Something New In A Book

don't worry, it's typed out below

A Marin acquaintance has published a book.  I took it out of the library.  As I do with every book I hold in my hands, I read all the pages in the front. 

I skimmed the laudatory blurbs.  I felt the paper (lovely, heavy, with a slight yellow cast that makes reading a pleasure).  I read the title, on a page all its own. I read the dedications (no one I recognized).  I read the copyright page (I'm sure it has a name all its own; I just don't know what it is.)

This is all relevant to the point of this post.  

The paragraph introducing this post appears at the bottom of that page, below the publisher's information and the ISBN.  It reads:

NO AI TRAINING:  Without in any way limiting the author's (and publisher's) exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to "train" generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited.  The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

I have never seen this warning on any other book.  Perhaps, because Simon and Schuster says this is a speculative fiction adventure and love story about family, genetic privacy, and the onrushing future of surveillance technology, the warning serves as an introduction to the story itself.  

I don't know yet.  I haven't read a word.  But I'm in love with the experience already.  AI may write books, but I won't feel connected the way I do when I'm holding an actual book.  

If trees must be slaughtered and reused, I'm glad to be able to thank them by reading real books.

If my words are being scraped to teach AI how to speak, I ought to receive a small token of appreciation, don't you think?  

All this, and I haven't read a word. I can't wait.