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Willison on Merchant's "Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry"

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Re: Willison on Merchant's "Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry"

#51

Post by simonw »

_zagj wrote: post #39
simonw wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit of an odd post to attach that comment to, but here you go: https://simonwillison.net/about/#disclosures

Besides the fact that you do have conflicts of interest (disclosing them doesn't negate them), you don't seem to understand that given how all of the Big AI players have shown themselves to be ruthless and shamelessly dishonest (hoovering up people's creative work without concern for its licensing, aggressively scraping websites to the point of DDOSing them, disregarding robots.txt and using residential IPs to disgui…

You might be talking about this one: https://simonwillison.net/2023/Dec/14/ai-trust-crisis/

I stand by my opinion that if a major AI company says they aren't training on something it means they aren't training on that thing.

I continue to be annoyed that they won't confirm what they ARE training on though. Saying "we don't train on data submitted is our API" isn't exactly transparent, I want to know what they ARE training on.

That lack of transparency is why they have a trust crisis in the first place!

Re: Willison on Merchant's "Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry"

#52

Post by djohnston »

simonw wrote: post #36
_zagj wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't think of a more insufferable AI cheerleader. I wish I could hide all submissions of his blogposts, as well as his comments. (Note that I flag neither.)

Anything I could do to be less insufferable? (Odd to see a complaint about me being an "AI cheerleader" attached to a post about the negative impact of AI on copywriting and how I think that sucks.)

Ignore the haters big dawg - your commentary and distillations are widely appreciated but there's always someone having a bad day looking for a punching bag.

Re: Willison on Merchant's "Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry"

#53

Post by iechoz6H »

MangoToupe wrote: post #22
bdcravens wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps, but then it becomes a buyer's market, and salaries will reflect that.

> and salaries will reflect that. Hilariously naive.

Isn't the implication that salaries will go down, but your response is assuming the GP is naively thinking salaries will go up?

Re: Willison on Merchant's "Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry"

#54

Post by thangalin »

singpolyma3 wrote: post #24

The problem isn't getting rid if people's jobs. Jobs are not inherently valuable. The problem is we have not built a society or economy where everyone can thrive regardless of their employment.

I'd go one step further: The problem is that we cannot build a fair and equitable socioeconomic capitalistic-driven society. Rather than complain about capitalism, I've written a near-future hard sci-fi novel that proposes and explores creating a society that doesn't rely on monetary capital to operate. My theory, which guides the plot, is that we have to look at the seeds of capitalism, namely food, and figure out how to eliminate the exchange of currency for it.

I posit that until this point in history there has never been a time where technology would allow us to grow and distribute food for free (in terms of both financial cost and labour of time). With the rise and convergence of AI, robotics, low-cost renewable energy, advances in optimal light-biomass conversion, diminishing costs on vertical farms, and self-driving vehicles, we have within our reach a way to produce food at essentially no cost.

Think through what would happen to society and our economy if food was free for anyone, anywhere. Think about the meaning of work.

If these ideas intrigue you, beta are readers wanted, see my profile for contact.

Re: Willison on Merchant's "Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry"

#55

Post by singpolyma3 »

happytoexplain wrote: post #48
singpolyma3 wrote: post #24

The problem isn't getting rid if people's jobs. Jobs are not inherently valuable. The problem is we have not built a society or economy where everyone can thrive regardless of their employment.

That's like saying "the problem isn't the unmaintainable cost of healthcare, it's that we haven't eliminated all diseases and aging". I.e. the latter is a long way off, and might not ever be 100% feasible, so it's horrifying and inhumane to imply we should allow the suffering caused by the former in the meantime.

No we shouldn't allow the suffering. Nor should we force people to work bullshit jobs. That's my point. Treating humans with dignity isn't even that hard but people need to believe it's important or it won't happen

Re: Willison on Merchant's "Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry"

#56

Post by omnimus »

mvkel wrote: post #35

I can't help but wonder if this is a bit like a few years ago when comedians were complaining that nobody was laughing at their jokes anymore. They realized that it was a mandate to figure out how to be funny again, because what was considered "funny" had changed. In this instance, and probably most instances of art/craft, copywriters need to figure out what is creative again, because what is considered "creative" ha…

The problem is that most copywriting is not and shouldn't be very creative. Often times it's just outsiders who know how to make public communication clear.

The sad part is that the managers deciding on using AI are the ones who rarely understand what is good public communication - that's why they were hiring someone to help them with it.

With AI they get some text that seems legit but the whole process of figuring out why&how is simply skipped. It might sometimes work but it's doubtful it builds knowledge in the organisation.

Re: Willison on Merchant's "Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry"

#57

Post by _zagj »

simonw wrote: post #36
_zagj wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't think of a more insufferable AI cheerleader. I wish I could hide all submissions of his blogposts, as well as his comments. (Note that I flag neither.)

Anything I could do to be less insufferable? (Odd to see a complaint about me being an "AI cheerleader" attached to a post about the negative impact of AI on copywriting and how I think that sucks.)

> the negative impact of AI on copywriting and how I think that sucks.)

The extent of your analysis is

> whelp that sucks

with a tone similar to what one might take when describing the impact of flatscreen TVs on the once-flourishing TV repair business, without mentioning all of the legitimate ethical (and legal) objections people have to how AI companies train their models and how the models are used.

> Anything I could do to be less insufferable?

Sure, go do a series on how they use residential IPs to hide their scraping, or on how they're probably violating copyright in a multitude of ways, including software FOSS licenses by disregarding attribution clauses and derivative work licensing obligations, especially for copyleft licenses like the GPL. Write about people using these systems to effectively "rewrite" GPL'd code so they can (theoretically) get around the terms completely.

Re: Willison on Merchant's "Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry"

#60

Post by simonw »

_zagj wrote: post #57
simonw wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything I could do to be less insufferable? (Odd to see a complaint about me being an "AI cheerleader" attached to a post about the negative impact of AI on copywriting and how I think that sucks.)

> the negative impact of AI on copywriting and how I think that sucks.) The extent of your analysis is > whelp that sucks with a tone similar to what one might take when describing the impact of flatscreen TVs on the once-flourishing TV repair business, without mentioning all of the legitimate ethical (and legal) objections people have to how AI companies train their models and how the models are used. > Anything I c…

Has it been proven that the major labs are scraping via residential IPs? If so I will absolutely write about that.

I know there are a ton of fly-by-night startups abusing residential IP scraping and I hate it, but if it's Anthropic or OpenAI or Google Gemini that's a story worth telling.

I have written a lot about training data - https://simonwillison.net/tags/training-data/ - including highlighting instances where models attempted to train on ethical sources.

I've also pointed out when a model claims to use ethical data but still uses a scrape of the web that's full of unlicensed content, eg https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jun/7/comma/ and https://simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/5/pleias-llms/

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