We believe that creative people have the right to be paid for their creative work. We want to support humans who express themselves, their emotions, and their souls through their creativity. We do not endorse or accept the use of creative work without compensation or consent to train machine learning models. We will do anything we can to prevent that.
We believe that humans are innately creative, and that creating is one of the pieces of a healthy life. We believe that creativity is a birthright for all people. We believe that creativity is an expression of the soul. The pain, work, and joy that goes into honing craft and creating something that expresses the self is one of the meanings of life. We do not endorse the use of large language models or image or video generating tools to approximate creative work, to help with editing, organizing or idea generation, or to refine or adjust a creator’s own work. We will not knowingly or willingly publish or produce something that was created or edited using this technology.
Here in New Mexico, we have a saying: Agua es Vida. Water is life. We do not endorse or accept spending water to cool data centers in places where there is not enough clean water for people or for food supply.
Because of all of the above (and more – there’s a book coming out of some of this), We do not knowingly or willingly use any form of what is erroneously referred to as “AI” in our work. (The technology has not actually created any form of artificial intelligence, merely intelligence simulators. The rest is marketing hype.) We also request that any editor, reviewer, artist, or contributor who works with us also avoid its use.
We say “knowingly” and “willingly” because the use of machine learning and generative text is being foisted upon us, embedded in everything we create outside of pen and paper. (e.g. Alicia says: “While I disabled copilot and pay only for the version of Microsoft Word without any “AI support,” the Word form of spelling and grammar check still uses machine learning to inform its recommendations. I can’t do a damned thing about that. Also, that seems like a reasonable way to use machine learning, so maybe I can accept it.”)
We are not against large language models, text generation, or image generation tools. We believe there are good uses for them, and ways to use them ethically and responsibly. What we are against is using them for acts of expression of the creative human spirit – which writing is.