Guadalajara.- Despite the precariousness of the job, the appearance of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the few royalties, violent attacks, censorship, persecution and exile.
Even, despite the oversupply of literary works and the competition, despite all this, it is written, authors coincided during the first table of the Mario Vargas Llosa Biennial that began this Thursday in memory of Raúl Padilla López, founder of the Guadalajara International Book Fair and promoter of this forum that celebrates the work of the Nobel Prize in Literature.
On the stage of the auditorium of the University Center for Administrative Economic Sciences, the authors Renato Cisneros (Peru), Olga Merino (Spain) and Sara Poot Herrera (Mexico), moderated by Giovanna Pollarolo (Peru), spoke about the limitations and shortcomings that they face in their trade on a daily basis.
Merino confessed that he has interacted with ChatGPT, which has questioned him about its own nature, but has also asked him if the arrival of AI-based writing platforms will replace the work of writers.
“Little machine, chat, answer me please, are you capable of answering frankly? He said yes, something that surprised me in a machine; I asked him, do you think that the machine, artificial intelligence, will oust us novelists? And the oracle of the machine said no, that we have a difficult time, but no,” said Merino.
Cisneros spoke of the precariousness of the trade. He recalled that the “White Book of the Writer”, a study carried out in 2019 to clarify the economic situation in which the authors live, makes a “pessimistic” account of this panorama.
“It is indicated that it is a precarious job, where there is a continuous dependence on subsidies, scholarships, aid, where the need to alternate two or three food jobs is also emphasized and where it is verified that there is a gap in terms of otherwise alarming genre.
“I think that 77 percent of those surveyed for that report acknowledge that they do not earn more than a thousand euros a year in copyright matters (just under 20,000 pesos) and only 16 percent are exclusively dedicated to writing; with that panorama of course that one writes and publishes despite these circumstances,” Cisneros exemplified.
The authors recalled the recent attack on Salman Rushdie, who lost an eye after being stabbed in New York by a religious extremist, as well as the persecution to which Nicaraguan authors Gioconda Belli and Sergio Ramírez have been subjected for being critical of the President of that country, Daniel Ortega. “Despite everything we write,” the authors reiterated.
For the third time, Guadalajara is the venue for the Mario Vargas Llosa Biennial. This meeting that began this Thursday and ends on Sunday, May 28, will bring together some thirty authors from countries such as Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Colombia, Spain and Germany.
#Writers #analyze #challenges #trade