On February 1st, the 8th edition of Conversations took place in Turin. A panel of international literary experts discussed the impact of AI on (the future of) the literary industry. What do we talk about when we talk about AI? Moderated by CELA director Frank Tazelaar and CELA project coordinator Kim van Kaam, a live panel with experts from the CELA network discussed the urgent questions around AI and the literary industry, including Vincenzo Latronico (writer, IT), Martina Kutková (translator, CZ), Aljaž Koprivnikar (literary professional, SI) and Nevena Milojević (foreign rights manager, RS).

A recording of the event can be viewed below.

Writer and photographer Stef Hulskamp works as an intern at Wintertuin. In 'Readymade marmelade', he shares his perspective and concerns on the matter after attending the panel talk.

READYMADE MARMALADE

So – another panel, another talk, another piece of text.  On AI.
I’ll spare the doomsday or utopia scenarios.
I’m tempted to type here; it’s all reading tea leaves anyway, here’s something that happened to my neighbor Gabriella the other day, and then type how she and her partner were having a big argument! Chairs, words, exclamation marks! I find gossip the most interesting form of dialogue. But no. I have to I have to, on AI.
 

I’ve often wondered why I’m so incredibly disinterested and bored-out by most ‘efficient’ technology – and I heard it voiced in CELA’s panel by Paola; it lacks reciprocity. It’s a good word that from now on I’ll cleverly use. For me, literature is a human connection. [bla bla I know this is a cliche but it’s true it’s true] I don’t know what it is that makes me read poetry or prose, but it sure as hell isn’t an efficiently optimised way of consuming information.

I was kind of relieved to see our panel wasn’t too excited with AI either.

I often feel baffled people still fall for the old computer logic that humans will be spared all the boring tasks and get to do only the fun creative stuff. This obviously never happens, if your job doesn’t exist anymore, no one will continue paying your salary. To this audience I don’t need to repeat examples of translators being only paid to now do post-editing on an AI-translated work.
 

I think of Duchamp’s readymade’s, are they art?

[Microsoft’s AI clearly says no because it wants me to change that word into marmalade’s ]
They certainly shocked the art world, and they were certainly a novelty. They forced people to reflect upon what authority an artist has, and what makes a work of art meaningful.
To some people, to me, they are art when I’m in a good mood. They aren’t when I’m jealous and vindictive and in less of a good mood. The obvious scary thing about readymades or AI writing a hundred novels in a day is the speed and my human unreliable dependency on mood, creativity, discipline and if it exists, talent that is in no way able to compete.

 And a human then pointing at one thing or the other deeming that object or text art is obviously in a better position to produce work because they need not waste time on making. Albeit Duchamp pointing at a bottle rack or urinal or a publisher pointing at one out of a dozen generated translations.
But is the point really to write / have / own a million books? Is the point really to gather as much good works as one can?

Aljaž Koprivnikar points that a lot of thinking, and a lot of the unspoken basis for these talks on AI starts from a capitalist mindset. The idea that production and efficiency seem to be a default logical aim. I’m in no place to say if it is or is not, just that my personal opinion is no.

My heart’s warmed by the panelists admitting that humans being selfish works both ways, humans will exploit AI for gain, but humans will also keep writing and translating because they simply love doing it, and it can be a very personally rewarding experience.

However, to be fair – I think for most people this is impossible. Maybe because I grew up poor and come from a more working-class non-art background I am overly cynical – I’m not sure people write or translate if we lose those two things as also being paid professions. The leisure class, sure.
But those voices who are so most interesting and deserving to be heard – of marginalised groups concerning economics, gender race or in any other way – those who have less freedom, time and space  - are at risk of being drowned out.
I really wanted acting classes as a kid, we had no money, I wanted music lessons, no money, I wanted drawing lessons, no money and so on and so on. Luckily later in adult life I ended up going to writing school by accident and would’ve otherwise never come into contact with literature. But I think of a lot of the guys I grew up with who were in the same boat and just never got exposed to creativity as being an option in life.

Latronico describes how his early translating days could be incredibly boring – translating catalogs for light switches. And even though he admits this shaped him, and gave an opportunity to work himself up, he says he wishes this tedious work on no one.

However if one likes writing but has to do tedious other labour because writing and translating aren’t career options, the chance that that person finds the time and energy to write a manuscript or translate one with a sore back from the factory work, for no other prospect than enjoying it, seems low to me.
 A few will persist of course, but I fear that, logistics aside, it would be a very demotivating and seemingly elitist culture to try and get in.

A point is made that literature seems to be more and more a luxury segment of life. 
I briefly worked in fashion, where the same thing has happened – hand-made fashion didn’t die with sweat-shops, mass production and AI- assisted design and pattern cutting.  It just became elitist and inaccessible to a lot of people. The majority of tailors and weavers and designers and pattern-makers etcetera became unnecessary and due to scarcity and the relatively high, time intensive cost of production we could now in the 21st century sell a single blouse for a few hundred euro.  [Which really, if you see the craft and time garment making costs, is in my opinion a fair price]

In an AI dominated literary world of the future, a few probably culturally famous people could have big bucks and thus the freedom to write more  - deeming a lot of aspiring writers and translators to be dependent on patrons and charity, which I doubt will be an environment that feels like you have much creative freedom.

Same as Spotify escapes me, I don’t get the allure of infinite options. You have the same limited time to consume either way so it seems nonsensical to me.

Maybe it’s the idea that out of more, the best will arrive!
Through sheer volume, we’ll eventually land on perfection.
I don’t think a lot of AI use comes from greed or laziness, I genuinely think for a lot of people in the industry it is a hope and want for great literature, and subconsciously it makes sense that the odds of getting that perfect story through sheer volume are higher than having a few people have a go at it one literary work at a time.
The best out of ten is less unique than the best out of a million.

But think of all the art throughout that ages that was stamped as horrible, which we now regard as genius.

I’ve been taking pictures since age eleven. I’ve always shot analog not for puritan reasons just that digital overwhelms me. When I briefly worked at this fashion brand I obviously had to shoot digital. What happened? I took hundreds of photographs because I could and I had the anxiety and weight leaning on me of possibly missing a good shot and the awareness of the thousands of combinations of light and colour I could make without extra effort. I had to, I had the responsibility of coming up with good work and
I then would spend days ‘selecting’ out of hundreds. I needed really about ten usable photos. This time really ruined my love for photography.  Obviously it’s my lack of skill that is also to blame here but with analog I never had any of this anxiety.  Choosing ten out of five hundred is harder than ten out of thirty. Plus it takes the joy out of looking. Especially if the pictures are barely discernible in tone. With analog I stopped when I ran out of film or felt like ‘I had it’ – and I could not shoot more even if I wanted to. It was out of my hands and this calmed me.

I think most artists have imposter-syndrome to a certain extent, and if writing a first draft manuscript or a hundred of them or a few hundred extra photos or illustrations would require almost no extra physical effort I think a lot of us would end up with enormous filing cabinets not because we want to cheat the system but because we feel an obligation to make good work.

For a fashion course in art school I did a shoot for myself so I could f*ck up without harming anyone but my own pride, so I shot analog. I got forty-two pictures loved about eleven. And I love grain and I love some are ruined and some are blurry and I only needed four or five anyway and I love seeing a wrongly stitched seam and I don’t care about AI’s perfect prose and plot and it’s so so so unromantic.

I could go on and on, online dating makes me anxious and leaves me empty because I find it a strange idea that even though I am typing to this person, maybe there’s a ‘better’ one out there underneath the x number of hearts and blurred pictures of people that like you.  Everyone anxiously giggles when admitting they met thru Hinge or Bumble.

I don’t like restaurants where I have to choose out of hundred dishes.
In the words of the great Gordon Ramsey [probably]: I like a nice short menu

Choice paralysis is real and takes the fun and the practice and the mistakes out of life and AI’s making that worse.

And in those restaurants, in Turin, where we could only say vegetarian or not, after a long day of discussing and talking words, because we are human and cannot stand the same topics day in day out I turn to my neighbor at the table and say anyway how’s your love-life?

Don’t take this for disinterest in literature, I see this interaction as being perfectly in line.

We are people in a people industry, literature transfers thought, emotion, challenges or sparks ideas – and exchanges stories.   With my own editor half the time is spent on talking about life and some things that pretty much amount to gossip. But it’s this exact reason that makes me trust her opinion, and makes me listen to what she has to say about my writing.

I’m looking forward to read more works that come out of the CELA project, I’m also waiting for Rie Qudan’s book Sympathy Tower Tokyo to be sold in English - and I’ll read it without trying to be clever and guessing which parts she used AI.   It’s enough for me to know that she wrote, and she chose, as a writer. 
If Rie would’ve been at the panel in person I would’ve loved to ask her if her translator knew which bits were AI, and I wish I could secretly spy on her translator to see if they used any AI!

Maybe personally being a bit of a Luddite and not knowing much, I look at the future a bit bleaky on bad days, and with indifference on good days.  I mean, crocs and 3d printing and bluetooth became all the rage and completely passed by me.  Apart from all the well thought out arguments for and against by people way smarter and well-read than me, it just seems to lack romance.  Although looking back now I think crocs can definitely add some romance, and I was too quick to judge back in the day.  But I am quite sure AI-Borges’ infinite generated book-library would bore the shit out of me.

Nonetheless, I’ll take advice from Aljaž Koprivnikar, who always says thank you in the end, [to ChatGPT] just in case Terminator happens, he’ll be part of the good guys.