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Thanks as always for these places and links. I don't understand chatgpt - wayside is using an ai called "pi"? It replies with a British accent & apparently "spontanteously" asks the boss during the day if he's OK. 😳

I'm still recovering from reading/listening to the npr story about an ai program that was given poetry to read & then asked to write poetry. Also an extraordinary article by a semiotics linguist about ai language failings -

I guess the bigger question for you as a writer is: have your books been pirated by ai?

I started Black Doves and then jumped from ep 3 to the last episode. I did the same with the guy Ritchie series. There's only so much unnecessary violence I can watch. Ben Wishaw is brilliant and Tracey Ullman was a gift but just how many crime gangs are in London!!!

I look forward to your last post for the year & thank you for all the recommendations for us - especially those of us avoiding the midday sun for the next two months. 🙏🌞🫠

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Thanks as always for the comments! It's funny, you're right - Black Doves *is* quite violent, but I had not noticed - or paid attention to the level of violence until you pointed it out. What does that say about how desensitised I have become to such imagery in my tv consumption? I suppose, that being said, there is a pulpiness to BD that I think feels different to say, Gangs of London, or even later seasons of The Boys, or even Love Lies Bleeding - I tend to be unable to stomach depictions versions of violence... but still. Something to think about - and maybe I'll make a note of such things when I'm next recommending.

As for my books being pirated by AI - it's less the books I'm worried about and more the reams of text and video I've put out on the internet for the last 15 years that I am certain make up part of any number of LLM training datasets. Alas! Theft, as always, from those at the top, profiting from our labour.

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