Philosopher Daniel Wodak writes:

I was wondering if you had any advice on the following issue, which might be a good topic for your blog. 

CUP asked me to sign an addendum authorizing them to in effect use the text of my Element in training LLMs, with the promise that I’d get 20% of unspecified royalties. This strikes me as a bad deal, though better informed people might disagree (perhaps it’s a sunk cost that the text will be used to train LLMs, for example). I expect many authors will face the question of whether to sign such agreements, and could benefit from advice about whether to do so.  

My own view is that helping LLMs improve just helps them enable our students to cheat more effectively, and thus wastes our time as teachers, as well as impairing our students’ cognitive capacities. Until such times as the possible benefits of LLMs are socialized, I would recommend a policy of total non-cooperation. (And the 20% of “unspecified royalties” will be, I’m rather confident, a trivial figure in any case.)

What do readers think? Signed comments only, i.e., a full name and a valid email address (the email address will not appear).