CARE-AI is concerned about the negative impact of AI on creative fields, including creative writing. We invite you to our special evening event featuring author Sean Michaels. We are hoping this session will spur further thinking about the potential constructive use of AI in the creative writing process but also highlight the importance of appropriate compensation, copyright and protection for writers in a world with a serious risk of unauthorized use of their material for training AI models or being displaced by AI-generated content.

Author Event: Sean Michaels Discusses the Origin and Creation of his Novel Do You Remember Being Born?

In 2019, the Giller Prize-winning novelist had his first encounter with a different kind of AI. It was three years before the launch of ChatGPT, but he found himself beguiled, unsettled—and even a little compromised—by these early Large Language Models. He began working on a book exploring this disquiet, and imagining how a great poet might respond to such technology—a poet like the infamous Marianne Moore, in her cape and tricorn hat. The result, Do You Remember Being Born?, has been hailed by WIRED magazine as “the definitive novel about art in the age of AI,” and by the New York Times as “a jumping-off point for timeless meditations on art, family, connection and the meaning of a life.” On February 24, Sean visits the University of Guelph to discuss the book’s origin and its creation—which was undertaken partly, and in deliberate discomfort, with AI tools. In his talk, he will raise new questions about the serious challenges and surprising opportunities provoked by these discoveries, and force us to rethink what it can mean to “collaborate.”

To join us, please register.