When Publishers Want to License Your Book to Generative AI Firms

Is it part of your book contract that your publisher may license your book to the makers of ChatGPT or other large language models or forms of generative AI? If given the choice, should you go along with it?

<img src="https://dailynous.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/distribution-via-generative-ai-1024x688.png" alt="" width="671" height="451">
Those are the questions raised in a recent email from a philosophy professor. He writes:
Last year, I published a book with Cambridge University Press. Now, I have received an email from them requesting that I sign an addendum to my contract agreeing to them licensing my book to providers of generative AI. They note that such technologies “offer opportunities and risks.” I imagine other philosophers have been getting similar requests.
I see some of the potential opportunities here (remuneration; getting my arguments read by other philosophers in the form of supposedly original student essays), but I’m having a harder time thinking through the potential risks—in part because I have little familiarity with the work philosophers are doing on AI. Given this, I was thinking that more-informed Daily Nous readers might be able to weigh in on the ethics and prudence of permitting such licensing.
Discussion welcome, especially from those who’ve faced similar offers, as well as from readers with expertise in legal and ethical matters related to AI, intellectual property, and publication ethics.The post https://dailynous.com/2024/11/12/when-publishers-want-to-license-your-book-to-generative-ai-firms/
.

https://dailynous.com/2024/11/12/when-publishers-want-to-license-your-book-to-generative-ai-firms/