AI detection

With all this hoo-hah about AI, a market has sprung up for "AI detection." Unfortunately many writers submit 100% original work only to find that AI detectors consider it "50% AI-written" or "50% likely to be AI-written" with the numbers widely varying; it's general consensus that the detection software is useless. One will call it 80%, another 20%; they are so wrong, so often, that they might as well be picking the numbers out of a random number generator.

This leads me to wonder what the heck the schools can do about this. I'm sure AI is generating a lot of homework and getting away with it. But should a school invest in "AI detection?" I don't think so.

But it leads me to my ultimate question: How DO you know what's AI generated? If AI is as smart as we are, and uses language that we've been using for years, and always uses the language that is most commonly used to express something - then, it's kind of like us, in the sense that it's creating language the same way we are. It seems to me that if you track this down carefully enough, and let AI create enough, there will really be no difference anyway. So you can't tell what's AI-generated and what's not. You can't be sure of anything.

Somebody mentioned em-dashes, as if AI kind of had a preference for them, so they've stopped using them altogether so that the AI detection software doesn't scoop them up. But wait a minute! Why would AI prefer em-dashes, or anything, more than the rest of us? That's really a style question, and AI doesn't really have a style, does it?

Just thinking out loud. This "detection" software, after it determines you have written AI-like material, then offers to "humanize" it, making it less like AI. For a fee, of course.

The writer's block is killing me. I don't pick up my big computer, the one with word, any time I could be disrupted, which is most of the time. But even when I have an entire hour free, I don't pick it up. Why?

I actually have five or six projects going but all of them are suspended. Not a lick of work on any of them in about a month. Every day I tell myself "write!" but don't. Sometimes writing about it here> will help jumpstart me.

The big one is finishing up The Halberd which will finish up Beasts of Ayutthaya, a trilogy of three retellings of Beauty and the Beast. It's almost done. It shouldn't be this hard. The problem is you have to think deeply and carefully to finish it off. You have to cover your bases.

And lately I've been sick, recovering from surgery, laid up a little, ducking out of a lot of responsibilities. And Christmas is coming. We adults have to go out and buy junk.

Give me a kick in the patootie. I need to get going. I also need some exercise. And I need to get back into the self-promotion business. The holiday season was a wash but hey, really, in the big picture, the whole thing is kind of a wash. If I wanted to make serious money I should have just done it differently. Period.

Hopefully, I will have something to show real soon here.

 

Just did my numbers, and yeah, they're pretty depressing; I'll explain. There are several reasons and writing about it sometimes helps my mind and helps me work my way out of a funk.

First, I write down my ratings, US kindle and paperback, for all 30 of my books every Saturday morning, as part of keeping up on the marketing. I know how much they lose in a week, each of them, on both sides. This week I was a little late and didn't get to it until after noon, but they were terrible anyway. Most of my books aren't selling much. Those that aren't are losing over 100k on the paperback side every week, and that's disheartening.

But it's partly because I've almost totally stopped my social media barrage. That wasn't getting me very far, but it's what I had. I have a rebellious streak and when you have to market I shut down. It's Christmas. You have to market. But nobody tells me what I have> to do. It's the hardest time in the year for me to market.

Bad strategy...but I can't help it, it's just the way I am. I can Know I have to get myself out there, and I just clam up and don't. Oh well. But that's not the worst of it. The worst is that I've more or less stopped writing too.

I'm almost done with a trilogy, three different retellings of Beauty and the Beast, but the third one is supposed to tie it all together and it's just sitting there; I'm not getting to it. It's partly because, on a day to day basis, it's hard to pick up the old computer, with Word on it. I am literally busy from the moment I wake up. When I have a single cup of coffee I check the scores (the numbers) and mess around. I don't market anymore (like I used to) but I also don't pick up the big computer and write either. What's left is copious reading. I can always do that. But that's far less productive.

Out of the reading I get a good view of indie writing as it is - much of it better than me. Some of it worse. Some of it depressing. Some of it very entertaining. It's a mixed bag to tell the truth. But I'm embarassed to say for this week anyway, it's about all I've got to show.

Now I figure people are buying books again. Now if at any time. My Local Author Fair is at the library on Saturday, a week from today, and hopefully people will be buying. They're not especially picking me out online, paperback or kindle, though i do get a few sales. It's depressing. I should be world famous by now.