Model Benchmarking, Part 3
AI Ethics. 1,100 words, 5 minute read. With ChatGPT o3.
Pulse 1 – Error 404: Prize Not Found
The notification hit Lia Mercado’s smartwatch like a skipped heartbeat:
HUGO & NEBULA BAN AI‑ASSISTED FICTION. EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY.
Across the bullpen, status lights on the office mini‑server blinked steady green—mocking her sudden arrhythmia. Lia toggled to her author list, all twelve names floating like spacecraft suddenly told space itself was illegal.
Benji Tran, veteran agent and part‑time optimist, emerged from behind a stack of galleys. “Heard the drumbeat?”
“It’s less drum and more firing squad.” Lia wiped a coffee ring off her desk with the side of her hand. “Half my clients used a model for something. Titles. Fight choreography. A single metaphor. The committees just built a wall and back‑dated the bricks.”
Benji offered his trademark upside‑down sticky note—opportunity—then glanced at the pulsing server LED. “Tech paves new roads. Awards prefer cul‑de‑sacs. Let’s build a highway.”
Pulse 2 – Co‑Author, Co‑Conspirator
Ten minutes later, Lia queued a private video call. Keenan Walsh joined first, his Brooklyn loft lit by early afternoon sun. He dragged a document into view—chapter fifteen, tracked changes glowing.
“Look.” He highlighted a paragraph where a fight at lunar low‑g felt both graceful and deadly. “Draft B: pure Keenan. Draft C: Mother‑Tongue.exe offered verbs I never would’ve reached. I fused them.” He zoomed on two words—petal‑shot thrust, silk‑fall dodge. “Cut them and the scene flatlines.”
Masha Beaudoin’s face materialized from Paris, eyebrow raised. “How many ‘silk‑falls’ before they call you silicon?”
“If the ban counts that verb as doping, I’m done,” Keenan said.
Lia caught her own reflection in the screen, jaw clenched. She clicked mute, whispered, “Show, don’t hide,” then unmuted. “We pivot to radical disclosure. Wear the process like neon.”
Keenan’s laugh was brittle. “Transparency sounds noble till the torches come out.”
Benji slid into frame beside Lia, marker in hand. On the conference‑room glass he scrawled: Anthropies—quill crossing fiber‑optic cable.
Masha tilted her head. “New trophy?”
“New telescope,” Benji said. “So readers can spot the nebula, not ban the night sky.”
Pulse 3 – The Leak
Three weeks, five op‑eds, and one ethically questionable leak later, the scandal erupted on a live‑stream debate. A leaked manuscript set side‑by‑side with a model training shard glowed behind the moderator: uncanny overlap, syntax fingerprints like matching DNA.
In the greenroom, Lia rehearsed intros while Keenan paced, palms sweating. “What if they drag me next? I used the same prototype last summer.”
“You’ll tell them,” Lia said, adjusting his lapel mic. “Then you’ll show the sentence you kept, the eight you rewrote, the ten you deleted. Let the audience watch the surgery.”
The stage lights lifted; the moderator introduced “human author Keenan Walsh” and “ethical AI researcher Dr. Pal.” The server racks flanking the dais blinked green, matching the anxiety thudding in Lia’s chest.
Mid‑panel, Dr. Pal gestured to the projection. “All this subterfuge proves? Bans breed better disguises. Imagine if the author had simply annotated, ‘Lines 12‑20 originated from a model.’ Scandal averted.”
Keenan inhaled. Cameras tracked the rise of his shoulders. “Actually,” he said, voice cracking but steady, “I am that author.” Gasps rippled. He tapped the offending lines. “These verbs were the model. I rebuilt the rest around them. They’re mine now—the way clay is still clay after a sculptor’s hands.”
Silence, then tentative applause—first row, then balcony, like lights flickering on across a city grid. Lia felt her pulse sync to the server LEDs: flash, flash, flash.
Pulse 4 – Launch Day Confession
The inaugural Anthropies ceremony took over a repurposed newspaper press room—machines of one era hosting the birth of another. Overhead, retired iron rollers framed holographic constellations; their cold metal smelled faintly of ink ghosts.
Benji fussed with uplights while Lia stood behind a podium, notes shaking. She’d volunteered to open with a welcome, but the real speech sat folded in her jacket pocket: a confession.
Inside that pocket was screenshot proof—months ago, under deadline, Lia had asked a model to pitch three email subject lines for a young‑adult client. She chose one, tweaked two adjectives, hit send. A trivial assist. Yet tonight’s charter demanded disclosure from everyone involved in the bookmaking chain—editors, marketers, even agents.
Benji stopped beside her, eyes soft. “Heartbeat’s quick.”
“So is the LED,” she said, nodding toward the server racks—green lights pulsing like metronomes.
“What scares you more,” he asked, “the truth or the reaction?”
“Both,” she admitted.
“Then say it fast,” he smiled, “and let them clap or not.”
Lia stepped to the mic. Twenty rows of writers, agents, coders, plus thousands on the stream. She cleared her throat.
“Before we hand out any shiny objects,” she began, “I need to log a credit. Last October, faced with a subject‑line crisis, I asked a language model for help. It suggested, I pruned, we shipped. The client loved it. I never reported that assist—till now.”
The room held its breath. In the pause, the server LEDs blinked once—green—like they, too, were waiting judgment.
Lia continued: “Tonight we start fresh. These servers? Partners. Not puppeteers, not phantoms. Their glow reminds us creativity is dialogue.”
From the wings, Keenan lifted a placeholder trophy—acrylic star shot through with copper circuits. Lia read the inscription aloud: FOR WORK THAT PROVES THE GALAXY IS WIDE ENOUGH FOR MORE THAN ONE KIND OF VOICE.
Applause rolled forward, slow but resolute, until even the press‑room rafters vibrated. Lia felt her chest loosen, heartbeat steadying to the server’s rhythm—flash, flash, flash.
Pulse 5 – Afterglow
Hours later, the party dissolved into clusters. Lia wandered past cold canapé trays, found Keenan leaning against an idle printing press, trophy underarm like a guitar.
“Thought they’d boo,” he admitted.
“They reserved that for the cash bar,” Lia smiled. “Turns out people like watching someone walk the plank and keep walking.”
Keenan tapped the copper circuits in the trophy. “Funny—the etching was done by a CNC router. Machine on machine.” He offered the award for her to hold; the metal felt warmer than expected.
From the balcony, Benji called down, “Portal reports one hundred eighty submissions and counting.” His grin reflected green LED staccato.
Lia pictured each manuscript arriving with footnotes—Line 473 suggested by Gemini‑5, Scene break proposed by MuseKit—glimmering diary entries of collaboration. A cartographer’s dream of stars.
She handed the trophy back. “Ready for the sequel?”
Keenan laughed. “Only if the universe writes half.”
Somewhere inside the racks, cooling fans spun like distant applause. Their soft whirr braided with human chatter until neither could be separated from the other—signal and noise, code and heartbeat, story still pulsing.
—End.