How Much Should Authors Get Paid to License Books to AI?
Most experts agree that tech companies should pay creators whose work is used to train artificial intelligence. Deciding on the right number is the hard part.
In his 1973 book The Denial of Death, the anthropologist Ernest Becker argued that, in order to function in the world, we repress our knowledge of our own mortality. Our “deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation,” Becker writes.
Until recently, I applied similarly avoidant logic to the existence of generative AI, and the threat it represented (i.e., the annihilation of my career as a writer). When ChatGPT launched to the public in 2022, I was so alarmed by its ability to mimic human writing that I did my best to forget about it. When tech-savvy friends raved about their new “virtual assistant,” I zoned out. When authors posted about the battle to prevent chatbots from stealing their work, I scrolled on. In 2023, the Atlantic published a search tool for writers to find out if their books had been used, without their permission, to train Meta Platforms Inc.’s AI model. I didn’t bother checking.