NaNoWriMo and AI

Nonprofits are often reliant on sponsors to help fund things that are part of the nonprofit's mission. Sometimes, the sponsor wants the nonprofit's audience, but there's a real or perceived disconnect in what the sponsor actually does and the health/welfare of the nonprofit's audience.

Such is the case with the current heat regarding National Novel Writing Month's position on AI and having AI sponsorship. 

Matthew Dow Smith posted on Bluesky:

I understand why an "AI" "writing" app would want to sponsor a writing event, but for the life of me, I can not understand why any event based around actual writing would accept the sponsorship of an "AI" company.

screenshot of NaNoWriMo's position on AI, taken Sep 2, 2024

On Sep 2, 2024 NaNoWriMo edited their "Position on AI" to include this:

we have edited this post by adding this paragraph to reflect our acknowledgment that there are bad actors in the AI space who are doing harm to writers and who are acting unethically. We want to make clear that, though we find the categorical condemnation for AI to be problematic for the reasons stated below, we are troubled by situational abuse of AI, and that certain situational abuses clearly conflict with our values. We also want to make clear that AI is a large umbrella technology and that the size and complexity of that category (which includes both non-generative and generative AI, among other uses) contributes to our belief that it is simply too big to categorically endorse or not endorse. 

We believe that to categorically condemn AI would be to ignore classist and ableist issues surrounding the use of the technology, and that questions around the use of AI tie to questions around privilege. 

At issue is the unlicensed scraping/stealing of the copyrighted work of writers (and other creatives) that the large AI programs have done to enable them to "generate" text -- though, as I've written before, I think that's a misnomer, and we should use "regurgitate" to better describe what they're actually doing.

Here's an April 2023 example of how NaNoWriMo is suggesting folks might use AI to help with their writing (see point 3).

Another post on Bluesky, by Becky & Frank:

The NaNoWriMo AI statement stings. I’ve been working as a writer for over a decade and have never completed that challenge. Writing is hard work and what I have to fight daily to do my job often feels insurmountable. Stealing the hard fought words of others to complete your stories is sick and sad.

One of the challenges of social media is that often it's a place of heat and not light. But one of the cool things is that it lets you know when something's happening, and you get to figure out how you feel about it.

Final thought on this to share from Bluesky is from Sarah Guillory:

I’m a runner. I love what it does for my mind, body, & soul. So people who fake running (who hire people to run logged into their Strava account) baffle me. What is the purpose? The same is true for using AI. Why pretend you are a writer when you are not writing? The creative process is the point.

What's your take? Is there a % of AI assistance that's feels right for you?

Illustrate, Translate, and Write On,
Lee