spite of the warnings it would have negative effects. It took losing a generation, the most drastic drops in mental health, countless deaths, and a shocking loss in literacy and critical thinking for the world to realize that phones are bad for children. Now schools are banning devices, and social media is getting slapped with huge fines. The fact that tech titans themselves did not allow their own children to have phones and put them into Montessori schools didn't seem to make an impression. Read or listen to Jonathan Haidt if you want to know more. Now it's AI. The warnings came faster as the evidence was even more obvious. AI does not help children! It destroys creativity and removes the ability to learn, reason, and think critically. The brain is a muscle that must be trained! Adults can use AI having learned to think and compare. They know what a good answer looks like. Without that ability to compare, children cannot discern quality, truth, or beauty. As a parent, teacher, long time homeschooler, speaker, etc, I'm seeing the effects of AI in children. Do we have to sacrifice another generation before we once again say "Whoops! That was a mistake, let's backpedal"? Please keep children away from AI. Teach them to think and reason! Teach them to recognize quality. Then, once they're older, let them use AI. You won't regret it. I teach a homeschool group I founded decades ago. Thankfully, most of the children are on board with this philosophy, and are able to point out AI slop quite well. However, there are a few that use AI as a crutch. The difference is so blatantly obvious, and it pains me every time I see it. Don't do this to your children, I beg you! Trust me, it may be hard to hold the line, but you will not regret it later. Use phones limited to talk and text, and teach your children to read, to write, to reason, to think, to discuss, to create. As homeschoolers, we have the opportunity to make a difference. Let's not jump into the raging stream out there, it's devastating to development. Once our children's minds are strong and capable, AI can be a perfectly valid tool to use. Pax.

#rejectai so sick of slop

Those who use AI to generate books are not authors. If someone couldn't be bothered to write it, I'm not going to bother to read it. And the fact that people *still* think they can use AI to tell whether something is AI or human generated is laughable.

Gross. Just gross.

I absolutely hate this timeline.

"AI-generated text [is] public domain"? Aha. So the push against AI in the adult world is also financial. I was wondering; this is America. I mean: if you have an author who has sold well for your publisher in the past, why put them under the microscope now? Why award an expensive contract to a writer then withdraw on just the suspicion that it's got some AI phrases? Public domain.

"turn benches into men"???? Really?!?!?! SMH

In addition to the various unreliable checkers flagging more non-American and British writers at higher rates, apparently Nigerian writers specifically have played a larger role in AI training, which makes authentic Nigerian authors even more likely to have their style flagged by the unreliable checkers. I've been struck by the back and forth relationship in publishing. The writers are using AI... and the editors are decrying it but they're also using AI.

I remember having a discussion, in my homeschooling days, about what should be included under the umbrella of "Language Arts." Someone proposed that it include speaking and listening, and I thought it was a brilliant idea.

Good to hear! (And I only saw the pun after typing that. 😉) Just this morning I was running water over a mason jar that had been in the freezer. The sound that the water, drumming on thin metal, was like the whoosh of a brewing storm. I had my husband take a listen and he agreed. This led us to becoming nostalgic about old time radio dramas and the clever ways they created accompanying sound effects. Both of us had the distinct impression that young kids today may just be ready to bring something like this back to life. The constant flashing of images all day long is exhausting, and it cuts short opportunities to imagine for oneself. Many positives to this revival. ❤️

Public speaking project in 4H was one of the best and toughest things we did as homeschoolers. One year I paired all that with lightning lit’s speech unit and we did poster talks and PowerPoints good and bad tools. Made sure those high schoolers were ready for college speech class!!

Aloud is allowing. Confessing aloud makes it so. Words are power, knowledge is power, conversation as a power exchange. Words are spells, spelling is creating. This is why the pen is mightier than the s-word. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, God created by the power of His Word. Our names are powerful spells, that brainwash us, we answer when we are called by our parents, and then eventually the meaning of our names, if we cooperate, and partner with our parents and God, is God’s calling on our lives. And we too need to understand the Power we have of speech, words. The animals used to be able to talk in the Garden, but it was taken away when it was used to deceive us. And now they are only allowed to talk on rare occasions. (Balam’s donkey.) When people learn online, they don’t realize they are being silenced from speaking, and if we are not allowed to speak, we are not being allowed to think for ourselves!! God takes it very personally and so should we when our intellect is insulted, “don’t think, just do.” Since when did mirroring become ok? “Repeat after me?” And we are paying for the privilege to be told we don’t know how to THINK.🙏🙏. We are agreeing with people who are talking down to us, but that is to keep us small, indoctrinate us, because they are middlemen that need to be needed. We are being brainwashed and must conform to the material. That happens when someone does all the talking in a conversation too. Also, lying is witchcraft, that weakens us. Which is why we have to be super guarded and read and hear everything like a legal document. So that we absorb and believe as few lies as possible. Someone that would lie, sets themselves up as the authority, then we are gullible and think they have our best at heart and they may but what if they too have been misled, the blind leading the blind? They might have 95% truth, but an airplane just needs to be 1% off for a while to not land on their target. Spells are used manipulate and of course those that do, do so while saying “it’s just words.” Online and typing, it’s called a “cursor,” we are concocting, the tree dots that appear when someone is typing? They are “bubbling” a brew! If we are not building we are being destructive and tearing down and talking down, power-grabbing. That is why we have to go-spell “the good news.” God literally tells us that life and death is in the power of our tongues. He does not exaggerate because that would be a form of lying. That’s why it’s so important to “go-spell” truth, encourage, rightly dividing, articulating, versus allowing blanket statements, vagueness, and the bad spells of nihilism, of no hope, because there is, in fact HOPE. 🙏. And we can believe Him. He’s telling the Truth. The more our word means something to us, the more careful we are with our words and the more careful we realize that God is too. He says what He means and He means what He says and He is not sloppy and He does not conflate. That is why His Word is so powerful, because He cannot lie. So His Word super potent, compared to ours, it’s super concentrated. It has Powerful Potential to divide bone from marrow. Anything else is watered down, literally diluted. God cannot lie and He never has but we have been weakened by our lies and others’. That makes Him All Powerful. Each lie and inconsistency weakens us. The more truth we have, the more truth we say, confess, out loud, the more powerful we get to be, rather than being weakened by lies. It really is Truth to Power, but not like that.

Charlotte Mason for the win!

I have been a pediatric speech-language pathologist for 45 years. The number of language delayed children on my caseload, not counting children with autism, has increased by 36% since COVID. To add to that...I was at a conference several years before COVID. The speaker was a famous speech therapist. She described walking behind a family who had 2 children in a stroller. They were walking through a large, packed carnival with lights, sounds, smells, etc. She was behind the family for 30 minutes. Despite all of the stimulation and all of the opportunities for conversation, the children were looking at their iPads the entire time. I'm sure everyone reading this can easily imagine the scenario.

Connie Braun 🙂

💯