Zarf Updates

Worldcon is the apex annual convention for a certain stratum of science fiction fandom. My stratum, to be precise. It's also the conference whose members vote the annual Hugo Awards.

Sadly, Worldcon the conference is becoming less notable than the semiregular scandals and political kerfuffles that happen at Worldcon, or around it, or around its organizers.

Ten years ago there was the "Sad Puppies" mess. (Basically GamerGate for sci-fi awards. I wrote a bit about that in 2016.) There were arguments around the Hugos and their ceremonies in 2019 and 2021 as well. Then in 2023, Worldcon was held in Chengdu, China, and that year's Hugos had a deeply suspect nomination process. (I didn't write about that, but I sure read a lot.)

The 2024 Worldcon seemed to go smoothly, and fandom breathed a collective sigh of, well, optimism if not relief.

Last week the Cloister Bell thrummed ominously:

Shouting erupted.

That statement was followed by a rapid clarification:

The further explanation dropped just a few minutes ago. (After I started writing this post!)

I am about to sit down and read that, and then I'll get back to writing this.

Okay, I read it.

I want to talk about this three ways: what I think, what other Worldcon participants think, and what happened with the Hugos.

What I think

Here's my personal involvement: I am a Worldcon program participant this year! Or at least I expect to be. So, presumably, my name was part of the "vetting process" mentioned above.

My first Worldcon was 1991 (Chicago) -- I was still in college then -- I had a hilariously awkward Amtrak voyage and crashed on a friend's couch for a week and had a great time. Guy Gavriel Kay read a chapter of Song for Arbonne and it was wonderful. I had to leave in the middle of his reading to catch my train home. I am so sorry, Mr. Kay, it wasn't you.

After that I hit Worldcon, oh, about every other year. But 2009 (Montreal) was my last Worldcon. After my Hadean Lands kickstarter in 2010, I started going to GDC most years, and that pretty well ate my time-and-money budget for enormous conferences.

But I miss Worldcon! When someone contacted me and said hey, we're going to have some interactive fiction panels at Worldcon in Seattle, ya want in? I said "Sure! That sounds awesome." And I put my name in as a possible participant. And then I received some forms about different panels I might be on, which I duly filled out, indicating that I can talk about IF and narrative games.

This is the first time I've volunteered to be on a Worldcon program, so I don't know exactly how the process works. (Worldcon never works exactly the same from year to year, which is part of how it gets into these messes.) But, on the evidence, I am a program participant and when the Worldcon schedule comes out I'll find out where I fit in.

What do I think about "Seattle's use of AI tools"? Honestly, I didn't even blink. Someone took a shortcut on Googling me. This probably means they did a bad job. But doing a bad job Googling me isn't an injury. Maybe they made panelist decisions based on bad info, but that isn't an injury either. It's just not as good a panel as it could have been. I've been on poorly-put-together convention panels before.

The May 6th post goes into more detail on the process. From this I learn that I was selected as a possible participant by a program track lead -- no AI was involved in that stage. Then my name was put into a ChatGPT query to "evaluate each person for scandals" (the post has the full query prompt). Then whatever links were returned by that query were reviewed by humans. If I read this correctly, they never got around to acting on those query results, and they plan to throw away the ChatGPT output and start that stage over with human volunteers.

So fine. None of this changes my plans.

To be clear, I registered to attend Worldcon before I volunteered to be on the Worldcon program. I have my flights and hotel reserved. I am going regardless of whether I get to yammer at people. I am going to have a blast.

What other Worldcon participants think

A lot of people are more upset than I was. See news posts April 30, May 2. (News posts thanks to File770, which I always link to for fannish news and history.)

This is not a criticism. People can decide how they feel about things. A lot of people thought that, given the ethical and environmental sins of the current AI industry, it was a terrible idea for the Worldcon committee to touch ChatGPT with a ten-foot pole. I agree with that! Some people decided not to provide their time and energy to a Worldcon which had disappointed them in that way. I didn't make that decision but I get where they're coming from.

Remember that the posts linked above date from before Worldcon's "Apology and Response" post, much less the "May 6th Statement". There was a bunch of rapid reaction in fandom. But again, I'm not disagreeing with those reactions. It just underscores what a bad decision the Worldcon people made. If the uncertainty about how AI was used upsets your community that much, that is the wrong community to use AI in!

Let me take a step back (temporarily). I hang out with a lot of people, with a wide spectrum of responses to AI. In fact it's not even a spectrum, it's a Munsellian multi-axis monstrosity. I run into:

• (a) people who say AI tools cannot be used because the output is garbage;
• (b) people who say AI tools should not be used because the input is immorally obtained and the process is immorally run;
• (c) people who are using AI tools and say they're useful.

And combinations of the three, of course.

(You'd think that (a) and (c) would contradict, but in fact we accept plenty of tools that are both useful and generate garbage. You just have to understand how they're bad. Google Translate is the obvious example -- that's been using a form of large language model since 2016. Really, the clash between (a) and (b) is more interesting. If a tool doesn't work, you don't have to make a moral argument to stop using it! But of course I've simplified these positions to sloganity, so let's let this go.)

(...You're going to ask where I stand, and, um. "All three are correct"? I haven't used AI tools, aside from one quick experiment in 2018, well before the LLM wave hit. But I think they will have important uses. I also think that web-search summarization will not turn out to be among them. Further prediction I will disdain, lest this post get longer and sillier than it already is.)

My point is: if I were to pick a group of people who would be stridently (b) with a hot side order of (a), it would be professional fiction writers. Which is to say, Worldcon program participants! This is a "read the room" moment when the room is already bristling with torches and pitchforks.

What Hugo administrators thought

I started this post off talking about Hugo Award scandals, but it's important to note that this ChatGPT situation did not affect the Hugos. It was about Worldcon panels. Different data, different process, different volunteers.

Nonetheless, the lead Hugo administrators (and one other Worldcon admin) just resigned:

This is a very circumspectly worded statement. You could reasonably assume that either:

• (i) These people are resigning because of the ChatGPT situation, even though it does not affect the Hugos; or
• (ii) These people are resigning because of some other terrible situation, and they want to make clear that it's not about ChatGPT affecting the Hugos. (Because, given the timing, people will jump straight to the opposite conclusion.)

Unfortunately, organizations have to be circumspect about a lot of terrible situations, because otherwise they get sued. (Worldcon got sued in 2018 over a terrible situation that they tried to be transparent about. Not gonna make that mistake again I bet.)

Either way, this puts a lot of suspicion into the air. Which is not great.

And so?

I already said I'm going. I hope no worse news turns up.

I'm going to send in a Hugo ballot. I may have to play Caves of Qud, which is on the Hugo Best Game list. I have repeatedly said that Caves of Qud scares me. (Everybody I say this to nods vigorously, including people who love Caves of Qud and people who worked on Caves of Qud.)

I still hope that I get to be on a panel about IF. I'm not assuming it will happen, because circumstances are still kaboinging. But I would like to. If I do, and you show up, I'll see you there. Otherwise -- I'm sure I'll blog about it afterwards. Can't not!