NaNoWriMo loves AI tools? Are you kidding me?

Actual robot, actually writing.

NaNoWriMo is in the news again, and not in a good way. Again.

The organization behind National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is being slammed online after it claimed that opposing the use of AI writing tools is "classist and ableist."

Not content to rest on their child-grooming laurels, NaNoWriMo has decided to piss off the writing community more by not only allowing AI tools to be used but releasing a statement that not allowing AI tools is double-plus ungood. From their statement:

We believe that to categorically condemn AI would be to ignore classist and ableist issues surrounding the use of the technology, and that questions around the use of AI tie to questions around privilege. 

• Classism. Not all writers have the financial ability to hire humans to help at certain phases of their writing. For some writers, the decision to use AI is a practical, not an ideological, one. The financial ability to engage a human for feedback and review assumes a level of privilege that not all community members possess.

• Ableism. Not all brains have same abilities and not all writers function at the same level of education or proficiency in the language in which they are writing. Some brains and ability levels require outside help or accommodations to achieve certain goals. The notion that all writers "should" be able to perform certain functions independently or is a position that we disagree with wholeheartedly. There is a wealth of reasons why individuals can't "see" the issues in their writing without help. 

• General Access Issues. All of these considerations exist within a larger system in which writers don't always have equal access to resources along the chain. For example, underrepresented minorities are less likely to be offered traditional publishing contracts, which places some, by default, into the indie author space, which inequitably creates upfront cost burdens that authors who do not suffer from systemic discrimination may have to incur.

Now, leaving aside the leftist balderdash about "upfront cost burdens" and "abelism" (which I'm sorry Lefties is not a freaking word), the oh-so-moral people at NaNoWriMostudiously ignore the sad truth that getting ChatGPT to barf out a bunch of paragraphs for you is not writing.

NaNo is supposed to be a writing contest. Where you -write-.

Arguably AI is techno-assisted plagiarism, and I do not appreciate the various tech companies scraping my books on Amazon for fodder to feed their large language models. Given AIs are used in professional environments to make money, I'd appreciate a tiny pittance of recompense for my contribution to their profits, thank you very much. Absent them paying me for what I've done, I'm against it. Because it's stealing. For the Leftists out there who need things spelled out, stealing is bad.

Apart from the unpaid plagiarism, given the realities of publishing these days I'm not against the use of AI tools in a professional environment. You need fast research, you need 1500 words about corsets and you know you'll never get more than ten bucks for it, AI is your friend. You need a book cover and you know your book is never going to make more than a hundred bucks, Photoshop and AI generative fill all the way, baby. Money is money. I use it for covers, I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

But for a writing contest? This is the same thing as using an e-bike in a bicycle race vs. riding it to work. Fine, it isn't against the rules, but did you really compete? Or did the bike compete and you just sat on it and waved to the spectators? A stupid concept, in my humble opinion, and I speculate that it could be cover for some financial kickback or other skulduggery. A pox upon them, and all their houses.

For the Usual Suspects, this is a different issue than the ridiculous conduct of the Dragon Awards. You can't ret-con rules and quietly disqualify nominees because somebody made a fuss about AI, and most particularly you can't do it under cover of darkness, by stealth. One of these things is not like the other, you Commie pukes.