Generative AI Policies
Convergence Magazine prides itself on being a home for critical reflection and exchange among the most strategic organizers and thinkers on the Left. We believe that good thinking happens through sharpening our ideas together, and therefore publishing articles that are created in whole or part with synthetically generated (sometimes referred to as “generative AI”) text is antithetical to our goals as a publication.
The process of writing offers us an opportunity to clarify our positions, strengthen our arguments, and consider alternative perspectives – all things that “generative AI” simply cannot do for us. While writing can be time-consuming and even frustrating at times, this is why we value creating slow media. We don’t aspire to ride the news cycle, and appreciate when writers give their work the persistent attention it deserves.
Synthetically generated text reduces writing to a set of least-common-denominators through the clever use of statistics and huge data sets, many of which include ill-gotten data scraped from the web. Developing a voice as a writer is a key craft in communicating our ideas: something which is the product of careful practice and can’t be replicated in this way. Your perspective, your ideas, and your voice as a writer are critical to the conversations we strive to foster.
What this means for writers
By submitting a piece for consideration, you are representing to Convergence Magazine that you and any named co-authors are the sole original authors of the writing contained therein. You warrant that text included in the article was not created by a synthetic text generator (“generative AI model”).
Our small editorial team makes every effort to ensure that the material that we publish is crafted by human beings. As editors, we think our job is to tighten up arguments, push where they are squishy, and help you present the best version of your insight to your readers.
What this means for other content on our website
We also value the creative labor of artists and designers, and believe our visual style and brand is part of what distinguishes Convergence Magazine from other outlets working today. Our lead illustrations are created by a group of skilled artists and designers and are created using a variety of digital and analog art methods, but are all made by humans in one way or another.
Music used in our podcasts, from intro tracks to bumper audio, is licensed either directly from artists (often under Creative Commons licenses or similar “copyleft” licensing) or via a stock content bundler. We make serious efforts to ensure these audio elements are also human-created.
Limiting large language model use in other areas of our work
We make an effort to restrict the access “generative AI” tools that are baked into the tech we use on a daily basis have to our data and information, as access to such data presents risks to security and the integrity of our work.
This doesn’t mean that there are zero uses of this type of technology. After all, many of the same techniques that are used to leverage large language models for “generative AI” are used in tools like spellcheck and speech-to-text transcription.
An example of a place where our team may use language models is to generate an initial transcript of podcast episodes. Where possible, we make an effort to edit these for accuracy, especially when it comes to the spelling of proper names, and make every effort to ensure that the use of such tools does not compromise the security or integrity of our work, either.
If you have any questions or feedback about this policy, please contact the Publisher.