A Fandom Pulse reader was confused by JDA’s advocacy of Castalia and Infogalactic’s joint Byron AI project:
Is this what I think it is? Is this website, created by an author who writes his own books with his own brain, promoting an AI that will do all the writing for us from now on? What the actual f**k is happening?
The AI doesn’t do everything. Without the human creative spark, it will accomplish nothing. This is more akin to providing battle armor for a soldier, making him stronger, faster, and more deadly. Consider how much faster I have been able to produce both fiction and non-fiction; neither the groundbreaking work demolishing Darwin, Kimura, and Kant would have been published without textual AI. I probably would have eventually got around to writing Probability Zero, especially after becoming aware of the more complete genomic information from the the 2025 study, but would never have gone on to address Neutral Theory and Kimura without the intellectual augmentation provided by AI.
AI is close to worthless without an anchor. That’s why it works so beautifully for translations. That’s why it’s highly effective for non-fiction. But it has no creative spark, and that’s why it can only augment the ideas and stories and experiences that the human element provides. And that’s why the Byron AI project is a positive one, and one worth backing.
For those who appreciated the poem featured in the launch video, I took the liberty of altering it and turning it into a Soulsigma song called Last to Know. It’s technically a Neo-Byronic, since it’s an original, not an adaptation, and it might be the best thing I’ve written yet.
They tell me that an honest man will bear
Her name upon his heart – a curious state!
For all my good intentions it seems
I drowned in wine and worse – a darker fate
Is well-deserved now – and yet without a care
I fall toward the abyss, and at a rate
Measureless across the years,
For what had cost me twenty months of tears…
I had a something once, no longer now,
That ached and wanted and overcame.
It burned at beauty and it fled from shame.
If that was soul I never learned its name.
As for the project, we’re off to a good start. We’ve already hit our base goal and we’ll be adding the requested $100 level soon, so if you’ve got suggestions for that, or for other tiers and rewards, feel free to share them in the comments. I’ll be discussing the project and making an announcement about it on the Darkstream tonight.