More AI Writing
At the Verge, Josh Dzieza has an in-depth look at how some writers are using artificial intelligence to increase their productivity. As I found in my own investigation, GPT-3 and its competitors still can’t produce good literature at scale. It’s telling that the most vigorous users Dzieza could find were Kindle Direct micro-genre writers and startup goblins promising to help consultants and self-help stooges who need a “minimum viable book” to bolster their credibility. Nevermind the fact that the kind of services that this AI Author Workshop is promising will lose value in direct proportion to how quickly they expand. Once everybody can churn out a minimum viable book to look professional, nobody will be impressed by your book.
More AI Art
Over on Twitter, Ethan Mollick is asking DALL-E 2 to make data visualizations based on the styles of famous artists. DALL-E still can’t do numbers or figures, so these are purely aesthetic. Still, they are beautiful.
Here is a chart in the style of Monet:
Here is a bar graph in the style of Basquiat:
A graph as it might have appeared in the Voynich Manuscript:
And one in the style of Gustav Klimt:
I seem to be saying this every week, but I’m still surprised that the novelty of DALL-E hasn’t worn off. Hopefully my number on the waitlist will come up soon.
Two Views on Russia & Russian Literature
Mikhail Shishkin, one of the finest Russian novelists working today, wrote a defense of Russian literature against Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
The road to the Bucha massacre leads not through Russian literature, but through its suppression—the denunciations or book bans against Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Mikhail Bulgakov, Vladimir Nabokov and Joseph Brodsky, Anna Akhmatova and Andrei Platonov; the executions of Nikolai Gumilev, Isaac Babel, and Perez Markish; the driving of Marina Tsvetaeva to suicide; the persecution of Osip Mandelstam and Daniil Kharms; the hounding of Boris Pasternak and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The history of Russian culture is one of desperate resistance, despite crushing defeats, against a criminal state power.
Russian literature owes the world another great novel. I sometimes imagine a young man who is now in a trench and has no idea that he is a writer, but who asks himself: “What am I doing here? Why has my government lied to me and betrayed me? Why should we kill and die here? Why are we, Russians, fascists and murderers?”
That is the task of Russian literature, to keep asking those eternal, cursed questions: “Who is to blame?” and “What is to be done?”
Shishkin has in mind many prominent voices, mostly Ukrainian, who have been speaking out against Russia’s language and literature. Volodymyr Rafeenko, a Russophone Ukrainian novelist from Donbas, has sweared off his native Russian and now only speaks and writes in Ukrainian. Another Volodymyr, Yermolenko, was in Foreign Policy last month saying that Pushkin et al. have always been handmaidens to Russian imperialism.
For what it’s worth, I side with Shishkin. I don’t begrudge any Ukrainians who would rather never have to deal with Russian literature again, but it’s not an accident that every major Russian writer—literally all of them, starting with Pushkin—ran afoul of the Russian state at least once. Russia has never had a government worthy of its artists, but if they aren’t pointing out the way for a better, liberal Russia, then who is?
Audiobooks on Spotify
Like their spiritual & economic cousins at Netflix, Spotify is currently grasping desperately for new revenue streams and signs of growth for investors. Podcasting turned out to be quite lucrative, so now they are expanding into the audiobook game. Last year, they offered $119 for the audiobook platform Findaway. The Department of Justice just approved the bid after a review, and Spotify is now promising an audiobook service soon. Rumor has it there will be an ad-supported tier that is either free or very cheap. We’ll see if audiobooks are as successful as podcasts have been for Spotify. Unlike podcasts, the audiobook market is all but owned by Amazon. It will take a lot to entice away listeners already invested in their ecosystem.
The Gutenberg Bible is Now an NFT
Yawn.