AI is disrupting everything–now, the mass customization of books. But isn’t that a good thing? …
AI and the Mass Customization of Books
AI is changing everything–even book publishing.
On SingularityHub–a website flouting the wonders of technology–has a recent article about how AI is shaking up the book publishing world.
“Publishing is one of many fields poised for disruption by tech companies and aritifical intelligence,” the article reads, “… AI promises to make publishing faster and more accessible than ever.” “But,” the article goes on, “do we want effortless art?”
I sat in a kind of stupefaction as I poured over this article seeing how AI is tearing apart what we understand as the book publishing industry. “Books?” I asked, “Isn’t AI well beyond something as banal and linear as books?”
Yes, books. We are moving rapidly into a place where more and more of the book publishing industry will be taken over by AI. And it has already motivated hundreds of publishing startups. Gone are the days of painfully slow book publishing.
The inverse seems to be occurring now. Previously important and meaningful forms of cultural work are being increasingly automated.
And what will this do to books? They will be mass created—not just mass produced. In fact, as with all technology, they will be mass customized.
Books Created Just For You
Here’s a scenario …
You want to purchase a book, but you don’t know really what you’d like. You have some favourite authors but they are a hit or miss.
What do you do?
Order something like the throw of a dice? No.
This is the 21st Century, the age of AI.
You simply order up a book, and the AI creates one for you based on all the information it has on you. It gives you exactly what you want to read. No more authors—don’t need ‘em. And besides they can’t give you everything you want. But this book you receive, same day of course, is one customized just for you.
The same article in Singularity Hub comments on the rise of publishing companies replacing more and more people with AI,
We are moving rapidly towards a future where once-important roles in the publishing sector—editing, translation, narration and voice acting, book design—will be increasingly performed by machines.
Spines’ CEO and cofounder, Yehuda Niv, has said, when queried, “We are not here to replace human creativity.” He emphasized his belief this automation will allow more writers to access the book market.
We can make statements like these and talk all about how much we need human creativity and how important it all is, but the fact is AI will quickly get to a point where it will be able to give the reader whatever he or she wants.
Entertainment–Not Art
It’s no more about the writer as artist or prophet or cultural critic—it’s about money and entertainment. If I can have an AI produce a book for me that is based on everything I love in writing and movies fused with all my other interests then why would I read anything else? It’s like venturing beyond your X or Instagram feed–you simply don’t do it.
Whether you like it or not, whether you feel bound to it or not, you’re hooked on your feed. Why? Because it’s based on what you spend your time looking at. Same with books and movies for that matter. Everything will be customized just for you.
The fact is, AI will be the provider of all entertainment and media in general. It’s already too late. We are in the midst of the Brave New World and it’s too late care.
Storytel and Nuanxed have both suggested the growth of audiobook circulation will compensate for the replacement of human actors and translators. Exactly who will benefit the most from this growth—authors or faceless shareholders—remains to be seen.
We’re already don’t it. We’ve been groomed to receive this new technological age. And it’s here. And most of us haven’t seen it coming.
As Jacques Ellul wrote in 1964 in his prophetic magnum opus The Technological Age,
Technique has no limits. It is self-perpetuating and its progress is uncontainable.
For Ellul, that main argument of his book–yes, back in 1964–was that we are bound by the technological age and we simply cannot stop it or slow it down or back out of it. We are bound to become technological beings.
For what purpose?
Progress?
We are rushing towards an unknown future–only this time it’s going to get really real.
Rushing Towards The Unknown
And again in Singularity Hub, the delusion of Edward Bellamy: that when we offload all of our labour onto automation we’ll have more time for leisure.
All fine and good, but what happens when we offload the creation of art to automation, to AI? …
The inverse seems to be occurring now. Previously important and meaningful forms of cultural work are being increasingly automated
It’s all so complicated isn’t it. … This unslakable thirst for progress. We had scrolls and books and then PDF files and audiobooks. Indeed the media of writing has changed, prior to which was oral tradition.
Now machines tell the stories for us. And artificial intelligence can write the books and make the movies and deliver the news for us. And it will give us precisely what we want to hear or see.
Unless …
There are those who want to read about the human condition written by humans. They want to see real Art, namely that created by a human in synergy with the Holy Spirit.
They want to write and create and paint and sculpt for real. Maybe it’s worth holding on to and fighting for.
One thing AI will continue to do is bifurcate society: chipped/unchipped, enhanced/unenhanced. The planet Zion in the Matrix movie comes to mind. There will be art, liturgy, prayer, agrarian societies, those who want to cut ties with the Matrix.
Then we will create art–for them!
