News & Views: July

And a callout to AI-resistant artists

Hello all. I’m back home after three weeks on holiday in the USA with my family. I am still returning psychologically to the green fields of Ireland after a 3500-mile road trip from Wyoming to Alaska. These kinds of distances are hard for European islanders like myself to get my head around, but it turns out to be the same distance as that between my home and Kiev. Phew. It was quite a journey, and I plan to write about it here soon.

Oddly, given the lack of sleep involved, this seems to have rejuvenated me after my bout(s) of illness. I’m not taking anything for granted, but I think that overwork and stress and all the usual maladies of the age were doing for me. Mountains and moose and fishing in glacial lakes and miles upon miles of empty forest and open road seem to be a good cure for the pressures of the Machine age.

Speaking of the Machine age - you can see from the photo above that I returned home to an advance reading copy of my book Against The Machine, which is published in September. Advance copies are produced for reviewers before publication, so the final cover is not in evidence, but the book’s contents are as they will be on publication. I’m always slightly afraid to read a book at this stage, because if I don’t like it it’s far too late to do anything about it. Writers tend to be neurotic perfectionists: there are a few notable exceptions but I’m not one of them.

Still, I was happy to be holding it, finally, in my hands: it’s looking good, and I’m intrigued to see what will happen when it arrives in the world. If you’d like to hold the final version in your own hands, you can pre-order the book now via my website.

Coming up …

Soon, I expect to be announcing the final shape of my October book tour of the US and UK. You’ll hear about that here as soon as I know myself. And starting next month, I’m going to be building up to publication day with a podcast mini-series, The Machine Sessions, in which I talk to interesting people about the themes of my book and how they relate to their own work. I have some smart people lined up. I think you might like it.

I also hope, health and time both permitting, to be writing an essay here and there, especially about the uber-subject of our times: the rise of Artificial Intelligence. There are two chapters in my book about this, but given the nature of the thing, the Machine is already moving on. What is it moving on to, and what comes next? I’m going to be exploring this here over the next few months.

But you can also expect more Wild Saints, and the resumption of the now bi-weekly Sunday Pilgrimage. The Devil is always stumbling and roaring around in the background, but we can’t be focusing too much on the darkness when there are things like this to explore:

Guess where this is and win a pine cone

Against AI: A callout for artists

One thing I do plan to write over the next few months is a call to action. Specifically, a call to action for other writers who want to resist the creep of AI into their work. We’ve all seen it by now: the articles here on Substack illustrated by AI images. The articles justifying the use of AI for creating essays, and even fiction. The feeble excuses - time, convenience, whatever - which are rapidly now being used to justify the use of Artificial Intelligence to create ‘content.’

I hate this, and I think that you should too. My objection is not simply the obvious one - the writers and artists who will be put out of work by AI-generated words and pictures - but the much deeper and more important point. Writing, like all creative forms, is a human endeavour. At its best it is pulled up from the soul and put down on the page, or the screen. We all use ‘tools’ of some kind to do this, like the keyboard I am now writing on. But AI is different. It does not help you to do your job; it does your job for you. It sucks up from the worldwide web the usings and doings and scrapings of the already-created and it rearranges them, pretending all the while that it has ‘created’ them itself. It imitates reality but can never replace it. It is, at root, a shabby, boring and actually evil thing. It is the end of art.

I plan to write an essay laying out exactly why, and that essay will also be the launch of a campaign. I’m calling it, quite simply, ‘Writers Against AI.’ I think it’s time that those of us who agree banded together to resist this. I’m going to commit, in three simple pledges, never to use AI in my work, and never to knowingly support other writers who do. If you agree, you can sign up too, and we can take a stand against this thing.

That’s the campaign, then: but I think it needs a logo. Something catchy and simple and downloadable that other Substackers or writers can take for free and put on their own work if they want to be part of this. A simple, stark logo that says ‘Writers Against AI’, or ‘AI-free content’ or - as suggested by one reader, ‘certified organic art’: variations upon themes like these is what I am looking for. More than one logo, for use in different times and places, could be useful.

So - if you are an artist and you would like to design and submit a logo for the launch of this campaign, I would love to see it. I will be choosing the best one, or perhaps a few, and publishing them here when I launch my broadside. Any art that is used as part of this campaign will be paid for. The logos in question need to be simple and in a format which can be downloaded. Email your entries to office@paulkingsnorth.net by the end of this month and we’ll take it from there.

Many blessings to you all this hot summer.

Paul