I want to put this bluntly. All of this talk about the problems and perils of AI is just a distraction. It’s a distraction from understanding the opportunity that AI brings to book publishing. This is not in the least to undermine the discussion, nor to in any way to suggest that the concerns are invalid or somehow unimportant. But you must fill two deep buckets when you think about AI, promise and peril, and keep a deep moat between them.

If you try to evaluate the opportunity through the lens of the coming AI apocalypse, you’ll have a hard time seeing the green light ahead. You could argue that we as an industry must assess the coming dangers in order to make the hard choices about how AI should be deployed in the publishing industry. Yes, we should make those assessments, and we can make pronouncements. But they will be unenforceable (except, occasionally—and eventually—by law). Entrepreneurs will reach into our industry however they choose, picking off the low-hanging fruit, regardless of the rules that we who are in charge seek to impose. (Did self-published authors listen attentively when we said, “No, you really can’t do that”?)

I’ll take a libertarian tack: you can only understand the perils surrounding a new technology after you fully appreciate the opportunities that it affords.

Read more:

McIlroy, T. (2023, June 2). AI Is About to Turn Book Publishing Upside-Down. Publishers’ Weekly. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/content-and-e-books/article/92471-ai-is-about-to-turn-book-publishing-upside-down.html