Book publishing, AI and the future of authorship

Between 1761 and 1788, France’s Royal Academy of Science released its magisterial survey of the nation’s arts, crafts and industry, the Descriptions des Arts et Métiers (faites ou approuvées par messieurs de l’Académie Royale des Sciences). The gorgeously printed 113 folio volume encyclopaedia with three supplements compiled the work of hundreds of scholars and almost half a century of scholarship. The scale of ambition that drove such a project was typical for this period of history — often described by historians as <a href="https://www.bl.uk/restoration-18th-century-literature/articles/the-enlightenment" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">The Enlightenment</a> or the Age of Reason. It was an age where belief in the human intellect, best evidenced through writing and publishing, reigned supreme. As the Chinese proverb goes: “the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” The Academy’s huge survey began with the study of a single industry: printing. This was because the experts and scholars of the Academy believed that printing had a special importance amongst the industrial arts: it was “that art which will preserve all others”. Some Artificial Intelligence (AI) enthusiasts claim that we are witnessing the dawn of a new epoch— an Age of, if you will, Artificial Reason. If we are interested in surveying how AI is going to change art, industry and commerce, then it would do us well to pay particular attention, like the 18th century French Royal Academy of Science, to recent developments in the book publishing industry. Already, there are concrete examples of how things are going to be changed or disrupted. <a href="https://uxdesign.cc/book-publishing-ai-and-the-future-of-authorship-8b2608c9351d">Click Here</a>