Blake Whiting - The Author - Does Not Exist

   I am still in the Comox Valley which is why I have not been doing much blogging. There are many better things to do, but it is cloudy this morning so I will produce something for those who are eagerly awaiting more prose from me, and for a few others who may be mildly curious about whether I still exist. I will finally get back to the subject of books.
   If the title has prompted you to search for "Blake Whiting", you will have found a baseball player and a lawyer and likely an obituary-or-two. You will not have found anything about the prolific author of the many books found on Amazon and elsewhere which appear under that name. Here are some samples from goodreads and more can be found on Amazon.

   I also have not been doing much reading while roaming around Vancouver Island, but I did notice an article and it is worth calling to your attention. If you are not interested in books, I will mention Artificial Intelligence (AI), which is the actual author of the books supposedly written by Blake Whiting. Who is behind Blake Whiting directing AI queries is not known at this point. Basically if one chooses a subject and a few books and articles related to it, AI can absorb the material and produce something which is not exactly plagiarism, nor is the resulting book actually  a 'new' one about the topic. It is best not to buy these books which are compiled from the work of real authors. Regard them as coal mine canaries since many more by other 'authors' will soon be available.

Source:
  "Who Is Blake Whiting?: The Most Astonishingly Productive Historian in Recent Times is Someone You’ll Never Meet," by Andrew Lawler, The American Scholar, April 16, 2026.
   "No living American historian is as prolific as Blake Whiting. In one week alone last fall, he published 13 books on a host of complex archaeological and historical subjects, ranging from the collapse of Near Eastern civilizations in 1177 BCE to the recent discovery of a huge Silk Road–era city in Central Asia.
   Amazon sells his hardbacks for $28.99, the paperbacks for $20.99, and the Kindle versions for a bargain $7.99. What you can’t buy from Amazon at any price, however, is Blake Whiting’s CV. Though the books claim to be copyrighted in his name, you won’t find an author picture or bio, nor will you find his website or Instagram. He does not belong to the faculty of any college or university, and he is unknown to those academics he cites in his books—which are not actually copyrighted.
   Whiting, as you have guessed, is neither historian nor human. His fake persona is harbinger of an alarming trend threatening disaster to academics and journalists alike.
   I know this all too well; I am a science and history author who has published extensively on many of the subjects covered in Whiting’s books. I have written magazine features that have been clearly reshuffled, reorganized, and supplemented with other freely available material to masquerade as the unique work of “Blake Whiting.” This is not plagiarism in the old-fashioned sense, in which a few sentences or paragraphs are lifted from a previously published work. This is word-laundering on a truly industrial scale, aided and abetted by one of the world’s largest corporations. Using AI tools and a pseudonym, unknown culprits are now profiting from my work and that of my colleagues."

Artificial Intelligence for the Unintelligent

 A.I. For Dummies - That Would Include Me
   If, like me, you are confused by a 'word' like "ChatGPT", or feel very small when the subject of large language models surfaces, then this post is for you. Or, if you are puzzled by headlines, such as these, then this post is for you: "Tens of Thousands of White-Collar Jobs Are Vanishing as AI Starts to Bite," or "From Mexico to Ireland: Fury Mounts Over a Global A.I. Frenzy". Plus, there are even more puzzling ones about "Sycophantic A.I. Chatbots" and "A.I. Hallucinations". Even the headlines that are pleasing (for a very small some), can be puzzling for the rest of us: 'Nvidia Is Now Worth $5 Trillion as It Consolidates Power in A.I. Boom." Or, maybe you have heard of this book and are worried, because the title clearly suggests we should be -- If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All. 
   Well, I did recently see two cartoons which illustrate clearly to a dummy like me, that there are two things AI relies upon that we should really be concerned about:

1.

2.
 

Sources (and more)

  The top cartoon is from The Guardian. The bottom one is from a New Yorker. This also is from the New Yorker:" A single data center can use as much power as the city of Philadelphia. And they’re popping up everywhere. These sprawling buildings, filled with rows of computing equipment, are the factories of the A.I. economy; they power all those mundane chatbot searches, sucking up tons of energy in the process."