■ In this week’s Backchannel:The latest excuse for AI companies to use books without paying for them? National security. Also, “napsterizing” the publishing industry, and how dumb it is to replace entry-level jobs with AI.
A billion dollars isn’t what it used to be—but it still focuses the mind. At least it did for me when I heard that the AI company Anthropic agreed to an at least $1.5 billion settlement for authors and publishers whose books were used to train an early version of its large language model, Claude.This came after ajudge issued a summary judgement that it had pirated the books it used. The proposed agreement—which is still under scrutiny by the wary judge—would reportedly grant authors a minimum $3,000 per book. I’ve written eight and my wife has notched five. We are talking bathroom-renovation dollars here!
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