Why MAINSPRINGS?

I was taken aback by how upset some people were on Facebook when I promoted the MAINSPRINGS project in the Antique Typewriter Collectors group. They got the impression that we were asking people to use AI, or celebrating the technology. Some understood better—that we are open to contributions that envision either negative or positive aspects of AI, and that we will consider submissions that use some AI. (For instance, someone might want to represent a dialogue between a person and AI, and use actual AI-generated responses in the dialogue. If the author discloses this honestly and it works artistically, OK.) But even this is too much for diehard AI haters. And others are just (understandably) sick of hearing those two vowels repeated ad nauseam! So what is my concept for this volume, anyway? And why bother?Whether we like it or not, generative AI has arrived in the 2020s like an asteroid hiting Yucatán. This event is comparable to the rise of the personal computer in the '80s, the Web…

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