FF#10 - Will AI Replace Authors? Learning is Like Popcorn, and How to Survive the Age of Post-Literacy
Friday Footnotes #10 - the weekly newsletter for parents who care about reading
Welcome to Friday Footnotes, a weekly newsletter from Storygram Parents. It’s even got pictures 🙌
Each week I touch on reading, parenting, motivation, children’s books, education, writers, and whatever else catches my attention. Enjoy!
Worth a read 💯
Breaking the format a little, I’m leading with this essential piece from
and , for . It’s a biggie, and couldn’t be more relevant to Storygram Parents.It’s called A Guide to Surviving the Age of Post-Literacy: How to raise (or become) a reader.
If you aren’t aware of Ruth and Peco, they produce consistently thorough, thoughtful, and practical articles, and this is no exception. (They also have a wonderful habit of finding lovely art that perfectly accompanies each piece).
Doomer Optimists
The opening gives ample evidence (much of which Storygram readers will be aware of) about the decline in literacy, reading enjoyment among children, and the general outlook for our kids. But rather than remain in a ‘doomer’ state, the post is a clarion call to do something about it:
While many will rightly continue to bemoan current trends, analysis of the problem won’t save us. We need to encourage literacy and a love of reading in our youth…
We can’t lay the responsibility for this task solely in the lap of institutions or corporations. The locus of control lies with each individual and within our homes.
(Emphasis added by me).
Summarising such a considered piece in what is supposed to be my short weekly newsletter is not really doable. So I’ll simply say this post is more like a resource. I’ll be coming back to it again and again for pointers and links and book recommendations.
They broadly cover:
Reading to your children
Teaching children the foundations of reading early, using phonics
Learning a wide vocabulary
Reading classic books
How to get started reading.
I will say, I was delighted to discover that as I reached the end of the article, Storygram got a mention! ❤️
Read the full article here.
This week’s footnotes 🧐
Here are this week’s footnotes1. Leave a comment with your take!
1. Will AI replace authors? 🖋️
This year, my wife and I started a new routine. Often on a Sunday evening, just as the Monday blues begin to kick in, we pop on a movie. Specifically, an Anime film2.
Why Anime? Partly because we want to be surprised. There’s beauty, mystery, strangeness, surprise, shock, and sometimes even horror. But rarely do the characters or plot move in a predictable direction.
But what does this have to do with AI authors?
Algorithmically suboptimal
Well, I suspect many Anime movies are algorithmically suboptimal. By which I mean studios or labels looking primarily to make sales might fight against the instincts of the creators which make these films what they are. (I understand this happens with studios already as producers get involved, and whole scripts get ripped up with marketing in mind. With data-led generative AI, just turn that concept up to 11).
For example, these films are mostly cartoons. They are often over two hours long. Every so often there is no dialogue throughout the entire film. Who is that designed for? Not the modern child, I suspect: when my wife and I watched the Lego movie, it was so overwhelming (a blizzard of colour and noise) that we both fell asleep!
AI authors will be directed by the ‘suits’ to produce works that hit all the right data points. I have no doubt they will do this effectively: well before AI came on the scene, Pixar had fine-tuned their story telling rules3 which have brought at least one grown man close to tears.
It is not so much about quality, then. And we know that AI can already convince users that it is intelligent, to devastating effect4.
The first generation without their own creative legacy
Where the quality comes from is another question. What marketing calls generative AI,
calls regurgitative AI, which seems closer to the mark. LLMs are fed the wealth of human creativity and experience, mash it up and spit it back. So this leads to the next concern: will this generation be the first without a legacy of creative works to hand to the next?The danger of writing for shareholders
Many authors only become recognised after their death5. That matters because some of the wealth of writing that ChatGPT stole (ahem, sorry, relies upon) wasn’t recognised for a long time. And if AI is concerned about anything, its the shareholders. It’s looking for immediacy, a return on investment, and market gains.
These are not friendly terms to the writer who is writing from their hard-won experience and from their soul.
If we allow writing to be dictated under such conditions, an echo chamber becomes unavoidable. But cultural ideas often flow from writing, and even those that are counter-cultural may become mainstream in decades to come.
The reader/writer connection
Let me wrap up with this. I believe there is a kind of spiritual connection between the reader and the author.
Even if you are a century apart, a thread exists between you when reading their words. You consider them, remember them, interrogate them in your mind. You wonder at their experiences. You might admire them, or even loathe them. But you cannot remain wholly neutral to the writer. Not so with AI. If you are aware of the machine-basis of the writing, a subtle but important link is removed between reader and writer.
For absolute clarity, as I aim to publish books with Storygram: we will not be allowing AI-written works to enter our catalog6.
Am I a luddite?
Can I ask a favour? 🙏
I’m so grateful to each of you for reading Storygram Parents.
As I try to raise awareness of this Substack, it helps very much if you could comment, share, or like our articles. It helps the algorithm to make good choices 😜
Perhaps you can think of one parent who might be interested to send the link to?
Here are a few buttons to make it easy! It only takes a moment:
Thank you so much. Onwards and upwards! 📖
2. Learning is like making popcorn 🍿
What did the amygdala say to the prefrontal cortex?
“You overthink everything!”
Parents are rightly concerned for the development of their children. When progress seems to halt, you might be inclined to leap in and fix things.
One encouragement for learners of all ages is this: growth is not linear. Put another way, you can be growing and yet see no improvement for a period of time.
How does that work? I suspect it’s to do with neuroplasticity - the growth and reorganisation of neural networks over time through repetition. But what I do know is that practicing consistently without seeing obvious improvement is an essential part of becoming a life-long, resilient learner. It’s an act of faith.
The initial stage of practicing any new task is accompanied by performance gains7. But as you continue, gains slow, and then pause. In weight lifting, you are advised to increase the load gradually to ensure that the muscles are under strain, even as they develop more strength.
I am not convinced that reading development is like weight lifting, though. I believe it’s more like making popcorn. With popcorn, you apply heat, and nothing much happens. You might hear faint signs of activity, but there will be a few minutes where you have to simply trust the process.
Then, you hear the first ‘pop’! Praise God for predictable scientific laws that result in tasty treats! One after another, the corn kernels reach a critical point of heat, and the metamorphosis from tooth traumatiser to salty snack is complete.
Guiding children towards consistent reading is the goal. Growth and progress will come, but are secondary to enjoyment, which has a far greater chance of producing life-long readers.
Quote of the week
We will soon need to read books for protection. We will need them for survival. We will seek them out because they offer an escape from the degraded digital domains, where duplicity is now dictated by the largest platforms with the richest owners.
Maybe some people think books are boring. But they just might change their minds when they’ve fully grasped what’s coming on their screens.
—
, The Glorious Future of the Book8That’s all for today. Have a wonderful weekend. And read a book! 😊
Graham
Footnotes: thoughts I’ve had, things I’ve read, or just about anything of interest that I felt worth making a little note of somewhere during the week.
Not that it matters, but we have begun a Blu-ray collection instead of streaming, which somehow makes it feel more like a special occasion.
Originally posted on Twitter by Emma Coats, the 22 rules of storytelling included one line, “Surprise yourself.” But does a machine have a self to surprise? 🧐
There is some nuance to this, especially as Apple and co are doing their utmost to shoehorn AI writing support into their OS. My opinion is that at no point should writers ever use AI to write prose. Spell check is fine. However, grammar and word/sentence structure suggestions should be offered by a human editor.
The Glorious Future of the Book (I like the subtitle: It’s still the best data centre of them all). Ted has over 250k subscribers on Substack, so he’s not exactly a niche thinker, though his insights are always fascinating.