Author Philip Pullman calls on government to act over ‘wicked’ AI scraping

Author Sir Philip Pullman has called on the government to change copyright laws regarding “scraping”, in which authors’ books are used to train artificial intelligence (AI) software to understand and generate human language.

Authors whose work is canceled do not receive compensation or recognition; This is something that writers are involved in Kate Mosse and Richard Osman criticizedHe said this could destroy growth in creative fields and amount to “theft”.

Sir Philip, author of the hugely popular novels about Lyra Silvertongue, the heroine of the His Dark Materials and The Book of Dust trilogies, thinks the authors should be compensated.

“If they give me money they can do whatever they want with my work,” he told the BBC’s culture editor Katie Razzall. “But stealing people’s labor… and then passing it off as something else… That’s immoral, but unfortunately not illegal.”

Sir Philip said: “As far as I know, everyone’s work has been stolen, scraped like a trawler… at the bottom of the sea. Prawns, oysters, starfish, mermaids, whatever. You name it, they’ve all been killed.”

“This is a bad system and I am totally against it.”

Sir Philip says he wants the government to act now, change the law and fight back.

“Of course they need to change this as soon as possible,” he said. “Don’t steal anyone else’s work.”

Sir Philip’s latest novel, The Rose Field, completes the second trilogy about Lyra. The first five books have sold 49 million copies worldwide so far.

Lyra lives in a universe parallel to ours, where humans have a daemon – a companion spirit in animal form.

He initially uncovers a plot using kidnapped children and uses a truth-telling device called an alethiometer.

“He is always curious and inquisitive,” he says. “I think this is a very important trait. We should praise curious people. We should also encourage this in children.”

The books describe her transformation from an 11-year-old girl into a woman in her early 20s, whose world is ruled by the Magisterium, a shadowy religious and political organization.

In The Rose Field, the Magisterium declares war on imagination, calling it a false, seductive, and dangerous doctrine.

Former English teacher Sir Philip, 78, goes on to describe what he sees as the real-life enemies of imagination.

He emphasizes that “the government’s education policy, which insists on memorizing things, sitting in rows and walking silently in corridors”, as well as the “nonsense” of learning the grammar of the language “before you use it”.

The author, who is clearly a fan of using imagination, calls this “a form of perception”, as can be understood from his writings.

He explains that the final book in the trilogy is about the land of “The Field of Roses, where things exist that you can only see with your imagination.”

“They’re there, but you can’t see them unless you imagine them, like ghosts, wishes, hopes, memories…

“Things that you can’t necessarily weigh or measure or analyze chemically, but are still there, like love, fear, hope. That’s what Lyra explores throughout this book.”

He is also an outspoken critic of organized religion.

“My arguments are about people in power who use religion to get other people to do things…religion gives them an extra sense of certainty when they do that because they believe they are doing God’s will,” he says.

Although he wrote about other worlds, realms and creatures, he insists that, unlike JRR Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, he is not a fantasy writer.

“I don’t think there’s any comparison between me and Tolkien. He was a fantasy writer and I’m not a fantasy writer.”

Despite his books featuring magical objects, talking animals and mythical griffins, he insists that he “writes about the real world through a small filter.”

He adds that after saying goodbye to Lyra and the other characters in his books, he’ll “miss them a little bit.”

But there is a silver lining for his millions of fans.

This may not be the end of Lyra’s story.

“I can’t say that,” he says. “It could be.”

He is now writing a memoir about his “unusual childhood” and a picture of the world in which he grew up.

His last thought is about the demons in his books, and he ponders what animal form he might take.

“I think it would be a corvid,” he says. “I love the Ravens. They’re not very well-liked. I don’t care.

“Their flight is extraordinary, their aerobatics turning upside down and coming very close to the ground.

“They are wonderful birds to watch, very smart.

“And in some mythologies, the raven is the storyteller.”

The Rose Field: The Book of Dust Volume Three, including an audiobook read by actor Michael Sheen, will be released on October 23.