NaNoWriMo created a shitstorm (of their own making) when they released a statement on AI driven by their sponsorship by ProWritingAid, which has been used as an automated grammar checker, but now has unspecified AI features. (Pivot to AI) In this statement, NaNoWriMo says not using AI is ableist and classist. Whoa! Stop the presses, hold your horses, and sit the hell down and let disabled authors speak. I have so much to say about this statement, but first, let’s make something abundantly clear.
Assistive AI which includes speech-to-text and automated grammar and spelling checkers IS NOT the same as generative AI wherein you tell a bot to write something for you and it composes it whole cloth. And equating the two while invoking the ableism card is a complete and utter disservice to disabled authors everywhere.
Companies which do this (and I’m including Ream in this because of their AI debacle a month or so ago) are using disabled authors to try and make their awful business decisions look better.
Full disclosure, I am very much against generative AI, especially as it’s being used within the neurodivergent community to make us sound more neurotypical. It’s a form of masking, which is also a blog for another site on another day. I’m also against using generative AI to write and publish stories. And let’s be clear, the whole point of NaNoWriMo is a personal challenge to write 50,000 words in a month. Sure, a lot of us have gone on to publish our NaNo stories, but we took pride in the writing of them, from our brains to the paper or the screen. We didn’t push a button and let some bot regurgitate several tens of thousands of words, based on other people’s writing often without their consent or payment and then go “yipee, we won!” Because I, and most authors I know, would not consider that “writing” anything. Programming, yes? Possibly? But not writing.
Assistive AI on the other hand, is a useful tool that helps authors get their own thoughts and ideas into a final form. If I use Word’s spell check editor, which I do, I am looking at each suggestion individually, comparing it to my known grammar rules (it’s often wrong, and getting worse the more they feed random writing into it) and deciding if I want to use the suggestion. That’s how I used ProWritingAid back when they first started, and frankly, why I quit using them, because they were having the same issue with their suggestions being incorrect back then. I don’t think it’s gotten any better.
I type 100 words per minute, so speech to text just pisses me off, but if I typed slower, then I’d use speech-to-text to dictate my books and there’s nothing wrong in doing so. I’m reading this in my mind as I type; there’s no difference in speaking it out loud and saving my aching hands. Assistive AI has it’s place and it’s uses, and again, I don’t know of anyone who is claiming that authors across the board, disabled or not, shouldn’t use it.
Which brings us to the classism and ableism claims, to which I cry BOGUS!
Let’s address the classism first because that’s the easier of the two. I’m an editor. I also note that my prices are probably less than most people are expecting, but still ensure I make a living wage. But also, I live in an area with a low cost of living, don’t have kids to support, and there are other factors in play in my pricing, the foremost being I believe everyone deserves a damn good edit that won’t break the bank. But some people can’t afford editors. I get that. Being able to drop four or more figures (of which mine are decidedly in the low three figures) on an edit is not for everyone, and it’s not classist to say it. I sure as heck couldn’t afford that at the moment, and I understand that not everyone is blessed to live in a grammar god, like I do. *smiles* What is classist is to think that the only editors worth paying charge four or more figures per edit. Saying “you get what you pay for” is classist, because there are editors like myself with decades of experience who don’t charge an astronomical sum of money. And let’s also be clear while we’re talking about classism, the rate you charge isn’t indicative of your worth. I know I’m worth a lot more, but again, see my cardinal rule “people deserve an awesome editor who charges reasonable rates” *waves* I have openings too, so if you need an editor, reach out.
So let’s talk about the ableism here. Making disabled people the scapegoat, using our accommodations to excuse your bad behavior, is the same ableist crap abled-bodied people pull when they don’t want to take responsibility for their actions. In the academic setting many professors push back against accommodations or even admitting that their policies are ableist because “if I let one student do it, then I have to let everyone”. No.
Equality is not equity. And let’s be honest, those assistive AI tools like spell check fall into the first box, because everyone uses them and they’re kinda okay for every body. Same with dictation or speech-to-text. Those of us who are disabled often don’t get the accommodations we need, and again, that’s a rant for another blog and probably on another site. But let’s just say my November as a neurodivergent person with chronic pain is not the same November a neurotypical able bodied has, and neither of our Novembers are the same as a single mother trying to write a book and deal with her children without any spousal or family support. In short, none of this has been about the tools we use to help us write, but rather creating a false dichotomy so that way those who don’t want to do the hard work can still pat themselves on the back and consider it a job well done.
So let’s cut the crap and quit saying that just because disabled people use a handicapped parking space that it’s okay for the able-bodied person to drive through the front of the damn store so they get “equal access”. Assistive technology isn’t being taken away. It’s not being banned. If anything, your generative AI technology is making assistive technology worse because AI rapidly aids in enshittification of anything tech. And most importantly, please stop creating a false dichotomy. Disabled people are tired of being thrown under the bus to make you feel better about your shittier decisions and lack of access. It’s just making y’all look bad, oh and here’s the more important thing that NaNo would like you to ignore. You have to paste those novels into their system in order to “win”. I don’t suppose they’ve told you what they’re going to do with those novels, or who they’re going to feed all that data to. And that, is a question worth asking. And no, it isn’t ableist or classist to do so.