To be filed in the excessive political correctness department, the National Novel Writing Month Organization, affectionately called NaNoWriMo, is refusing to ban AI use in its annual, month-long writing event.

NaNoWriMo is a non-profit organization that helps people achieve their goals and make their voice heard through writing. November is National Writing Month. Each year aspiring writers rush to their laptops with the idea of finishing a novel between November 1st and 30th. If you can write 50,000 words in November you can pat yourself on the back and bask in the glow of your accomplishment.

What Happened?

Earlier this week, NaNoWriMo published a FAQ outlining their views on AI use in writing. In a nutshell, NaNoWriMo punted on definitively accepting or rejecting the use of AI technology. Instead, they said:

…to categorically condemn AI would be to ignore classist and ableist issues surrounding the use of the technology, and that questions around the use of AI tie to questions around privilege.

NaNoWriMo

Yours truly, someone who writes for a living, disagrees with NaNoWriMo’s approach. NaNoWriMo claims disallowing AI is classist because some people can’t afford humans to assist with their writing. Hello, grew up poor and went to public school. English classes and creativity helped hone my writing early on. It wasn’t until I was older and scrounged enough funds to hire an editor for my first works.

Ableist. According to NaNoWriMo, all brains work differently. Yes, they do and it’s wonderful. Different folks have different ideas, and perspectives of the world.

And, General Access Issues. This issue is one I’m particularly interested in. I empathize for people who don’t have equal access to technology. Wealthy and affluent people are the first to get access to technologies. The poor don’t realize technological benefits until way after they’ve been exploited. AI is supposed to be a democratizing technology providing greater access to opportunity.

Thing is. I don’t disagree with these suggestions, it’s their approach. NaNoWriMo should have stated: ChatGPT, Gemini, and other LLMs can be used for ideation or idea generation, wordsmithing, and proofreading. Things LLMs and other agents are well adept at doing. Hiring an AI copyeditor, *chef’s kiss*!

Why wouldn’t they do the work and argue against using these technologies for the pure generation of ideas. Today, you can have ChatGPT write your entire novel by feeding it prompts. That’s what I have beef with. Furthermore, we already know OpenAI is stealing copyrighted material to train GPT. And…we know online content is getting crappier in general because new agents are being trained on AI generated drivel.

Why couldn’t NaNoWriMo be explicit in communicating an acceptable use of the technology? That in order to have your voices heard…it must be your voice. Not a rehashing of pre-trained text synthesized from Stephen King, Seneca, William Shakespeare, and Kat Williams.

I’m totally against ableism and banning of technologies.

However, I’m totally for the integrity of originality and working through the challenges of effectively expressing yourself.

-MJ