Ok, so that was unexpected.

It wasn’t unexpected to receive a random email from an unknown sender who presented themselves as a New York law firm. Just another chunk of junk mail to chuck. But just for the heck of it I decided to read the missive before dumping it in the digital dustbin.

The email’s headline trumpeted in a bold font:

Notice of $1.5 Billion Proposed Class Action Settlement Between Authors & Publishers and Anthropic PBC

This was followed in italics by:

A federal court authorized this Notice. This is not junk mail, an advertisement, or a solicitation from a lawyer.

Aha! That’s exactly the type of thing a scammer would say! The next part, I knew, would involve a wild story about a Nigerian prince and a request for my checking account number, my mother’s maiden name, my Social Security digits, and the color of my socks. I may have been born at night, but I wasn’t born last night.

Fully expecting to uncover a scummy scam, I did some research. Numerous reputable news outlets confirmed the email’s description of the lawsuit and its settlement.

This prompted a closer reading of the email, which revealed some intriguing details. For starters, it said that the settlement was the result of a class-action lawsuit which claimed that Anthropic had pirated copyrighted works that it used to train Claude, its artificial intelligence chatbot.

A searchable link was provided. And there among all those stolen copyrighted works was my book, “Dear County Agent Guy.” That was totally unexpected.

Before I could start planning how to spend all that loot — a beach house on Maui, a villa in Tuscany, a new air freshener for my old pickup — I studied the email’s details. Sadly, my share of the settlement will only be about $3,000. It seems that I’ll have to split that $1.5 billion with 500,000 other authors. Phooey.

The chiseling doesn’t end there. The law firm mentions that they will get 25% of the settlement plus “the deduction of any costs, fees, and expenses.” What are some of these “expenses”? Do they include such things as five-martini lunches or hiring personal masseuses for the lawyers’ cats? Inquiring minds want to know.

My publisher will get a cut, and my literary agent will want her commission. And the IRS will likely be standing at the end of the rainbow with a sheaf of forms, holding out an expectant hand.

I have tried to avoid AI as much as possible. I’d never heard of Anthropic or Claude. The fact that they would use my book as a language learning tool is enough to make me question the “intelligence” part of this particular AI model.

For starters, I don’t hold an English major degree; I barely made it through high school. I’m just a grungy farmer who messes around at his computer’s keyboard. My sole college experience took place in my distant youth when I attended a party at Hanson Hall. And I doubt that the university hands out credits for that sort of thing.

Did anyone at Anthropic actually read “Dear County Agent Guy”? A quick perusal of its chapter titles would reveal such literary gems as “Deep Diaper Doo-doo” and “Never Sleep with a Baby Chick.” Some of the more riveting stories in the book involve such things as using baling twine to help a Holstein heifer deliver her calf, teaching our young sons how to fry a tick on an electric fence, and watching in awe as a 120-pound lady veterinarian tipped a 1,200-pound cow.

This is only my opinion, but I think Anthropic should have been pickier.

It took an army of lawyers to teach the Big Tech company something that every schoolchild already knows: thou shalt not steal. The slogan “move fast and break things” might sound excellent in theory, but I’ve learned that it’s not always that great in practice. I have the busted knuckles and the scars to prove it.

My understanding is that Anthropic has inked deals with major tech giants including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Nvidia. I hate to think of the amount of havoc Claude might have wreaked if he had used a quote lifted directly from my book. A good example would be “It’s automatic; she can’t help it. All girls have to give kisses when you blow in their ears.”

The market value of Anthropic is currently pegged at $350 billion. That $1.5 billion settlement is like the lint from the bottom of their pocket.

I expect that my share of the settlement might be enough to buy a cup of coffee. But first I need to get that new air freshener.

— Jerry’s book, “Dear County Agent Guy”, can be found at www.workman.comand in bookstores nationwide.