cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/39685922

Earlier this year I got fired and replaced by a robot. And the managers who made the decision didn’t tell me – or anyone else affected by the change – that it was happening.

The gig I lost started as a happy and profitable relationship with Cosmos Magazine – Australia’s rough analog of New Scientist. I wrote occasional features and a column that appeared every three weeks in the online edition.

It didn’t. In February – just days after I’d submitted a column – I and all other freelancers for Cosmos received an email informing us that no more submissions would be accepted.

It’s a rare business that can profitably serve both science and the public, and Cosmos was no exception: I understand it was kept afloat with financial assistance. When that funding ended, Cosmos ran into trouble.

Accepting the economic realities of our time, I mourned the loss of a great outlet for my more scientific investigations, and moved on.

It turns out that wasn’t quite the entire story, though. Six months later, on August 8, a friend texted with news from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. In summary (courtesy of the ABC):

Cosmos Magazine used a grant to build a ‘custom AI service’ to generate articles for its website.

The AI service relied on content from contributors who were not consulted about the project and, as freelancers, retained copyright over their work.

Contributors, former editors and a former CEO, including two co-founders, have criticized the publishing decision.

Cosmos had been caught out using generative AI to compose articles for its website – and using a grant from a nonprofit that runs Australia’s most prestigious journalism awards to do it. That’s why my work – writing articles for that website – had so suddenly vanished.