Your AI did not "go rogue"
it's just a program.

Your AI did not "hallucinate"
it has no brain.

Your AI did not "create" anything
it's just a plagiarism machine.

Your AI is not your "friend"
stop anthropomorphizing it.

It's just code. Exploitative, polluting, and unethical code :no_ai:

#NoAI

This story should terrify any open source project or company that allows LLM-generated code into their project.

Someone created a new app, using Claude. Only it wasn’t a new app, it was clearly plagiarised because it happened that there was an example in the training set that exactly matched the requirements. The similarity was well within the range that courts have previously used to determine a derived work.

When you have this level of similarity, the requirement comes to you to prove that there was no way that the original work could have flowed to your project. Companies that have this concern usually do it by ensuring that no one on the team has been exposed to the original and that the code for the original never goes near their systems. But when one of the systems that you use is a language model trained on, among other things, all of the open-source code that it could scrape (and which does not disclose its training set), being able to prove that there was no path from some other codebase to yours is impossible.

Just because the US copyright office has ruled that you, as the person promoting an LLM, cannot assert copyright on the output, does not mean that someone else can’t. If you take a DVD and transcode it to H.264, there is no creative step and so the new copy is not something subject to independent copyright, but it is a derived work of the DVD (itself a lower-quality derived work of the original masters) and so subject to the same copyright.

Importantly in this story, the person prompting Claude had no idea that the original app existed. To safely use the code, they would need to search everything in the training data and discard outputs that would meet the bar of being substantially similar. And that’s something that requires human judgement.

#ScribesAndMakers Aug 9: Have you ever switched perspective mid-chapter/story? Was it successful in your opinion?

I have, in fact, switched from close 3rd with viewpoint switches only at scene boundaries, in the first 13 chapters of my WIP, to now doing full-on, omniscient 3rd person starting with chapter 14. It's making a bunch of things much easier and smoother.

But I'll go back and revise the 1st 13 in my first editing pass, so the final version will all be omni.

#WritersCoffeeClub Aug 9: What’s a subject you’d like to write about, but haven’t yet?

Space exploration, as people in the late '60s and early '70s hoped it would progress.

#WordWeavers Aug 9: What's the smallest detail you've researched for a story?

It's a toss-up between:

* which way various little, unremarkable doors on various streets open (in or out? hinges on the left or right?)
* what's the most expensive brand of bourbon on sale at this particular dive bar?

Rails is done

https://lucas.dohmen.io/posts/2026/08/09/rails-is-done/

#Ruby #Programming #WebDev

What do you click first in a new game?

#ScribesAndMakers Aug 8: Polymorphous?

I really like mercury. I wish it weren't so poisonous.

#WritersCoffeeClub Aug 8: In your works, when the subaltern speaks, who listens?

I think in some ways, my WIP is attempting to ask that question of America. It positions the protagonists as subalterns, attempting to speak to authorities, and trying very hard to be heard. And my intended ending should leave the reader considering ways that they can do likewise in reality. At least, that's my hope.

#WordWeavers Aug 8: Which character would survive a zombie apocalypse, and why?

For how long? *None* of my characters know enough about gardening or farming to set up a sustainable source of food; they're all city-dwellers. So this "survival" is going to be "how long until the canned food runs out or goes bad?"

That said, I think Van Martinez would probably survive the longest. She's tough, resourceful, and *highly* skilled in combat.

I am a little shocked at the lack of solidarity I see between artists working in different mediums wrt genAI.

Musicians who would never use it to make music use it to make cover art

Graphic artists reach for it to make music over their videos

Writers use it to illustrate their articles

And, considering software development an art, many use it to create web sites or apps to host their art.

None of this is necessary. All of this is harmful to the other artists.

Collaborate ffs.

Stop it.

Passing on from Bsky for any #authors having trouble finding human cover #artists. The artists on this site have been vetted by a group of artists as not using gen ai in their work.

#IndieAuthors #HumanArt #CoverArt

https://hirehumanartists.com/listings/

Nonwhite friends: one of my local friends and their family have been experiencing some pretty horrific racism (I was not there).

I’m feeling super out-of-my-depth on how to best help and support them. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

a learned a new word today and i love it

zuzai

https://zuzai.org

Hail Freya, it's Friday! Today's #FridayPaganPoll:

Most pagans believe in some kind of reincarnation, but there are many variations of it. The classic kind that most people know is "whole soul" reincarnation, where the soul is reincarnated one-to-one, and may or may not have memories of the previous incarnation.
There is also what I'll call "partial soul," where only some pieces move on and there is no retention of whole memories.

Which one most closely matches your beliefs on reincarnation?

(This is obviously an extremely nuanced topic, so detailed comments are welcome and appreciated!)

#pagan #polytheism #witch

...whether it was "actual" reality. What mattered was that Cobb had gone through experiences that changed him. (And "going through experiences that change a person" is the major function of all protagonists, so that means Nolan's saying something about art as well.) That made me appreciate it way more; it's now one of my favorite movies. 2/2

#ScribesAndMakers

#ScribesAndMakers Aug 7: Is there a work of art that you didn't like at first but came to appreciate once you understood it better?

My initial reaction to the end of _Inception_ was that Nolan's refusal to show us whether the top would fall over or not was a cop-out. My then-wife pointed out that it actually _strengthened_ the movie's message, which was that Cobb no longer cared whether it was a dream or reality, that in fact it didn't even matter... 1/2

#WritersCoffeeClub Aug 7: What subcultures exist in your work?

There are ways in which the city wizard community almost functions like a subculture of its own. But I'm also giving definite representation to the goth-industrial "freak" subculture, and some to ravers as well.

Maybe this is because my story is set in our world, so any "world-building" I do has to be stuff that can fit into the cracks and the contours of the existing world. I could never just declare, "Okay, this thing works that way" or "that item was set up X many years before". I have to make sure it all connects with observed reality as much as possible. 2/2

#WordWeavers