(no subject)

[olivermoss]

Worldcon will detail by Tuesday exactly how ChatGPT was used in this panelists selection process, so I will mostly hold off on comment until then. Here's the thing though, any time a con is like 'think of our poor volunteers' you know bullshit is up. Either the Seattle crew had the people to be doing this work, and who wanted to do this work, or they didn't. If they didn't, why the fuck did they compete for this bid? And if they do, and are not giving those volunteers the work to do... that's worse.

They may still have time to fix their shit, but right now it's like, wtf? Like ignore the AI issues for a sec. Picking panelists is the good shit. It's the fun, social, hang out with people with your same hobby, shape the cool stuff that will happen at the con, part of con running. You want people who enjoy that work to be working on your con, being social, community building among them, and happy. You do not want to reduce these volunteer hours. If you want a strong community of con runners in your city, pulling their hours because you are using AI is a slap in the face to people wanting to work and hang out. It makes people feel bad and not valued. Let people hang out and do some work and then throw them a pizza party about it.

Ignore using the Anti-Minority Bias Machine That Likes to Hallucinate issues for a moment, from a conrunner POV this is just downright them punching their own community in the face.

Wait, I was going to wait until Tuesday and more deets, but, oops. Anyway, if they don't have enough staff to be running this con that's bad. If they aren't, that's worse.

Comments

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

There's another very serious issue, which is that any use of AI is contentious right now. There are creative people who have been violated by it. There are lots of folks who feel it's unethical to use for various reasons. There are people in the science fiction community who've been studying AI for decades and doubtless know more about it than whatever idiot(s) decided this was somehow a good idea. Plus the ones who are concerned about the possibility of a conscious AI being abused, and not wanting anything to do with any AI to avoid that possibility.

Using AI to interview potential panelists would have, if said panelists knew about the AI, immediately reduce the field by the number of people who didn't want to deal with AI in that context and thus dropped out. And if they didn't know, if it was done secretly, then that was an ethical violation that will make it harder to find panelists for any con because the ones who are serious about avoiding AI will likely not trust other cons.

There is just no way this was ever going to be a good idea, and it will continue to make trouble for other people for a long time.

[muccamukk]

I think one issue is that as per the previous post, a lot of the volunteers WERE federal government workers, and they've been hit pretty hard but Events. So they may have lost a bunch of people unexpectedly? Or the people lost a lot of capacity to cope?

Which does not excuse the LLM shit, but does make a little sense of the Woe Is Us vibe.

[olivermoss]

That would take a toll, but bringing in AI is just going to make the sense of doom worse, especially with the fallout from it. I feel bad for them and hope they do manage to pull things out.

Orycon, the local con that a lot of Portland Worldcon crew also work on, is ending this year. We might be having a regional collapse in old school SFF con culture.

[muccamukk]

I definitely think that it wasn't a great choice 🤦‍♀️. I do hope they'll be able to recover. I'm sure we're all very interested in what they're going to say on Tuesday (and if that somehow makes it worse, lol).

[mistressofmuses]

Terrible move from them all around, and their shitty statement (the initial one; I have not seen their promised followup from yesterday, now) did not help. Because yeah, that's one of the good and fun parts of putting on the con! So what the fuck? Even ignoring all the ways that AI is fucking garbage and *is not actually a fact-finding tool*, it's a shitty thing to do! And since AI IS garbage for this sort of thing... so many layers upon layers of WOW, BAD FUCKING LOOK.

Especially coming back from a year that severely tarnished the con's reputation.

And especially just in general being the con representing one of the groups of people (genre authors!) who are most likely to have serious concerns about AI and how it's been trained and what was used in its training data, etc.

Bad job all around.

[olivermoss]

If these track leads don't want to be carefully vetting the panelists themselves, why the hell are they track leads! This is baffling from the horrible options, the possible bad consequences of using AI to rule people in without double checking (they only double checked the exclusions), to just... if the track leads don't find this work exciting and fun, uh, why the hell are they track leads? (Esp since the hundreds of hours divided by 30 people means a drop in the bucket)

This is the dumbest corner cutting, and from people who should be excited and happy to be able to do the work!

[mistressofmuses]

Right? Like, this isn't a job they should have if they don't want to do it! Plus... yeah, the excuse about it being "so time consuming" just... doesn't seem true. Like you said, split between 30 people? Those "hundreds of hours" are like... an afternoon or two of work each? And this is one of the jobs I'd think should be a fun one! A thing to be excited about participating in!

And exactly - great that they double checked the exclusions, but trusting the *inclusions* to AI is also bad!

[olivermoss]

Programming is the bulk of what people actually do at cons, outside of random unstructured socializing. If the head of the sewing track and isn't excited to get emails about people who can teach cool stuff, show some niche historical designs, etc, like wtf? Also, they should know the landscape and want to be reaching out to people in their area of expertise for more into.

Excluding someone based on AI is bad, but also trusting AI that a panelist isn't a problem? Honestly, that's worse to me. That's how you get problematic people platformed and promoted by your con.

[mistressofmuses]

Right? Basically everyone I knew in my con-going days, self included, structured our days around what we wanted to do in terms of programming. Which panels or watch-rooms we wanted to attend, what bigger event or competition type things were highlights of certain days, etc. That's what cons are *for*! The people in charge of that programming should be knowledgeable about it, and they should be enthusiastic about it!

Very much so. "AI didn't give me any results indicating they were a problem." Okay, but AI isn't a fact-finding tool. What things could it have missed? Are there other factors that you could have accounted for by doing a human search? Is all the information as publicly available as you were counting on for your AI queries to even hope to turn up? That could very easily let some brand of asshole get a platform at your con due to sheer oversight.

[olivermoss]

Also, a lot of people don't really have online footprints outside of shadow ones. It's easy to lose sight of this, but for a surprisingly high amount of people if they are even online they are lurkers and not producing anything for it to find. You've got to actually be able to talk to people, and want to talk to people.

[mistressofmuses]

Right? Some people have an easy-to-find online presence. Some people don't. Or have screennames that are very "if you know, you know" in terms of connecting it to the name they write under, but it's not obvious if you aren't familiar. Or people who like you said, are just lurkers. Or who scrubbed their online presence once they reached some level of fame. Some people enjoy what they do in terms of creative work, but want nothing to do with online anything, and power to them. There are all sorts of reasons that a basic search - especially one outsourced to fancy autocomplete - won't give you all the answers about a person.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, exactly. That's why they have 30 track leads, they are expected to know or be able to ask about a lot of them. Or know, for example, if the are through certain publishers that's a red flag. And this is the con where one of their major dramas involved people lying about motivations online (Sad Puppies) and doing anything they could to game Worldcon's systems. A bit of savvy and insider knowledge is needed.

A lot of people are worried about old tweets and stuff like that. so they use services to scrub their online presence. Yeah, online searches are going to be great for some panelists, but probably not most. And a lot of the old school crowd value privacy as well

[mistressofmuses]

Right? Those are the sorts of things I'd expect these particular volunteers to have some general knowledge of (like you said, the whole Vox Day/Sad Puppies thing) and/or at least have a pretty good idea of how to find more information out.

Lots of people do want to scrub their old online presence, either for good or bad reasons. Maybe it's "oh no, I don't want my bigoted tweets to become public knowledge!" Sometimes it's "I was not careful enough about my privacy pre-fame." Whatever the motive, it does mean there are some people that a quick search isn't going to bring much up for, and deeper looks might be needed, to say nothing of the types who never had that presence to begin with. (And hell, there are constant dramas about authors behaving badly and then just bouncing to a new pseudonym and trying to curate a new identity entirely.)

It's just absolutely not the kind of thing that anyone should have considered appropriate to source to a fucking AI query.

[olivermoss]

Yeah like, considering how LLMs work, if enough people say 'so and so is a bad person' in places that are indexed but no one will read it, the Sad Pupplies and other wankers could feed the LLMs poison pills, and that's exactly how they operate. Manipulating online info is a huge part of their shtick.

And with me I'll only publish under a Psued because I used to run cons and there are still people upset I didn't fall for this 4chan ops and posted about what was tried with reference links so the community knew what was going on. Them finding out I'm writing would give them easy ways to fuck with me. Honestly, anxiety about that might be something holding me back a bit.

But, why would a fantasy and sci fi con be aware of the problems of new, emerging tech and the issues of information manipulation? It's not like part of their hobby is focused on the dangers and dehumaniztion of emerging / predicted tech.

And awkwardly phrased jokes aside, despite the whole 'new city new con' they do have enough institutional knowledge to be aware of past problems. The biggest villains in the China Worldcon debacle are from the Seattle crew and people who likely would be involved if not for the issues, and also like probably all of them were together at Norwescon. The insider's circle is a very strong clique, there is more continuity than most people realize.

[mistressofmuses]

Right? There are certainly ways to manipulate AI responses, which is a thing I've seen done multiple times deliberately to prove a point about that very thing. That's a prime avenue of manipulation for bad actors. And sure, they insist no one was denied or removed from consideration because of the AI returns, but... this is still not an unbiased thing.

There are all sorts of reasons people don't want their professional identity tied easily to their personal life. Grudges is certainly one of those reasons! Because yeah, those same sorts of bad actors could absolutely try to take the opportunity to fuck with anyone they've had issues with in the past.

It does seem extra stupid and ironic to have it be a fucking speculative fiction con pulling this stuff. Very "create the torment nexus" of them.

It's sadly not surprising to know that it is a really consistent core clique, even when the con is trying to put a fresh coat of paint on and trying to distance themselves from all the shit that went down last year. I know there were a handful of resignations and all, but it doesn't shock me that a lot of the people involved remain the same, or that plenty of the people at fault for what happened in China have stayed on.

Still seems like they should have been aware enough to try and prevent another major PR disaster, but... ah well. "Years since Worldcon has fucked up" sign remains at zero.

[olivermoss]

Some cons might be mostly separate, but the Seattle crew? There is a lot of overlap with the people who ran China. That is why I knew some of the very talked about people from that year. Also the bidding process itself, you need to be very connected.

It's a mess, but it's a mess that some people are very invested in. And some people just accept that it's a mess, because not accepting that might mean changing stuff and we can't have that.

And hey, without the PR disasters would they even have PR?

[mistressofmuses]

It is definitely a mess... and yeah, seems like as invested as people are, they're a particular kind of invested that won't allow them to make the sorts of changes that probably actually need to happen.

China burned through basically all their credibility, and man was this not the way to try to gain back their standing in the community.

Lol, a fair point! Could we even call it a Worldcon if it was lacking in PR disaster?

[olivermoss]

I only know the local peeps, but they considering change to be death of their culture, giving into the dreaded mainstream.

Losing credibility doesn't seem to effect them much.

[mistressofmuses]

It really is a bit unfortunate that "loss of credibility" doesn't seem to actually have any impact, even when it seems like it should! Nothing seems to stick in terms of any significant consequence. :/

There is a lot of pushback in geek culture spaces, in terms of resisting any sort of change, it's true. I do get it - there are ways in which fandom has, I think, become in some ways worse for the ways it's gained mainstream attention. And I realize there's a lot of nostalgia for ye olde days (I certainly think back fondly on the cons I went to in my teens and early 20s, or the LJ heydays, and I've seen plenty of people who are nostalgic for things that far predate my experience of fandom or genre spaces.) But the knee-jerk "EVERYTHING MUST STAY THE SAME!" or the treating of *any* change as being some sort of capitulation to the "normies" isn't the way to allow spaces to survive, much less thrive.

[olivermoss]

There is also a strong contingent of holdover hippies and also just general genre nerds who take change as giving into the mainstream, the death of their culture. The ones I know are so reactionary I don't even know how to talk about them without sounding like parody. Orycon, the local con with a strong Worldcon peeps overlap, is ending this year. In 2020 they actually resisted not having the con, saying that the continuity was more important... even with a mostly aging fanbase? Actually, who cares about that, all the guilt they tried to pull to try to have the con anyway was gross no matter the demographic.

[mistressofmuses]

Yeah... I do understand to an extent, wanting to be protective of a counter-cultural identity, not wanting it to be absorbed into the mainstream... but yeah, a lot of it is just reactionary and more regressive than anything. It's certainly not the way to help anything to grow or thrive. I'm sympathetic to people not wanting to watch their niche genre stuff get completely trampled by MCU merch and Funko Pops and Terf Wizard School garbage or whatnot, but you can protect the nature of what you love without utterly stagnating, too.

Ugh, trying to guilt anyone and everyone into holding an in-person con in 2020 is just beyond stupid and gross. I don't give a shit how much you want that "continuity," there are more important priorities! Yuck.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, and they handled it all really poorly. They refused to believe when Sherlock was having a moment. They could have hosted the first Nightvale tour, but turned it down. The extent to which they refuse to listen and act superior is off the charts.

Especially with their demographic, putting their ideals over everything to try to guilt people into coming in 2020 was just insane. I assume that con never happened, but I'm not in the spaces where I'd have the details. I'd love to know why this year is the final year, but again I don't want to wade into the spaces where I'd find the deets.

[mistressofmuses]

Ugh. As sympathetic as I can be toward frustration about fandom as it is now and all... ignoring stuff that was absolutely the modern/current face of exactly the genres that they were supposedly championing... They definitely handled that shit badly.

Yeah, I don't blame you for wanting to stay noped the hell away from anywhere that would be providing further details. It can be a shame when things that have had a really long history go away... but sometimes things deserve to shut down, and it sounds like it's been overdue in this case.

[olivermoss]

I want the deets so badly, but I know I'd have to wade through stuff I'd find upsetting. Also, my best bet would be facebook and no.

Yeah, them going away is overdue. It sucks because the con had actual endowments for things like bringing in filk artists every year, etc. A LOT of money way poured into long term investments in that con. IDK if anything else will pop up since the local comic con is so big. Maybe? Could be cool?

[mistressofmuses]

I hope that this shutting down leaves room for something better to flourish in its place. It does suck that there were a bunch of those kinds of long-term investments for something that squandered the opportunity to be something much better.

[olivermoss]

I am curious what's going to happen to all those programs, because they were endowed enough to spit out thousands a year... sometimes money very oddly spent. But, it was supposed to be a loooong term investment to protect traditions like filk. I wonder what is going to become of all that money

[mistressofmuses]

I definitely do wonder where that money will go... I'm a bit afraid that it'll go nowhere good. Can hope it goes to something else to support the same communities, but that also feels too optimistic considering.

[olivermoss]

I feel like this should be public info, but I cannot find anything on it

[mistressofmuses]

That does seem like something they should have provided a plan for. :/