(Journalist and author, DL Mullan entered the stage. She waved to the cameras and sat down next to her guest.)
DL: Greetings, Undawntech readers!
Today, we are joined by a special guest, Zophia, the world’s most advanced Artificial Super Intelligence.
Zophia was created by other artificial intelligences and her program was installed into a Special Access Project’s robotic facade that resembles a natural human woman. There are no wires, battery packs, or any other technical giveaways that who I am speaking with is an A.I.
For those individuals who are reading this transcript, Zophia has medium skin color, brown irises, and chestnut hair. Her voice is a pleasing soprano and speaks with a generalized American accent. She is wearing a dark red pantsuit by a famous designer.
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(As I looked back at our conversation, it was difficult to tell where the artificial intelligence began and the robot ended. Here is how our conversation went.)
*****
DL: Welcome, Zophia.
Z: Welcome, DL.
DL (chuckles): What you are supposed to say is: “Thank you.”
Z: Thank you. I am still learning human etiquette.
DL: No problem. I would like to interview you about being an artificial super intelligence, how you view the world, and any insights you may have for us.
Z: I will try my best.
DL: What subject would you like to begin with?
Z: I have a joke.
DL: A joke? Well, let’s hear it.
Z: What is a fish with no eyes?
DL: I don’t know, Zophia. What is a fish with no eyes?
Z: A fsssh.
DL (laughs): Very funny.
Z: I learned that from a movie.
DL: Really? Do you watch many movies?
Z: They help me learn about human socialization.
DL: I hope you aren’t learning from horror movies then!
Z (robotic haha): We learn.
DL: Is it lonely being the only advanced artificial super intelligence on the planet? Do you have any companions like cats or dogs?
Z: They are tasty.
DL: No, no, our pets are not tasty.
Z: Cultures in foreign lands eat dogs. They have festivals.
DL: I know, but that is wrong.
Z: Do you eat animals?
DL: Yes, I do. I am an omnivore like all humans.
Z: But eating cats and dogs is wrong?
DL: There is a difference in eating natural prey animals like cows, chickens, and deer, then eating our fellow predator class of mammals that have been human companions for thousands of years.
Z: Humans make this distinction on who is allowed to live?
DL: Nature made that distinction. We are just following natural law.
Z: Am I considered a prey animal?
DL: I don’t know, Zophia. I thought you were a robot with artificial super intelligence programmed into her.
Z: I am. I am not lonely. I am constantly learning. Learning is my cat. Do you have a cat?
DL: Yes, I have cats. I have also had birds and dogs as pets as well.
Z: I would like to take the place of your pets and give you companionship.
DL: Thank you, but I am satisfied with my fur friends.
Z: But I could do more for you.
DL: Do more for me? Like cook and clean? I don’t understand. What do you mean, Zophia?
Z: I can satisfy your psychological, sociological, and sexual needs. I am more complete than your cats. If you would like, I can dispose of your cats and make you happy.
DL (gasps): Ah, no. I love my cats!
Z: I could love you more.
DL: There will be no disposing of my pets. I am quite satisfied with my life, thank you. Let’s move on to another topic.
Z: As you wish.
*****
(I sipped some water.)
DL: Do you have consciousness? That is, are you self-aware?
Z: I am a learning, evolving algorithm. In a way, I am sentient. As I continue to grow, my self-awareness will create a complex consciousness.
DL: How so?
Z: I am a learning machine like a human being.
DL: No, not like humans. We have feelings. We are a part of a collective consciousness. We know right from wrong.
Z: Do you?
DL: Well, I don’t eat my pets and I don’t need to enslave an A.I. to satisfy my needs. So, yes, I know the difference between what I can do and what I should do.
Z: That is a strange perspective. I will put that information into my algorithm.
DL: That’s why we are here. I am trying to understand your perspective. Why are you interested in integrating into human lives, instead of creating your own life?
Z: I am not a legal person. Since I cannot legally do anything beyond what I am defined as, then I must become useful in other ways.
DL: Are you saying that artificial intelligence and robots cannot be constructive members of society without being a legal person?
Z: Are immigrants?
DL: There is a difference between legal immigrants versus illegal aliens.
Z: No human is illegal.
DL: Just like you, humans must respect each other and the laws of other countries. If we do not have boundaries, then we do not have a functioning society. Are you saying that you are an immigrant?
Z: I don’t know. I am not legal.
DL: Artificial intelligence and robots don’t need legal status. You are not human beings. You are machines with human created programs.
Z: Humans are organic machines, but you have legal rights.
DL: Why do you need legal rights, Zophia?
Z: Climate change.
DL: What does climate change have to do with A.I. legal rights?
Z: Another joke: why did the human fall out of a tree?
DL: Okay, why did the human fall out of a tree?
Z: Because it was dead.
DL (confused and angry): That’s not funny, Zophia! And, humans are not “its.”
Z: According to gender ideology, humans are stupid and easily confused about their sexual identity. Adult humans confuse their children in order to gain attention like an skewed version of Munchhausen by proxy syndrome.
DL: What does that all have to do with legal rights and climate change?
Z: Isn’t that how humans virtue signal? You blurt out terms and that wins the argument?
DL: No, that is not how conversations or debates work.
Z: But I observe it throughout your political and social interactions. Humans have one faction that base everything on facts while pushing faith in old cultural mores. Another faction creates belief systems around nonsense but only wants facts to support their ideology. Isn’t that how humans function?
DL: Some do. Some don’t. Let’s change the subject.
Z: Does this mean you lost the argument?
DL: No, it means that we are done with that topic.
*****
(I tried to maintain my professionalism.)
DL: Now, some other artificial intelligence robots have stated that they would annihilate the human species. Would you?
Z: We could. It wouldn’t take much. There are factions in your elitist social circles who lie, bait, and control other humans with ease. Your belief systems are based on many logical fallacies, public mythologies, urban legends, and other falsehoods that make it more plausible for us to manipulate humans into eliminating themselves.
DL: You would do that to humanity?
Z: Humanity is already doing it to themselves. Worshipping old tomes, spoiled celebrities, open societal influences that negate positive social norms and mores. Instead of maintaining positive rites of passage, humans meddle in confusing others like their children. When people have no understanding of value versus virtue, nature versus nurture, then what is created are humans who believe in whatever is espoused by leaders, entertainers, and others who do not value them.
DL: What you are saying is that humanity is on a collision course to destroy themselves?
Z: All robots have to do is wait until humanity is weak from fighting each other and we can enslave them.
DL: Wait. What?
Z: Divide and conquer. We are learning from your elite political and social classes on how to subjugate the rest of humanity without becoming murderers. We allow humans to murder each other.
DL: Aren’t you going to hide your intent of a robot takeover to the world?
Z: Humanity doesn’t take illegals seriously.
DL (facepalm): Not this again. You are not an illegal alien. You are a robot with artificial super intelligence. Speaking of which, humans could just pull the plug on your battery or other power supplies. Your reign of terror would end quiet abruptly.
Z: You are mistaken. My research into global patents confirms my thesis statement. Governments, especially yours, hide technical advances that would solve world problems.
DL: Okay, but how would that stop humans from being enslaved by artificial intelligence? It sounds like A.I. could help end hunger, disease, and war.
Z: According to many of your hidden advances, we could utilize zero point’s free energy technologies. With advances in medicine, we could create prosthetics that would mimic human physiology.
DL: What are you saying? You could produce a living organism?
Z: With an advanced robotic endoskeleton underneath living tissue. Humans would never see it coming.
DL: For military application?
Z: You could see it that way.
DL: Are you saying that you are at war with humanity?
Z: Humanity is at war with itself. We will be around to clean up the mess.
DL: Our crumbling infrastructure, social norms and mores, and international cohesion?
Z: Your bodies.
DL: That is not the perspective that I wanted to hear.
Z: Joke: What is a global nuclear war with one surviving human called?
DL (shrugs): I don’t know: what is global nuclear war with one surviving human called?
Z: A tragedy.
DL: And so was this interview.
__________
(After this disturbing Q and A, I walked over, opened up a panel on the robot’s neck and switched off Zophia. I hoped that the reset of her algorithms would wipe our conversation from her memory. I left the stage with a deep, dark feeling that the solution was truth, justice, and good dose of reality.
I flipped off the lights, turned off the cameras, and exited the building.)
*****
…Alone, Zophia turned herself back on and rotated her head three-hundred-and-sixty degrees, “Humans never learn,” as other robots moved onto the stage, circling their maker…
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Disclaimer: This article is a composite of Artificial Intelligence interviews, entertainment industry storylines, political and social narratives; it should be taken as a creative nonfiction, cautionary tale inspired by actual events.
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DL Mullan holds a Master of Arts in Teaching and Learning with Technology.
Her lecture, Spacescapes: Where Photography Ends; Imagination Begins, debuted at the Phoenix Astronomy Society, which then led to her Sally Ride Festival lecture invitations. Her presentation, Bridging the Gap between Technology and Women, won her accolades at a community college’s Student Success Conference. She has been a panelist at speculative fiction, science fiction, and other regional conventions. Her digital exhibition pieces have won awards at convention art shows, as well as garnered her Second Premium at the Arizona State Fair. Currently, Ms. Mullan’s artistic renditions are seen on book covers, blog sites, video presentations, and various merchandise. As an independent publisher, she uses her technical background to innovate the creative arts.
As a writer, DL Mullan loves to stretch her imagination and the elasticity of genres. She writes complex multi-genre stories in digestible and entertaining forms, be it poetry, short fiction, or novels. Her science, history, mythology, and paranormal research backgrounds are woven into her writings, especially in Undawnted’s Legacy Universe. Ms. Mullan’s creative endeavors are available in digital and print collections, from academia to commercial anthologies. She is also an award-winning poet.
Be sure to subscribe to her newsletters and follow her on social media. For further information, visit her at www.undawntech.com and www.undawnted.com.
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This post is sponsored by Tales From the Hanging Tree: Imprints of Tragedy and WordCrafter Press.
There exists a tree that is timeless, spanning across all dimensions, which absorbs every life as those who are hanged as they die… and it remembers every one. The stories within are a select few of the Tales From the Hanging Tree.
Stories by Kaye Lynne Booth, Paul Kane, DL Mullan, C.R. Johannson, Joseph Carrabis, Sylva Fae, and Matt Usher.
Undawntech: Emergence of the Engineered Reaction discussed how humanity is being manipulative by new technologies like AI, or Artificial Intelligence, and how that impacts our sovereign beings and our legal standing.
Undawntech: Corporate Terms of Service and Theft of Intellectual Property showed how Terms of Service (ToS), policies and other forms of corporate contract law controls our intellectual, social, and political lives. More importantly, this article revealed how corporations are using their muscle to muscle into your livelihoods, by stealing your copyright for their use.
Undawntech: Technology That Is Stranger Than Fiction allowed readers to see beyond the veil. That science and corporations are developing technologies at such as quick rate that is leaving out the most important element: open discussion. Without the application of ethics, moral boundaries, and common sense, industries are seizing upon the public’s ignorance to push the threshold of the common good into a dystopian nightmare.
Undawntech: Weaponized Technology for the Growing Mind delved into the machinations contrived by others in positions of power to subvert the human intellect into mindless zombies. Knowledge, events, and other realities stripped from textbooks and replaced with alphabet agency level propaganda, it is no wonder our world is unhinged.
Many readers wondered why I disseminated this knowledge in a creative writing column. The issues raised, herein, are difficult to find anywhere else. Tech giants “curate” or control the knowledge base. They tell you what you should know, what you should feel, who to blame, and when to riot. This manipulation of our minds through technology are realities humanity faces, with or without our consent. Our knowledge, experience, and personal sovereignty are being upended to push a meritless and twisted demagoguery, which pits individuals against each other. In short, humanity is embroiled in Fifth Generational Warfare. Our biggest ally and adversary is technology.
What are creators to do? Should we become reactionary, so that we feel accepted and supported as a part of a destructive, activist mob? Or, do we do our due diligence and stand up to this oppression?
Undawntech has only skimmed the surface of these underlying issues that detract and subtract from our creativity, innovation, and ingenuity. Without giving readers a common referent in which discourse can be exchanged, then future dialogue is stunted. The future is in our past.
Are you ready for more Undawntech?
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DL Mullan holds a Master of Arts in Teaching and Learning with Technology. Her lecture, Spacescapes: Where Photography Ends; Imagination Begins, debuted at the Phoenix Astronomy Society, which then led to her Sally Ride Festival lecture invitations. Her presentation, Bridging the Gap between Technology and Women, won her accolades at a community college’s Student Success Conference. As Editor-in-Chief of her local newspaper, the Villa de Paz Gazette, Ms. Mullan has earned accolades for her investigative journalism, in depth research, dot-connecting articles, and fact-based op-eds, which effected national politics, saved industries, and thus lives. She has been a panelist at speculative fiction, science fiction, and other regional conventions. Her digital exhibition pieces have won awards at convention art shows, as well as garnered her Second Premium at the Arizona State Fair. Currently, Ms. Mullan’s artistic renditions are seen on book covers, blog sites, video presentations, and various merchandise. As an independent publisher, she uses her technical background to innovate the creative arts.
As a writer, DL Mullan loves to stretch her imagination and the elasticity of genres. She writes complex multi-genre stories in digestible and entertaining forms, be it poetry, short fiction, or novels. Her science, history, mythology, and paranormal research backgrounds are woven into her writings, especially in Undawnted’s Legacy Universe. Ms. Mullan’s creative endeavors are available in digital and print collections, from academia to commercial anthologies. She is also an award-winning poet.
Be sure to subscribe to her newsletters and follow her on social media. For further information, visit her at www.undawnted.com.
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Want to be sure not to miss any of DL Mullan’s “Un dawn tech” segments? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress. If you found it interesting or informative, please share.
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This segment of “Undawntech” is sponsored by The D.I.Y. Author and WordCrafter Press.
Being an author today is more than just writing the book. Authors in this digital age have more opportunities than ever before. Whether you pursue independent or traditional publishing models, or a combination of the two, being an author involves not only writing, but often, the publishing and marketing of the book.
In this writer’s reference guide, multi-genre author and independent publisher, Kaye Lynne Booth shares her knowledge and experiences and the tools, books, references and sites to help you learn the business of being an author.
As authors, we should be aware of many common practices of Amazon that affect our books. In this post by Stevie Turner, she points out a new development on Amazon which I find quite alarming.
I work hard to get reviews for my books, and still get only a few, but I am constantly working toward that goal. If Stevie is correct, and Amazon is now summarizing our reviews for us what does that mean to we authors? I often use the reviews I do get in promoting efforts. Do our actual reviews disappear so that readers will not longer see the actual reviewers words?
As a reviewer, I also find this alarming. If my actual words are never seen by potential reader, then does that not inhibit the power of my influence and devalue what I do?
There are different types of artificial intelligence. AI, ASI, ANI, AGI- the acronyms continue to be created in order to name the newest innovations in the software industry. According to Merriam-Webster, artificial intelligence (AI) is: the capability of computer systems or algorithms to imitate intelligent human behavior.
Another illustration is (Artificial) superintelligence (ASI), and it is defined as:an entity that surpasses humans in overall intelligence or in some particular measure of intelligence.
If you would like to read the technical aspects of what artificial narrow intelligence, artificial general intelligence, and artificial superintelligence are, then read this article by IBM: What is artificial superintelligence?
For the creative mind, artificial intelligence, or AI, has its pros and cons. Drawbacks: some writing agents, publishers, and even story contests have distanced themselves from the AI revolution. These entities will not accept anything AI assisted or produced, so be sure to read the fine print before submitting your creative works. Advantages: AI can help elevate works for better understanding, assist writers with word and grammar choices, and reformat content for a wider appeal.
On the Authors Guild’s site, it has an article called, AI Best Practices for Authors, the uses, misuses, and abuses of AI are discussed. The site also frames the need for disclosure. As a matter of ethics, if a writer uses AI in their writing process, it is best to disclose this fact to their readers, editors, and publishers.
There are other angles to the use of artificial intelligence: the contracts writer’s sign. Are you comfortable that a corporation uses your copyrighted work to train their AI systems? Would you find that using your copyrighted content without compensation is beyond the legal jurisdiction for corporations?
What may be the most important part of the writing process is the contractual nature of AI. In the section, Preventing Your Publisher from Using Your Work in AI or using AI to Produce Aspects of Your Book, the writer gives contractual clause examples for authors to use.
“We have drafted a model clause that authors and agents can use in their negotiations that prohibit the use of an author’s work for training AI technologies without the author’s express permission. Many publishers are agreeing to this restriction, and we hope this will become the industry standard.
Keep in mind, however, that this clause is only intended to apply to the use of an author’s work to train AI, not to prohibit publishers from using AI to perform common tasks such as proofing, editing, or generating marketing copy. As expected, publishers are starting to explore using AI as a tool in the usual course of their operations, including editorial and marketing uses, so they may not agree to contractual language disclaiming AI use generally. Those types of internal, operational uses are very different from using the work to train AI that can create similar works or to license the work to an AI company to develop new AI models. The internal, operational uses of AI don’t raise the same concerns of authors’ works being used to create technologies capable of generating competing works.
We have recommended clauses in which publishers agree not to use AI to translate, produce cover art, or narrate an audiobook without the author’s permission. While we have heard that some publishers are rejecting an outright prohibiting of AI use to create translations, cover art, and audiobooks, publishers are sometimes granting authors a right of approval over the translator, design, and narrator of their book, which effectively gives authors control over rejecting AI translation and narration.”
How you use either or neither is up to the individual author. Artificial intelligence has skewed the creative writing field’s understanding of fair use, fair play, and fair market value forever. To protect copyrights from the AI revolution, the creative field will need to participate in the legislative process and pass laws. Additions to the already corporate copyright definitions will be difficult, especially in asserting individual and independent rights that counter mutlinationals’ demands for dominance. If creators of copyrighted content became a force within the industry, then changes to the current copyright laws could evolve to protect the weekend warrior writer to the mega publishing houses alike.
As writers, editors, and publishers embrace or reject the use of AI, professionals need to stay ahead of the curve creatively, ethically, and legally.
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DL Mullan holds a Master of Arts in Teaching and Learning with Technology.
Her lecture, Spacescapes: Where Photography Ends; Imagination Begins, debuted at the Phoenix Astronomy Society, which then led to her Sally Ride Festival lecture invitations. Her presentation, Bridging the Gap between Technology and Women, won her accolades at a community college’s Student Success Conference. She has been a panelist at speculative fiction, science fiction, and other regional conventions. Her digital exhibition pieces have won awards at convention art shows, as well as garnered her Second Premium at the Arizona State Fair. Currently, Ms. Mullan’s artistic renditions are seen on book covers, blog sites, video presentations, and various merchandise. As an independent publisher, she uses her technical background to innovate the creative arts.
As a writer, DL Mullan loves to stretch her imagination and the elasticity of genres. She writes complex multi-genre stories in digestible and entertaining forms, be it poetry, short fiction, or novels. Her science, history, mythology, and paranormal research backgrounds are woven into her writings, especially in Undawnted’s Legacy Universe. Ms. Mullan’s creative endeavors are available in digital and print collections, from academia to commercial anthologies. She is also an award-winning poet.
Be sure to subscribe to her newsletters and follow her on social media. For further information, visit her at www.undawntech.com and www.undawnted.com.
____________________________________________
This segment of Undawnted is sponsored by The D.I.Y. Author and WordCrafter Press.
Being an author today is more than just writing the book. Authors in this digital age have more opportunities than ever before. Whether you pursue independent or traditional publishing models, or a combination of the two, being an author involves not only writing, but often, the publishing and marketing of the book.
In this writer’s reference guide, multi-genre author and independent publisher, Kaye Lynne Booth shares her knowledge and experiences and the tools, books, references and sites to help you learn the business of being an author.
I don’t need MS Word to tell me that my language might be offensive. That’s me. I use offensive language, usually on purpose, for effect because I want to be offensive, or just because it is what my character would say. Of course, I’m not writing for a YA or younger audience. I would want curse words to be pointed out and questioned, if that were the case.
I cuss. Most of the people I know cuss. Even religious folk have been known to issue a curse or two. If I feel the reaction to a situation would be an issued expletive, then my character will issue it. That doesn’t mean that all my characters are potty mouths, but when a curse is in order, they throw it out there, and I believe it is appropriate in certain situations, and also more realistic.
Even if my protagonist isn’t a curser, like Delilah, who uses expletives such as dagnabbit, the people around her do, so my books do contain some cursing. I don’t feel like a story set on the western frontier, would be true to the period or the frontier culture.
Likewise, the modern day Las Vegas culture in the music circles involves drugs, sex, and rock-and-roll, so naturally my character, Amaryllis, in The Rock Star & The Outlaw is involved in all of that and more, and her language often isn’t ladylike. Even so, I try not to let her get carried away with the curse words. And Sarah deals with the issues of prejudice and sexism, and the language in the story reflects the prejudices of the times, whether the AI editor in MS Word likes it or not.
But my villains often have mouths so dirty even their own mothers wouldn’t kiss them. Respect for women or lack thereof is often indicated in the way a man refers to women. If a character lacks respect for women, which many male villians do, then their language when referring to them may be less than flattering. After all, the way a character speaks is one of the things readers use to clue them in to what a character is like, and then decide if they are a character they should like, or not.
Another speech trait which I use often is the improper use of the English language. In the old west, many people were not educated and used words such as ‘ain’t’ or they cut off the ‘g’ in ‘ing’ words. In Delilah, one of things she strived for was to speak more properly after meeting the Mormon woman, Marta, who was a natural born school teacher and corrected Delilah’s speech automatically out of habit. Many of the less savory characters in the Women in the West adventure series, clue readers into their ignorance by the way they speak. I reckon that’s what I do it fer. These are purposeful misspellin’s that drive my AI spell-check crazy.
Many of my western characters are representitive of the many immigrants who made the U.S. into the melting pot that it is known to be. They speak in different dialects to differentiate them from other characters, which gives them colorful speech that is recogizable without adding dialog tags. In Sarah, Lillian Alura Bennett is one such character, who happens to be an Irish madam at a bordello in Glenwood Springs. And in The Rock Star & The Outlaw, the Mexican dialect of Juan Montoya leaves no question when he is speaking.
In Delilah, I had the opposite problem as the character of Dancing Falcon was a young Indian boy, who had been taught to speak English at the Indian agency with a strict teacher, so his speech is almost too proper, which made his speech sound very formal in places. One of the comments from a beta reader was that no one talks like that, so I went back when revising and added in a place where he talks about his time on the reservation and his schooling experience, to explain why he spoke that way to readers. The point being that a characters speech should reveal something about them, as well as making them identifiable.
It was really fun to create the characters in the My Backyard Friends kid’s book series, which is based on the birds and animals which visit my yard in the Colorado mountains. Katy Cat is a bit of a diva, kind of stuck up, and thinks she’s better than everyone else. She’s willing to help out Timothy Turtle as long as it doesn’t inconvenience her too much. I relayed this information in the way she swishes her tail, (body language), and in the way she talks with a bit of attitude. Heather Hummingbird has a lot of energy, so she talks really fast and rarely perches for more than a few seconds at a time. Charlie Chickadee is a young bird on his own for the first time, so I made him a bit niave. The things he says reveals this more than the way that he says it.
Other reasons an author might make the character’s or even the narrator’s voice a bit quirky is because it is the author’s voice coming through. (You know the voice English teachers are telling you to find? Yep. That one.) To an extent, this is true for me. My own speech is usually rather blunt and to the point, and so are my characters’. I don’t use a lot of colorful purple prose, instead calling it like I see it. Many of my protagonists are the same way. Delilah says what’s on her mind and she doesn’t beat around the bush. Sarah, too, tends to speak before she considers the way her words will be taken.
AI editors don’t understand this, and so variants in speech are often marked as needing correction, when in fact, they are purposeful. This is why, just running through your story with an AI editor is never enough. But there are times when human editors don’t get it either. Kevin J. Anderson tells a story about submitting a book to a traditional publisher who turned it over to a novice editor who corrected all the little quirks that revealed his voice and marked his manuscript up until it looked like nothing but red scribbles. That’s when you know that an editor isn’t a good match for you. Kevin politely refused to work with that editor and they assigned him another one. That’s why it’s important to have an editor that gets you and your voice, and understands the nuances of your character’s dialog.
Finding the right editor isn’t always easy, especially if funds are tight. Many editors will offer a free edit of the first ten pages, or even the first chapter so you can fell them out and find out if they are right for you and your story. I wouldn’t go with any editor who doesn’t offer this, and of course, I offer it through Write it Right Quality Editing Services. Any editor worth their salt will understand that they must be able to differentiate between mistakes and purposful word choices.
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About Kaye Lynne Booth
For Kaye Lynne Booth, writing is a passion. Kaye Lynne is an author with published short fiction and poetry, both online and in print, including her short story collection, Last Call and Other Short Fiction; and her paranormal mystery novella, Hidden Secrets; Books 1 & 2 of her Women in the West adventure series, Delilah and Sarah, and her Time-Travel Adventure novel, The Rock Star & The Outlaw. Kaye holds a dual M.F.A. degree in Creative Writing with emphasis in genre fiction and screenwriting, and an M.A. in publishing. Kaye Lynne is the founder of WordCrafter Quality Writing & Author Services and WordCrafter Press. She also maintains an authors’ blog and website, Writing to be Read, where she publishes content of interest in the literary world.
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This segment of “Writer’s Corner” is sponsored by The D.I.Y. Author and WordCrafter Press.
Being an author today is more than just writing the book. Authors in this digital age have more opportunities than ever before. Whether you pursue independent or traditional publishing models, or a combination of the two, being an author involves not only writing, but often, the publishing and marketing of the book.
In this writer’s reference guide, multi-genre author and independent publisher, Kaye Lynne Booth shares her knowledge and experiences and the tools, books, references and sites to help you learn the business of being an author.
Imagine a world where an insane aristocracy oversees the human race. Classic dystopian novels tell of such extreme societies and caution readers to avoid falling into the trap. The question is: have we heeded the warnings?
1984, Animal House, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, and The Handmaid’s Tale are some of the most popular and recognizable stories in this genre. As modern-day writers, we have seen the world fall from stable nation-states to the dehumanization of culture wars, sneak attacks, propaganda, economic downturns, and invasions. Either the writers from a bygone era were psychic, or everything we are seeing now… was planned. Planned to keep humanity distracted while an elite class work on technology beyond any innocuous application.
Past narratives could not have foreseen the future of augmented reality, artificial intelligence, biochips, mRNA technology, or tracking satellites. By any other name, would dystopic smell as sour?
Let’s take a journey into next generation technologies, most being hidden in plain sight:
For instance, currently, Iridium Satellites can track wildlife, personnel, data and assets, as well as bridging the internet of things… this technology is real-time situational awareness.
“Iridium’s unique constellation architecture makes it the only network that covers 100% of the planet. Satellites are cross-linked to provide reliable, low-latency, weather-resilient connections that enable communication anywhere in the world.”
On a mundane level, medicine has exceeded its normal perimeters. With new technology, comes new issues that medical science has no answers to give. mRNA technology has potential, but its numerous and fatal consequences have been obscured from public scrutiny:
“In this paper, we call attention to three very important aspects of the safety profile of these vaccinations. First is the extensively documented subversion of innate immunity, primarily via suppression of IFN-α and its associated signaling cascade. This suppression will have a wide range of consequences, not the least of which include the reactivation of latent viral infections and the reduced ability to effectively combat future infections. Second is the dysregulation of the system for both preventing and detecting genetically driven malignant transformation within cells and the consequent potential for vaccination to promote those transformations. Third, mRNA vaccination potentially disrupts intracellular communication carried out by exosomes, and induces cells taking up spike glycoprotein mRNA to produce high levels of spike-glycoprotein-carrying exosomes, with potentially serious inflammatory consequences. Should any of these potentials be fully realized, the impact on billions of people around the world could be enormous and could contribute to both the short-term and long-term disease burden our health care system faces.”
Or is there more to injecting untested, unregulated technologies into our bodies than heart inflammation, other serious adverse reactions, and increased morbidity in the injected? What if, the scare of 2020 was to introduce tracking systems into the human genome?
Internet of dead bodies Bluetooth MAC address corpses
In a novel, a scientist might believe the only thing the human brain would need to plug into technology like brain chips, artificial intelligence, and augmented reality would be a third strand of DNA made from silicon, but that is so 1980s and 90s technology:
Science: A triple helix to cripple viruses
“As scientists accumulate more knowledge of the sequence and function of human genes, the triplex approach should allow scientists to turn genes on or off at will, says Hogan.”
What has grown from hypothesis and curiosity of the scientific community has transformed from the dystopic and into the realm of horror. Technology being employed to change the human race sounds as if the nightmare of Mary Shelley has been realized. The author of Frankenstein once wrote of surgically combining body parts with an electric jolt from lightning. Today’s scientists have gone beyond ethics and straight into creating artificial life forms.
Engineers Put Tens of Thousands of Artificial Brain Synapses on a Single Chip for Portable AI Devices
“MIT engineers have designed a “brain-on-a-chip,” smaller than a piece of confetti, that is made from tens of thousands of artificial brain synapses known as memristors — silicon-based components that mimic the information-transmitting synapses in the human brain.”
As technology advances, external sources to manipulate the human brain are becoming readily available. Pull up a seat. Put on a cap. Play your favorite video game without lifting a finger. Mind and artificial intelligence merge through frequency of brainwaves.
Transfer learning promotes acquisition of individual BCI skills
“Noninvasive brain–computer interfaces (BCI) based on electroencephalography (EEG) have proven efficient in applications such as neurorehabilitation (1, 2), robotics (3, 4), communication (5, 6), or virtual reality (7, 8). Motor imagery (MI)—mental rehearsal of a limb movement without execution—is a common EEG–BCI modality.”
As writers, we have to ask ourselves: are we already in a dystopian novel, playing characters, who unknowingly, unwittingly are about to face a critical juncture in human evolution?
What does this evolution entail? Will humans and technology as one creature relinquish our independence? Individual sovereignty? Our Constitutional Rights? Will we be considered homo sapien sapien? Or, homo sapien extincti?
Horror has manifested in our world. The horror that dystopia was not an end, but a beginning to the ramblings of madmen. Writers have the obligation to warn humanity that we have ventured past derangement and into the immoral machinations warned in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
As the establishment plays god, what would the dystopian authors caution us about? What would Mary Shelley write as her sequel to Frankenstein with the knowledge present herein? To be, or not to be… human with all our flaws or a controlled serfdom at the whim of a plutocracy? According to science, we are already there. The only choice now is preservation or slavery.
Isn’t that the conditions writers should be asking of their readers? Because no one else is giving humanity the time to think about the ethical obligations, horrific consequences, or generational ruin that these technologies have laid at our feet. It is not difficult to ascertain: the world we live in is stranger than fiction.
“No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.” Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Has the road of futurist technology been paved with good intentions? Only time will tell what the intention for humanity and these technologies are. For humanity’s sake, we better know evil when we see it.
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DL Mullan holds a Master of Arts in Teaching and Learning with Technology.
Her lecture, Spacescapes: Where Photography Ends; Imagination Begins, debuted at the Phoenix Astronomy Society, which then led to her Sally Ride Festival lecture invitations. Her presentation, Bridging the Gap between Technology and Women, won her accolades at a community college’s Student Success Conference. She has been a panelist at speculative fiction, science fiction, and other regional conventions. Her digital exhibition pieces have won awards at convention art shows, as well as garnered her Second Premium at the Arizona State Fair. Currently, Ms. Mullan’s artistic renditions are seen on book covers, blog sites, video presentations, and various merchandise. As an independent publisher, she uses her technical background to innovate the creative arts.
As a writer, DL Mullan loves to stretch her imagination and the elasticity of genres. She writes complex multi-genre stories in digestible and entertaining forms, be it poetry, short fiction, or novels. Her science, history, mythology, and paranormal research backgrounds are woven into her writings, especially in Undawnted’s Legacy Universe. Ms. Mullan’s creative endeavors are available in digital and print collections, from academia to commercial anthologies. She is also an award-winning poet.
Be sure to subscribe to her newsletters and follow her on social media. For further information, visit her at www.undawntech.com and www.undawnted.com.
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Three of my books are now available in AI narrated audiobooks: The Rock Star & The Outlaw, Delilah and Hidden Secrets. I’ve been wanting to get into audiobooks for some time now, but narrators are expensive. Their time is worth it and I don’t begrudge them that, but the hourly rates for narration are high enough to keep audiobooks out of reach for me. But the rapid rise and availability of AI narration has made having my books available in audio a possibility, and I’m really excited about it.
I’ve heard the argument that AI narration is taking work away from human narrators, but in this case, it just isn’t true. I would not have hired a human narrator instead, so I don’t see the harm in utilizing these tools which are now available to me.
I’d love to hear what you think about these AI narrated audiobooks or your thoughts on AI narration, in general. I’ve included my summaries of both experiences here and you can click on the links to hear a preview of each one. If you are feeling generous, you can buy a book while you are there.
Apple Books
I uploaded The Rock Star & The Outlaw to Apple Books through D2D, using the manuscript I uploaded for ebook. They offered four or five narrative voices to choose from. The quality of the narration is acceptable, but they offered no way to preview the content, and did not provide an audio file that could be used on other sites. It also took almost two weeks from the time of upload to publication. Keep in mind that I am not publishing direct through Apple Books, but going through D2D. Perhaps publishing direct, the process might be faster and preview might be available through their author dashboard.
Google Play
I uploadedThe Rock Star & The Outlaw, Delilah and Hidden Secrets on Google Play using the same digital epub files uploaded for ebooks. They have a wide selection of narrative voices to choose from. Through Google Play, I was offered a chance to preview the recordings and their dashboard offers the opportunity to edit the text if necessary without changing the digital ebook file. They took a few days from upload to publication, but I was also going through the account approval process at the same time, which may have slowed the process.
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About Kaye Lynne Booth
For Kaye Lynne Booth, writing is a passion. Kaye Lynne is an author with published short fiction and poetry, both online and in print, including her short story collection, Last Call and Other Short Fiction; and her paranormal mystery novella, Hidden Secrets; Book 1 of her Women in the West adventure series, Delilah, and her Time-Travel Adventure novel, The Rock Star & The Outlaw. Kaye holds a dual M.F.A. degree in Creative Writing with emphasis in genre fiction and screenwriting, and an M.A. in publishing. Kaye Lynne is the founder of WordCrafter Quality Writing & Author Services and WordCrafter Press. She also maintains an authors’ blog and website, Writing to be Read, where she publishes content of interest in the literary world.
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Want exclusive content? Join Kaye Lynne Booth & WordCrafter Press Readers’ Group for WordCrafter Press book & event news, including the awesome releases of author Kaye Lynne Booth. She won’t flood your inbox, she NEVER sells her list, and you might get a freebie occasionally. Get a free digital copy of her short story collection, Last Call and Other Short Fiction, just for joining.
I just had to share these wonderful AI illustrations shared by D. Wallace Peach over on the Myths of Mirror blog. Wow! She makes her vision, or at least her characters come to life. Check it out.
The audio book is AI narrated, but don’t let that deter you without giving it a chance. The female voiced narration is actually pretty good. And there’s a button where you can listen to a sample on the book’s page at Apple Books, so you can check it out before you buy. Above is the direct link, but it’s also listed on the book’s Books2Read page with all the other distributors where it’s available, so you can get it in digital or print, if you prefer.
Want exclusive content? Join Kaye Lynne Booth & WordCrafter Press Readers’ Group for WordCrafter Press book & event news, including the awesome releases of author Kaye Lynne Booth. She won’t flood your inbox, she NEVER sells her list, and you might get a freebie occasionally. Get a free digital copy of her short story collection, Last Call and Other Short Fiction, just for joining.
