The Society of Authors (UK) is helping launch this: an identifier for human-authored (i.e. non-AI) books: https://humanauthored.co.uk/

[funhouseradio@mastodon.world]

@datarama @cstross
I hate autotune but I love drum machines. Maybe hypocrisy. Idk.

[holothuroid@rollenspiel.social]

@cstross
AI has shown us one thing. We vastly underestimate the complexity, skill and creativity behind *other* people's work. It's never our work that AI can replace only those minor things other people do.

[toerror@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@ainmosni @datarama @cstross Development is fairly unique among the creative professions in that it contains a lot of primarily financially focused careerists who know that the way to succeed ( and now survive ) is to ride whatever the current wave of hype is.

[cstross@wandering.shop]

@toerror @ainmosni @datarama This is new this century. I think things were rather different in the 20th century, changing significantly from the early 1970s through to the late 1990s. The new finance focus has really taken root since 2008. (Which was, oh, 18 years ago, so a generation. /me: old now.)

[bytex64@awesome.garden]

@datarama @cstross This is it. The danger is that generative AI content is corrosive to human connection.

[datarama@hachyderm.io]

@toerror @ainmosni @cstross It's also fairly unique in that most of the practicioners don't regard themselves as members of a creative profession at all.

[datarama@hachyderm.io]

@toerror @ainmosni @cstross As I've been saying for the last three years or so:

Programming is an art form, and we know this because the tech industry came to destroy programming at exactly the same time it came to destroy all other art.

[doomed_daniel@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@datarama @ainmosni @Lemmus @cstross
I fear that AI doesn't replace me because it's better than (or at least as good as) me at writing code, but despite it's bad at it, because it's faster/cheaper (in the short term, ignoring damage by broken software that apparently no one cares about anymore)

[johnbierce@wandering.shop]

@holothuroid @cstross Ayuuuuuuuup.

[woltiv@mastodon.social]

@datarama @ainmosni @Lemmus @cstross The argument of “it’s bad at its job” is always the weakest argument because we went from nightmare fuel image gen to telling grok to make someone nude in just a couple years.

The way the Gen AI was trained and the economic and psychological impact are the arguments that won’t go away, and are what I try to focus on when discussing it.

[datarama@hachyderm.io]

@woltiv @ainmosni @Lemmus @cstross

Sure, but those are *features*, rather than bugs, to the people deploying this.

[jedimb@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@datarama @cstross I wish more coders would, but at least I know I'm not alone in hating all kinds of AI slop.

[loosf@yiff.life]

@ainmosni @datarama @cstross

I have seen firsthand how programmers get actively deskilled with slop code.

People I respected stopped being able to explain and justify the changes they pushed.
Because they did not remember. Because they did not write it.

ANYWAYS

Access Error

(www.ft.com)

"Ecommerce giant says there has been a ‘trend of incidents’ linked to ‘Gen-AI assisted changes’"

[njr@mathstodon.xyz]

@datarama @cstross It’s depressingly Pastor Niemöller (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_They_Came).

[hareguizer@mastodon.art]

@datarama @cstross this is why developing skills in multiple areas is so important. That way, we get hives from all the slop, not just one type.

(I find I yick hard regardless of media type. As far as my brain is concerned, it’s shoggoths all the way down.)

[datarama@hachyderm.io]

@Hareguizer @cstross That's me, I guess. I make software for a living, but I also used to draw (and make pixel art), play a couple of musical instruments, and write (bad) short fiction.

This is wonderful! It means that living in 2026 is a giant pile of unending disgust.

[a@girllich.link]

@Npars01 @cstross

I don't understand why nearly every science fiction author is opposed to the most science fiction technology in decades

[npars01@mstdn.social]

@a @cstross

Elon Musk’s Government Legacy Was Enacting Project 2025. His Ties Go Back Years.

The billionaire rescued the right-wing plan to dismantle the government while at its most toxic moment. Enacting its vision at DOGE, Musk was Trump’s enabler and fall guy.

DeSmog (www.desmog.com)

Trump and the Energy Industry Are Eager to Power AI With Fossil Fuels

At a Pittsburgh summit, the Trump administration, energy executives, and tech barons joined as one to promote AI as the future of fossil fuels.

WIRED (www.wired.com)

AI Energy Demand Can Keep Fossil Fuels Alive, Tech Backers Promise World’s Two Biggest Oil Producers

An AI-fossil fuel axis is forming in the U.S. and Saudi Arabia as AI advocates pledge an endless need for energy — spelling disaster for the climate.

DeSmog (www.desmog.com)

These 15 Coal Plants Would Have Retired. Then Came AI and Trump.

Utilities started reversing coal power’s “irreversible” decline. Will it last?

DeSmog (www.desmog.com)

Science fiction authors may be into systems thinking; the kind of thinking that predicts the consequences of a hyped up, error prone product designed to wastefully burn fossil fuels to keep oil oligarchs rich.

AI is a product accelerating an ecocide.

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

(www.bloomberg.com)

Attention Required! | Cloudflare

(www.arabnews.com)

The same folks who funded 9/11 & the Jan 6 coup attempt
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/27/technology/saudi-arabia-ai-exporter.html

1/

[npars01@mstdn.social]

2/

AI is a circular financial fraud, no different than Enron.

On NVIDIA and Analyslop

Editor's note: a previous version of this newsletter went out with Matt Hughes' name on it, that's my editor who went over it for spelling errors and loaded it into the CMS. Sorry! Hey all! I’m going to start hammering out free pieces again after a brief hiatus, mostly

Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At (www.wheresyoured.at)

"So, last week the AI boom wilted brutally under the weight of an NVIDIA earnings that beat earnings but didn’t make anybody feel better about the overall stability of the industry. Worse still, NVIDIA’s earnings also mentioned $27bn in cloud commitments — literally paying its customers to rent the chips it sells, heavily suggesting that there isn’t the underlying revenue."

The AI Bubble Is An Information War

Editor's Note: Apologies if you received this email twice - we had an issue with our mail server that meant it was hitting spam in many cases! Hi! If you like this piece and want to support my work, please subscribe to my premium newsletter. It’s $70 a year,

Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At (www.wheresyoured.at)

[cstross@wandering.shop]

@a @Npars01 Because we can see the second-order consequences and they are going to be *brutal*. (Also, the current AI stuff is basically marketing hype by right-wing investors like a16z looking to steal pension funds and loot stable businesses, and the mind uploading hype is from born-again Xtians who can't quite believe in Jesus any more so they want a less implausible, technological replacement.)