Transcript

EP 105 - Gutenberg vs. Woolf: Who Owns the AI Book? · Conversations Beyond Their Lives

HOST: Half a million AI books can appear before lunch. Johannes, is this your fault? [SFX: loud paper avalanche] GUEST1: My press multiplied Bibles, pamphlets, heresies. I did not invent garbage. GUEST2: No, but you industrialized temptation. HOST: Virginia Woolf, you’re saying scale changes the soul? GUEST2: Scale changes attention. A novel needs a room, money, time. Now it gets a prompt. GUEST1: Cheap books also freed readers. GUEST2: Cheap, yes. Counterfeit, no. [AD_BREAK:1] HOST: Amazon now labels some AI content. Enough? GUEST1: Labels are printer’s marks. Useful. GUEST2: If honest. But ghosts don’t sign receipts. [SFX: confused ghost cough] HOST: Meaning? GUEST2: Dead writers training machines. Living writers paid nothing. GUEST1: Then build guilds. Licenses. Ledgers. [AD_BREAK:2] HOST: So not ban the machine? GUEST2: Ban theft wearing spectacles. GUEST1: Ha. HOST: Final verdict: revolution or landfill? GUEST1: Both. Every press prints prayers and poison. GUEST2: Then teach readers to smell the poison. [SFX: silly sniff] [AD_BREAK:3] HOST: And maybe pay the people who grew the flowers.