Worries about the dark side of artificial intelligence are stirring up a lot of buzz at the world’s premier science-fiction convention, taking place this week in Seattle, and not just because intelligent machines are standard plot devices in sci-fi tales.
When the organizers of Seattle Worldcon 2025 acknowledged in April that ChatGPT was used to vet potential panelists for the event, it caused such an outcry that the organizers ended up issuing an apology and redoing the process without AI tools. The episode also inspired some writers and fans to organize a one-day, AI-free alternative conference called ConCurrent Seattle, which takes place on Thursday near Worldcon’s venue.
Frank Catalano, a former tech executive and GeekWire contributor who is participating in three Worldcon panels this week, said science-fiction writers and artists fear that generative AI tools are plagiarizing their works to create automated products. (Full disclosure: My own book, “The Case for Pluto,” is among the thousands of copyrighted works that were used to train Meta’s Llama 3 AI model.)
“For writers, AI is an existential issue,” Catalano said. “I think it understandably freaks writers out, especially science-fiction writers, to think that there are people talking that their work is obsolete because of technology they once wrote about.”
The concerns go far beyond job security for science-fiction writers. The broader debate was front and center today at the first of several Worldcon panels focusing on the tech world’s AI revolution.
