Summer 2023, Atlantic Ocean began publishing a searchable database of authors whose work was fodder for training AI systems at companies including Meta, Anthropic, and OpenAI. Authors hacked to see if their works were in the database. You probably remember the heartbreaking instagram stories that followed.
“I felt violated and very upset,” Andrea Bartz said The New York Times.
What a normal and beautiful nature of nature – to feel that you are protecting for your mental output, for the end of your creation. I wish I had access to that kind of cleanliness. Unfortunately, my instincts wanted more: I just wanted to be at the table. Even if it meant I was robbed.
Then, last November, the District Court found that Anthropic had violated authors’ rights by downloading articles published in Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror, online datasets of piracy tools. The decision created a fund of about $1.5 billion to pay writers and publishers about $3,000 per job. It is the largest copyright settlement in history, yet it somehow feels inadequate in terms of future Anthropic profits, which seem to come at the expense of future human-created work.
To qualify for this potential cash payment, authors had to meet several criteria, including that Anthropic must have downloaded your book from one of those two databases, and that you must have an International Book Number or register with the US Copyright Office within five years of publication.
I had a book published by Macmillan in March 2022, so naturally, I looked into Atlantic Ocean‘s databases, published as part of their larger AI Watchdog project. And look, my book did enter LibGen, a collection of 7.5 million+ books and 81+ million research papers created in Russia in 2008 and has been circulating around the Internet ever since. It has been proven to be free of any publisher attempts to block it, and has been used by OpenAI, Meta, Anthropic, and possibly others.
But now. I checked the List of Works on the official website of the Anthropic Copyright Settlement. And my book was nowhere to be found.
So… my job was at LibGen. But it is not in the Task List. I can conclude that Anthropic DOES download my book but… Is this a personal choice? Does this mean that someone at Anthropic was clicking on various PDFs, looking through my book cover and description and saying, Well, we don’t need a rousing and vivid account of the creation of the most important part of modern finance, and the fascinating, quixotic man who ran it. That doesn’t sound like it has much to do with the totality of a person’s knowledge. …It’s even worse.
Why am I not injured? Danger me! Select me! Love me!
I immediately understood a special moment in a special character from one of the most memorable psychological changes in Jennifer Egan’s amazing novel. Visit of the Goon Squad (high class but still low!): Kitty Jackson.
The moment in question is in Chapter 8 – “Selling the Whole” – narrated by frustrated PR executive Dolly Peale. Dolly was at the top of the PR industry in New York until she threw a dangerous party on New Year’s Eve. Her party decor included lights shining on transparent acrylic trays containing oil and water suspended above the party, but the lights heated the liquid, melting the trays until they collapsed and sending droplets of glistening oil onto the 500 celebrity guests, scalding and destroying them. Dolly watched this happen, horrified, and failed to call 911. After that, all her money went to pay off her guest houses, she spent six months in jail for criminal negligence, and her career was over.
The book continues with him two years later as he seeks to resume his career by reviving the image of “The General,” a dictator of destruction in an unnamed country; his job, as a publicist, is to soften his dignity, after all the genocide.
“Dolly’s first big idea was a hat. She chose a light green, blue hat, with brims that came down over the big dried apricot ears. The ears were not attractive, and they covered the hat…She looked great in the hat.
His other big idea, after the hat, was to create The General with an aging star, Kitty Jackson, whose star needed to shine a little. Dolly arranges for them to meet, on a trip to The General’s country. And it is during this trip, when Kitty takes off her shirt, that Dolly notices the burn marks on Kitty’s arms. Like a burn someone might get a drop of hot oil – just like Kitty did at Dolly’s disastrous NYE party. But Dolly knew Kitty wasn’t there—she remembered the guest list. Kitty admits that no, she wasn’t at the party—she made her own burns, ho look as if he was there. Well, a lot of people did, he tells Dolly. Everyone wanted to appear as if they were one of the 500 at the party.
This was funny when Jennifer Egan wrote it, but now, for me, it’s all too true. I want to appear as if I were at a party of famous writers. I can definitely have this in common with Zadie Smith, Sarah Silverman, and Michael Chabon. My work was hacked too! I’m hurt! I may not be the most famous name in the world of literary arts, I don’t usually get invited to all your literary groups, but is it a place I can delete?
But the sick thing about publishing a book is that before you do, it seems that publishing itself is an unimaginable success, a very high place. And it is! But once you’ve arrived at that place, you see that there is no end to the rewards—real and imagined, beautiful and dangerous—there is in conquering the world, and that you see yourself as invincible.
I imagine this is what Paris Hilton’s neighbor might have heard during the Bling Ring robbery. Sitting in their house, not robbed, rich, and completely depressed. My house is full of expensive bags too! Televisions, jewelry, more! Why am I not injured? Danger me! Select me! Love me!
Of course no one wants their work to be put into an AI slop machine. And no one wanted hot oil dripping on them from above at a NYE party. But one it does want to be included, involved. Suitable and invited. It hurts, but I want to be at the party, fed AI, poured hot oil. (Though in this case, the hot oil poured on the A-list celebrity guests, the writers, is made of their talent.)
I will not pour my hot talent into my hands, I will not feed my book with Claude’s lifeless, lifeless mouth. I have a question for someone with Anthropic knowledge.
For those of you who are truly burned out: the deadline to submit a claim form to the Anthropic settlement is Monday, March 30. Check out the solution site for more.
#Feeling #Anthropic #Settlement #Respected #Book