AI companies have trained their large language models on copyrighted books. Was this legal? And if not, what can you, a book’s author, do about it? Can you get paid? This post should answer your questions. Is it legal to train a large language model on a copyrighted book? At this point, the legal cases…
ABC, a Disney property, recently suspended the late-night host Jimmy Kimmel and took his show off the air due to pressure from the Trump administration. Some of my friends are suggesting, knee-jerk fashion, that the right reaction is to boycott Disney. But before you do that, you should understand why Disney and ABC made this…
When two or more people collaborate on a book, there’s often a primary writer and a primary idea person. There are lots of ways that collaboration can work, but it pays to think about it before you get started, and adjust it while you’re working together. And it’s also important to for all the collaborators…
Newsletter 111. Think twice about recycling your outrage. Plus, not sounding like an AI, how consultants stand out, three people to follow and three books to read. Welcome to the machine You had a busy week. I know. You posted on social media, and I saw it. You’re hurting, like all of us, and I…
I’m not a habitual procrastinator. But when there is time before the deadline for a project, sometimes I put it off. (You know, just like everyone else.) Here are bad reasons to procrastinate: Good reasons to procrastinate (and what to do about them) Here are good reasons to procrastinate: That last reason is the interesting…
In the classic Star Trek episode, “The Day of the Dove,” the crew of the Enterprise and a group of Klingons are pitted against each other. Forced into sharing a small space with equal numbers on a ship they no longer control, they find their passions inflamed. Stratagems are employed. Weapons are wielded. Members of…
Two recent developments are pointing the way towards a web-wide content licensing and payment trend for AI training. Two days ago, publishers including Reddit, Yahoo, Medium, Quora, Ziff-Davis and O’Reilly announced support for RSL (really simple licensing), a scheme by which site owners could include AI licensing terms in their site’s robots.txt file. Shelly Palmer’s…
It’s certainly fun to interview people doing interesting things and write up their experiences in your nonfiction book. Case studies about individuals who gained influence or clever marketing programs hold plenty of interest. But when it’s time to write about the CEOs of multi-billion-dollar companies, you’re going to need a different strategy. I’m about to…
Newsletter 110. Dead people I once knew are still making me smarter — and kinder. Plus, debunking the MIT study about failed AI projects, the Anthropic piracy settlement on hold, three people to follow, and three books to read. I see dead people I’m older than most of you. Retirement age (but I’m not retiring)….