I’ll just come out and say it: I predict that the world’s last Worldcon will happen before 2034, and that after that, the convention (and possibly the Hugo Awards themselves) will be permanently disbanded. That’s what I think will be the ultimate consequence of the latest “scandal” regarding Seattle Worldcon’s use of ChatGPT, and the anti-AI madness currently sweeping the science fiction community on Bluesky.
If you haven’t been following the “scandal,” you ought to check out Jon Del Arroz’s coverage of it. He’s definitely partisan when it comes to politics and fandom, but he’s neutral on the subject of AI, or as neutral as you’re going to find, especially in writerly circles.
But here’s the TL;DW: the people organizing Worldcon 2025 in Seattle decided to use ChatGPT to help them decide which authors and panelists to put on which panels. This triggered a bunch of authors and panelists who are opposed to generative AI, simply on principle. Some of these authors—including Jeff VanderMeer, who is up for a Hugo award—have bowed out, while others have called for resignations and apologies. Many of the volunteer staff have also stepped down, exacerbating the staffing shortage—which is why the convention relied on ChatGPT in the first place. And apparently over on Bluesky, the scandal is taking on a life of its own, with everyone working themselves up to a massive frenzy over the subject.
My own opinion of the “scandal” is this: it isn’t a freaking scandal! Whatever your opinion on AI-assisted writing, using ChatGPT as an aid to research panelists is totally above-board and a legitimate use of AI. To disagree with that is to say that there is no ethical use-case for generative AI whatsoever, which is hypocritical and absurd—unless, of course, you’re still writing your books on a manual typewriter and submitting them to your publisher via the US postal service. Or using WordStar, if your name is G.R.R. Martin and you’re the last person on earth who “writes” with that defunct software (putting “writes” in quotation marks, since we all know by now that Martin isn’t actually writing anything).
But it isn’t the “scandal” itself that interests me, so much as what the fallout will likely be. Ever since the Sad Puppies debacle in 2015 (and arguably long before that), Worldcon has been dominated by the wokest fringe of SF&F fandom, and it’s been an open secret that the Hugo awards themselves are controlled by the publishers, largely for marketing purposes.
So at this point, the only things really keeping the whole Worldcon/Hugo charade going are 1) woke authors who use the convention to manufacture clout for their failing careers, because they wouldn’t otherwise have a platform, and 2) woke publishers who use the awards to manufacture clout for their poorly-selling books, because they don’t actually know how to market books effectively (at least, not to readers—libraries are a whole other subejct deserving of its own discussion, because there is a genuine scandal there). Once those two things dry up, and all of the ruin has been exhausted from these institutions (ie Worldcon and the Hugos), I really do think they will collapse and go away.
That’s what I find so fascinating about this scandal: it is so utterly toxic and absurd on its face that it’s going to do permanent damage to Worldcon and the Hugos. The writers of the rising generation who will one day dominate the field are all playing around with these AI tools right now, and doing really interesting things with them. Meanwhile, most of the authors who are screaming about AI on Bluesky right now will either be dead or irrelevant (or both) in the next 20 years. And yes, Mike Glyer, you can quote me on that.
Seriously, though: if the Worldcon community is so vociferiously opposed to a legitimate use-case of ChatGPT—namely, to alleviate the already overwhelming burdens being carried by the volunteer staff—AND they continue to be absolutely toxic about it online… who in their right mind would want to be a part of that community? And since the only thing keeping the whole charade going is its ability to manufacture clout, that’s why I think its years are numbered—and likely in the single digits.
On the plus side, if/when the Hugos finally die, I won’t have to read any more crappy woke books to be able to say I’ve read (or DNFed) every Hugo award-winning novel.
WorldCon became dead to me after Sad Puppies.