Author of LGBTQIA+ speculative fiction and poetry in English and Esperanto. Teacher of scientific writing. Lover of natural history. SFWA Secretary. (he/him)
The SFWA Nebula Conference is coming right up (June 6 and 7, 2025). Although I’ve attended remotely before, I’m attending this year in person for the first time. I will be appearing at two events on Friday, June 6th: a “Meet and Greet” at 4pm CDT with William Ledbetter, Greg Leunig, and Michael Capobianco and a Networking Reception from 8 to 11pm.
I have also been invited to serve during the award ceremony as a “runner,” that will guide people to the stage during the event. When I was asked if was willing to do that, I pointed out that I would be happy to, as long as it didn’t actually involved any running, as I will be wearing a mask and walking slowly with a staff. I was assured that would be fine, and so I said I would be happy to serve.
Prior to the conference, the SFWA Board will have a retreat to discuss strategic planning. Anyone who’s been reading my blog will be unsurprised by my focuses: restoring normal functioning, increasing fundraising, and improving member retention. To accomplish the last two, I think we need to improve publicity and outreach. SFWA does a lot of great stuff, but people don’t always know what we’re doing.
I really do appreciate many of the things that SFWA offers. I particularly take advantage of the Writing Date for socialization and networking (though a little less since I run my own similar event for the Straw Dog Writers Guild). Writer Beware is a particularly useful useful service. The information about contracts and publishing have been extremely helpful. And I appreciate the SFWA community as a resource to learn about craft of writing, the publishing landscape, to learn about new projects, and to hear scuttlebutt.
I find I’m a little more nervous heading to this convention than I usually am. I think this is because I’m a little more concerned than usual about making a good impression. I’m going to be meeting a lot of people that I’ll be working with for the next couple of years as Secretary. But everyone involved in SFWA leadership has been fantastic to work with so far, so I’m not really worried — just a little nervous.
When I was a kid, I started walking with a staff as a walking stick. My family lived in a forest in southwest Michigan. My brother Philip had a friend, Richard Molenaar, and they were always doing all kinds of creative fictional things, making fantastical maps and stories and artwork. At one point, they constructed an imaginary religion and used a wind-thrown tree in the forest as their “Temple of the Staff.” I liked imitating things that my older brother was doing, so I cut a staff too and started walking with it. In those days, I usually cut a staff of ironwood (Ostrya virginiana), which I would often mark with runes.
I had learned to make runes when I read The Hobbit in fourth grade. Tolkien had adapted futhorc runes when he created the dwarven map and I had reverse engineered them once I realized that it was just a substitution cipher of the English text from the book. My friends and I exchanged all of our notes in class in runic when I was in high school, so I was quite proficient at writing in runic, once upon a time. It worked really well, although one time I wrote the note in Spanish and my friend (who was studying French) was very puzzled when he tried to read it.
Years later, when I moved back to Michigan for graduate work, I decided to cut a small red oak (Quercus rubra) tree in the forest and made two staves. I peeled the bark just at the top on each and, on one for myself, I carved an S rune and, on one for my wife, I carved an A rune. I still have those staves, thirty years later. I used them only occasionally for most of that time but, when I fell on the ice several years ago, I injured my right knee. Since then, I’ve found using a walking aid helpful, and so I’ve taken to using a staff pretty much any time I have to walk for more than a few blocks.
The staves are pretty long — around five feet — so they don’t really fit conveniently in the car. When we began our road trip, it became clear, I couldn’t bring either of my existing staves, so I decided I would undertake to make a new staff while en route.
When we arrived at Phil’s apartment, I mentioned my plan and inquired whether there might be a good place to cut a staff. He said that he had a number of walking sticks already that I could borrow to see if any might be right. One was from the Kalamazoo Nature Center, but it was too short. Another was a big crooked piece of osage orange driftwood. It was closer to what I wanted in height, but just wasn’t a good fit.
We puzzled for a while about where to cut a staff but we couldn’t come up with a place where it would really be appropriate to do that. So I fell back on my plan B: to look for a wooden handle at a hardware store that I could adapt to be a staff.
We went to a local hardware store to see what was available. They had axe handles and shovel handles, but they were all too short. Push broom handles were longer, but too narrow. There were dowels, but they were also too short. There was a really long piece of heavier wood, but it was so long there was no way to carry it in the car. A wheelbarrow handle was long enough, but the bottom two-thirds was squared off, making the whole thing a bit cumbersome and heavy. There were a bunch of other cylindrical objects that we joked about making into a staff: water pipe insulation (not rigid enough). Florescent light bulbs (too brittle). Eventually we gave up. I nearly resorted to going to one of the large chain stores, but Phil remembered another local hardware store and, after we looked there, we found a dust mop handle that had a metal part at the end (to hold the dust mop), but which was otherwise about the right length, diameter, and heaviness. Plus, it was absurdly cheap (like $10). We bought some rubber feet and took it home to work on it.
I wanted to decorate it a bit and had been thinking about how to do it as we investigated the various possibilities. I considered buying a dremel motor tool and routing out some runes, but that was a bit more expensive than I had bargained for. Phil suggested wood burning. He had an old woodburning kit he had gotten as a teenager that he’d been carrying around for fifty years. So, after cutting off the metal head and sticking on a rubber foot, we got out the woodburning kit and I gave it a try.
I wanted to put on a rune, or runes. When I had carved runes before, it was enough work that I just put on a single rune at the top. But with the wood burning kit, I aimed to do three runes to spell out SDB. I looked through the various tips and selected one that was rather like a standard screwdriver. It worked admirably to made wide, even strokes for runes. Then, I added a diamond-shaped mark between the B and the S, to make it clear in what order the runes were to be read. But then the rest of the staff looked very plain, so I considered adding more runes.
I experimented making small runes with the wood burning tool. By pressing the tip into the wood, I could easily make small line segments and, from those, I could construct runes. Putting one above another, I could make the stem and then I could add two more to make a T or an A rune. But a D rune required like 8 little segments and was so hard to keep aligned that the result wasn’t really readable. So I decided to cheat: I went to the store and bought a pack of fine-point sharpies and so I could just write the runes in several colors.
I decided to have the text spiral around the staff. I wound a piece of masking tape around and around the staff and then wrote out the words of La Vojo in runes going down, above the tape in black, and then back up below the tape in red. It only took me about 40 minutes of focused effort and, although the runes are little scribbly, I’m quite satisfied with the result, which is very mystical.
On Saturday, Phil’s Historical European Martial Arts group was tabling at their local farmer’s market. I went along and took my staff. Even before I was introduced, my staff was an object of great fascination, which I found quite gratifying. And it serves its primary purpose, as a walking aid, very admirably.
One of many advantages of being an academic is having the time to travel. Two years ago, my son and I went on a summer road trip to BayCon. With the end of the current semester, we’ve embarked on a new adventure.
I’ve had the good fortune to travel widely over my life. The experiences of many of the places I’ve visited have featured in my writing. Here are just a few:
Drenched with sweat and coated with dust, bouncing along on a wagon behind a tractor, stacking bales of hay under the hot sun.
An ancient Roman aqueduct, with a double row of arches, spanning a valley and still delivering fresh water thousands of years after construction.
The gritty, polluted atmosphere of São Paulo. Doors with multiple locks. Windows barred. Every big truck with a small follower car, a plastic dome in the roof that can pop off and, inside, several heavily-armed burly men.
The desert southwest of the United States with red rocks contrasting the dark green of the piñon pine and juniper. Scattered potsherds everywhere. Cool canyons with cottonwoods and huge tree frogs that are invisible until you spot one and then realized you were surrounded.
Climbing above the treeline of a high mountain pass with the sky all around and snow still in the shadows of the peaks. Beautiful alpine flowers blooming in the sunlight.
Thermal features steaming in a barren plain with twisted grey dead trees scattered across the landscape. The omnipresent smell of brimstone.
The golden sand of a tropical beach and the ocean in three or four shades of blue. Waves breaking over the distant reef, with huge cumulus clouds riding the trade winds out to sea.
Driving through mile and mile of sprawl — strip malls and auto dealerships — only to enter the boarded up decrepit buildings of an old downtown swallowed by the sprawl, and re-emerging on the other side to miles of further sprawl on the other side.
Standing at the rusty metal border fence, outside the United States, looking in, while armed border control guards drive white SUVs back and forth, watching — always watching.
Rolling through the run-down backside of the metropolis by rail, then diving underground into a subterranean warren of grimy cement pillars dimly glimpsed though uncertain light as the train rolls into Grand Central Station.
On a dirt road, trying to bicycle back onto the map. Racing a summer thunderstorm moving in from the west, and arriving at a country store just as the first drops start to fall. Lightning. Thunder. The power goes out.
Walking through a seemingly pristine forest, only to discover an old rail grade, piles of mine tailings, and old cellar holes, to remind you that, less than 200 years ago, the entire region was clearcut and occupied. Now abandoned.
I’ve posted previously about using geomorphology and botany for settings in fiction. Of course, it’s not just the physical and biological characteristics that make a setting. The people in a place are also essential components: How they look. How they dress. How they speak. How they interact. Plus the economic circumstances and level of development. And the cultural institutions and their manifestations in the landscape: houses, businesses, churches, government buildings, and their architectural styles.
When I first tried to write, I found myself frequently drawing from literary sources for my imaginary settings. But the longer I’ve lived, and the more places I’ve visited, I find my own recollections are so much more vivid and nuanced, that they are my primary source for constructing settings.
My current adventure has already taken me several new places I’ve not visited before. We spent several days in Asheville for a wedding and then drove through the Smoky Mountains, through Tennessee and Kentucky, to Illinois. Next week, we’ll go to the SFWA Nebula Conference in Kansas City. I look forward to all of the new experiences to come. Don’t be surprised if there are some new settings in my writing in the coming years!
I visited the Leverett Peace Pagoda today. It’s only a short drive from Amherst. You park at the bottom and walk up the mountain for around a quarter mile. It’s always an opportunity for quiet reflection. It is one of many pagodas constructed after Hiroshima and Nagaski by a Buddhist order dedicated to opposing nuclear weapons.
I can’t remember when I first discovered the Peace Pagoda. I probably hadn’t been living in the Pioneer Valley for more than a year or two. At the top, there is the amazing pagoda with gold statues at the cardinal points. Nearby, there’s a little pond with an island in the middle. Just beyond, built in the foundation of an older temple that was destroyed by fire, there is a little zen gravel garden. Usually, there are several strings of multi-colored prayer flags fluttering in the breeze. The pond is covered with lily pads and has frogs, tadpoles, minnows, and newts. It’s the among the most peaceful places I’ve ever visited.
Over the nearly 30 years I’ve been visiting, a number of changes have occurred. Over many years, they built new temple near the pagoda. There is a new area near the pond dedicated by and to native American people. A number of new monuments have been erected. There are number of new buildings and residences on the road up to the pagoda. But the message of the pagoda is the same.
At some point, I started writing haibun in Esperanto about interesting places in the Pioneer Valley. In 2010, I published Patro kaj Filo ĉe Sukerpanmonto (Father and Son Visit Mount Sugarloaf). Three years later, I published Spuroj sub Franc-Reĝa Ponto (Tracks Under French King Bridge). And in 2014, Morto… kaj vivo en Amherst, Masacuseco (Death… and Life in Amherst, Massachusetts), a haibun about a visit to the Emily Dickinson homestead, that tied for second place in the Belarta Konkurso. I had always intended to follow it up with a haibun about the Peace Pagoda. I made notes and had started writing it, but it was around that time that I had my falling out with the Esperanto movement. And I pretty much quit doing anything with Esperanto.
I think the last time I visited the Peace Pagoda was shortly after I got out of the hospital. I wasn’t well enough to make the climb, so I drove up and parked near the top. This time, I made the climb on foot. With my reduced lung capacity, it’s a struggle. But I had my walking stick and walked slowly, while other people passed me on the climb. Going back down was also difficult. I injured a knee in a fall maybe 10 years ago and doing downhill is painful. But I used my stick, took small steps, and made it back down.
It was a glorious day in the sunshine at the top. I sat to enjoy the view, walked around the little island, and was inspired to write a haiku.
pinpinglo falas / a pine-needle falls
aliĝas la aliaj… / and joins the others…
jam mararmeo / already a flotilla
As I was getting ready to leave, I ran into another old man at the announcement board getting ready to mow the lawn. He mentioned a ceremony planned for early June. I thanked him and said I had been coming for nearly 30 years and it was nice to see the changes and on going commitment of the community. He said he’d been coming for nigh on 30 years himself. “It doesn’t seem we’re getting any closer to peace, though,” I said. We shook our heads sadly and parted.
For the week before the Watch City Steampunk Festival, I kept checking the forecast and trying to decide what to do. There was rain predicted the day before, but the forecast kept changing: some days, it seemed like it would clear up before the festival opened. And other times, it looked like it would be a washout. The night before, I decided that I would just have to drive there and make an assessment.
I had thought there would be another attending author. I’d met him previously at Readercon was hopeful he’d come early enough to help me set up. But it turned out he actually couldn’t attend. I was luckily able to recruit my son to go with me to help with load out, load in, and to give me breaks to use the facilities.
My son and I got up at 5am for the two-hour drive to Waltham. Normally, the drive would be a half-hour shorter, but it was slower driving in the rain. When we arrived, light rain was still falling. But looking at the radar made me think that the heaviest of the rain was over. The radar image was fascinating: the storm was rotating counter-clockwise, almost like a hurricane, very nearly centered on Waltham. But most of the heaviest bands of rain were to the north and the whole system was moving slowly northeast.So we started unloading. We set up the canopy and the table, put up the banner, and brought just a minimal subset of books to display.
My wife looked at the picture and said we should have lowered the banner and/or raised the table cloth. She tracked down the picture from last year to show me how it looked before. I said that Daniel and I had agreed that the weather had left us “rain damaged.”
Business was slow all morning. A few people stopped to look, but nobody bought anything. It continued to rain and was chilly, with temps only in the low 50s. I put on a heavier coat and my gloves. But, little by little, the sun began to peek out and the festival became more lively. And sales picked up.
I hadn’t brought a wide selection. In addition to what was listed there, I brought Romancing the Rainbow, my books of haiku, and a few other things. But a lot of people buying books here had seen me before — either last year at Watch City or at Readercon, Arisia, or Boskone. When I had signed up to do Watch City, I thought I’d have a new book out. But it’s been delayed. I had hoped it would be out in June, but now looks like it may be delayed yet again. In any case, several people said they already had either Revin’s Heart and/or Better Angels: Tour de Force, so their choices were pretty limited. One young woman, who already had Revin’s Heart bought a copy of Romancing the Rainbow. A young man, with his parents, was very interested in Revin’s Heart but really liked the bundle of novelettes, so his parents paid the extra $10 to buy him the bundle. A young woman was interested in the Esperanto books, saying her dad spoke Esperanto. She bought him a copy of Premitaj Floroj. A young man, who had been a student employee of mine ten years ago, remembered himself to me and took a card, so he could order a book. I gave away a lot of cards.
Another vendor stopped by to ask me how we did. I indicated that sales had been lackluster. He said he’d done very well: he’d sold 24 copies of his new release. He made encouraging comments about small-press and indie publishing.
A lot of people were puzzled by the “Small Publishing in a Big Universe” moniker. Once they heard what it was, they agreed it sounded like a great idea. One woman mentioned the Independent Publishers of New England that is conceptually similar. I should look into them some more. She mentioned upcoming events I might consider.
After we packed up, we drove to Dirigible Brewing for dinner and a beer. The weather by then was perfect. Still cool, but sunny and pleasant for drive home.
I was excited to be offered a place on the program at Worldcon in Seattle, but recent events about Worldcon have left me in a quandary. I will probably still attend, but I’m dismayed and discouraged by what’s happening.
I first attended Worldcon in 2023. I applied to be a participant with little expectation of getting on the program, and was very surprised when I ended up with eight appearances. I applied again in 2024 and, expecting to be selected, made all of my arrangements to travel internationally to Glasgow. When I was not selected, I decided — at significant expense — to cancel all of my arrangements. So, when I applied for this year in Seattle, I wasn’t sure what to expect.
I filled out the interest form to be a participant in October. In January, I was very excited to be invited to be a participant. And, in early April, I had the opportunity to fill out the panel selection survey, to propose myself for particular roles. And then, just before May, the Worldcon Chair issued a statement, followed by an apology, and then a clarifying statement, about the use of ChatGPT, a generative AI Large Language Model (LLM) in the participant selection process, that included the actual ChatGPT prompt they used to investigate participants.
Basically, they tried to use ChatGPT to assess potential participants (who were identified by name to the system) for disqualifying attitudes, statements, and behaviors. The system collected information and provided it for review, along with an assessment of the suitability of each name.
The reaction of the speculative fiction community was swift and almost universally negative. A few people have tried to speak up for the organizers, but most expressed outrage. A number of prominent people have withdrawn as volunteers and participants. Or even pulled their works from consideration for awards.
Large Language Models are reviled in the writing community for many reasons: they have been unethically developed, frequently exhibit bias, and are known to “hallucinate” false information. Moreover, they represent an existential threat to the writing community if their corporate masters are allowed to profit from the unethical use of the source materials that were used to train them.
Others, with more expertise, have written about the shortcomings of using Generative AI in general, and ChatGPT in particular, for this purpose. Both the choice of tool and the nature of the prompt meant that the results would be potentially biased and untrustworthy.
Many people ran the prompt on their own name to see what their report looked like. Out of curiosity, I finally decided to do that too, to see what they would have found when they investigated me. The report about me was banal with no wildly incorrect information. (I could speculate at length about why, but the reasons aren’t really germane to this discussion.)
I have written about my grave concerns about the use of generative AI and that fact that I do not personally use “AI” for anything. I had previously never used ChatGPT. And I regret having given into my curiosity to use it now.
My overall reaction has been dismay. Worldcon was already going to be thinly attended due to the unsafe conditions traveling to — or even within — the United States for many people. Now, even more people are canceling their plans to attend for this unforced error.
My initial hope was that they would reject the work done by AI — the fruit of the poison tree — and redo the participant selection process — even it meant I risked being denied a spot on the program. But, unfortunately, they seem to have doubled-down on retaining the work done to date.
So, I’m left with a quandary. I don’t plan to take any immediate action. I don’t even know if I’ve been selected to appear on any panels. And I have other obligations to fulfill at Worldcon: My publisher has applied to sell books there — presumably including my forthcoming book. Furthermore, as Secretary of SFWA, I would like the opportunity to meet with and coordinate with my colleagues. But I’m left dismayed and discouraged. And deeply unsettled.
For a couple of years, I’ve been, off and on, working on a new book: The Ground Never Lies. It’s about a geomancer with an anger problem who has come to believe she is unloveable, but discovers a capacity for love she didn’t know she had.
As I wrote the story, I realized that I couldn’t tell the story with a single time line. I wrote the “present day” timeline first, and then went back and started writing an earlier timeline that explains how she has come to the conclusion that she is unloveable — and explains how she developed her other abilities and skills.
Now that these are both (mostly) written, I need to somehow marry them together. As a first step, I’ve begun to carefully separate the two narratives into individual scenes. As I’ve done this, I’ve had a surprising realization: I suck at writing “scenes.” I have a tendency to just write the story. Maybe if I had ever had any instruction in writing, someone might have explained that stories can have “structure” and you can use it “intentionally.” Oh, well. Live and learn.
Now that I’m doing it, it’s giving me new insight into how to organize each scene and give each a dramatic arc that leads naturally from one to the next. Fascinating! What an idea!
During the winter, I do all of my writing in my chilly, basement office. It’s a nice place to work. It’s brightly lit. I have a laptop and a portrait display. I have posters of my book covers surrounding me. It’s a great place to write! But all winter I can’t wait for spring to arrive, so I can emerge from my cave, set up my tent, and write out in my yard.
One of the first things we bought after we moved into our house was a picnic table. We put it in our front yard so it was convenient to the kitchen (there was no door into the backyard when we bought the house). And we also liked hanging out near the street so we could chat with neighbors as they walked by. Or use the table to meet with guests when they arrived.
It took on new importance during the pandemic when we could no longer invite people into our home. The table became the de facto place where I would meet with friends and colleagues to have a beer and talk. And, while for many people the pandemic is “over,” my chronic health issues mean that I still can’t meet with friends indoors or at restaurants or cafes (except outside).
Pretty soon after getting the table, however, we discovered a shortcoming: mosquitos. During the daytime, mosquitos were not too bad but, once the sun started to go down, the mosquitos made the table almost unusable. And, of course, even a light rainstorm was enough to chase us inside and leave the table too wet to sit on for hours.
One other hazard was our delightful sakura tree. Not the tree, itself, of course, but the flock of cedar waxwings that comes to gorge on its tiny, bitter cherries every year. After the birds “process” the cherries, they leave droppings everywhere and the table would be covered with them.
Our solution was to buy a tent for the yard that we could erect over the table. We tried several models that didn’t last very long but, eventually found a frame that was sturdy enough that we’ve had it for years. We have to replace the canopy and mosquito net every two or three years due to UV damage.
Last year, after a quarter century, the picnic table finally gave up the ghost. My wife and I discussed what to replace it with and I said I wanted to get a patio sectional sofa. She was skeptical. She said that we would need to get a patio to put it on! And I said, “Let’s do it!” So we hired our local handyman to do the work. He dug out a hole, packed sand at the bottom, and laid the patio blocks inside. Then I purchased the sectional sofa to sit on top. Boy, is it a wonderful place to work — when the weather’s nice.
I purchased the red izakaya lantern years ago. My innovation this winter was to buy a string of 75% off holiday lights after Christmas to clip around the frame. They really light up the tent and gives it a very festive atmosphere inside. My sister-in-law who saw the pictures said it looks like “glamping.”
Does it improve my productivity? Probably not. But it makes writing a whole lot more fun. And it’s an even better place to meet with small groups of friends and colleagues for a beer.
Writing takes both patience and persistence. Unfortunately, I’m rather lacking in both.
I want to be patient, but I am constantly chafing at the bit. But so much of writing is a waiting game. No matter how much you want to move quickly, there are limits all along the way, in writing, revising, and publishing.
I can only write so much at a time. I’ve known for a long time that my creative output is uneven. Some days, I can only write a few hundred words. Frequently, I find I need to find my way through a story by taking a break to turn things over in my mind before I can write productively again. But it’s hard to wait.
Revising requires leaving some time after writing before coming to look at the text again. If I try to revise something too soon, I can’t see the problems: I remember too clearly what I was trying to say and so I can’t see what I’m actually saying. But it’s hard to wait.
Publishing requires the most patience of all. Submitting work and waiting for a reply. Submitting work over and over again through rejections. And, when something is finally accepted, waiting while the work is edited, edited again, proofed, and then scheduled for release. It’s so hard to wait.
Through all the ups and downs you just have to keep going. The writing life is filled with disappointment. You constantly have to put yourself out there and, more often than not, there’s simply no reaction. Or you get get rejected. You submit manuscripts and they’re rejected. You offer a reading and nobody comes. You apply to appear at a convention and aren’t scheduled. You apply for a writing retreat and are passed over. The worst is when you just don’t hear anything. Sigh…
That said, now and then, all of the work really pays off. Recently, I took a few minutes to look at my very first book of haiku, Poŝtmarkoj el Esperantujo. Published in 2010, it’s fifteen years old now and it still holds up pretty well. All of the work it took to produce it has paid off for me in terms of having something that stands the test of time. I’m similarly proud of all of my books. If anything, they’ve just gotten better. Now if other people would just notice…
No matter. I can wait. I’ll just keep to my path writing and publishing books when I can.
One thing most people probably haven’t thought much about is the autonomy of so-called AIs. (Note: Large Language Models are not actually “intelligent” in the way people think of intelligence and people tend to project intelligence onto their behavior. But for the sake of convenience, I’ll call them AI anyway). Who actually controls AIs?
People assume that AIs are “trained” on “data” and then behave autonomously in response to the prompts they’re given. That’s sometimes true. But in many ways, their behavior is often secretly constrained. When Google’s photo recognition software mistakenly identified an African American as a gorilla, the company simply put in a hard limit so that the AI would never report recognizing anything as a gorilla. But none of this is visible to the end user. Most of the current AIs are probably full of hacks like these to prevent the AI from making common sense blunders that would get the company in trouble. But what other kinds of hacks might be in place?
If you’re a company producing an AI, there are all kinds of things you might wish your AI would do if used in particular circumstances. Or by particular people: your opponents, say. Or politicians. How irresistible will it be to corporations that make AIs to make them act in ways that benefit the corporation when given the opportunity? Anyone who knows corporations will know that it will be totally irresistible.
More importantly, when was the last time you heard of a corporation getting it’s network compromised. Yesterday? This morning? Ten minutes ago? It happens all the time. What happens when one of these AIs get compromised? How do you know the AIs you’ve been using up until now haven’t already been compromised?
Humans sometimes get compromised too. If someone gets kompromat on a person, like a pee tape for example, they might be able to get them to do nearly anything: even become a traitor to their country. And, of course, people are notoriously susceptible to inducements: e.g. money, sex, drugs. Or to become a mole or traitor for revenge. There are a bunch of huge differences between human treachery and a compromised AI. But one difference should give you pause.
We have deep experience with human treachery. We all know hundreds or thousands of examples of it throughout recorded history. There is legal precedent and volumes of case law for how to handle it. We have no experience with what happens when an AI gets compromised and begins to systematically undermine the agenda of the user. Who is responsible? Who decides? What’s the liability? Nobody knows.
Personally, I don’t use AI for anything. Not for important things. Not for unimportant things. Not for anything. That may seem like an extreme position. But I think that once many people begin to use AI, they’ll quickly become dependent on it and will find it much harder to recognize the subtle ways that AI — or whoever is actually controlling it — may be using them.
