Author Mia Tsai has announced ConCurrent Seattle, a one-day SFFH con intended to be an alternative program to Worldcon, will be held Thursday, August 14 at the ACT Theatre in downtown Seattle across from the Sheraton.
“ConCurrent was created as a response to Worldcon’s use of ChatGPT in the panelist vetting process,” says Tsai. “The use of ChatGPT at Worldcon has been a breach of trust in an industry of writers whose work has been stolen to train genAI.”
The ConCurrent website contends, “The event is not intended as a replacement for WorldCon, and it is the organizers’ hope that people will be able to attend both without judgment in the spirit of the connection and discovery that has helped the SFFH community thrive.”
And, “ConCurrent’s aim is to provide programming only, with a focus on what is currently happening in the SFFH genre.”
Two participants already advertised are Rebecca Roanhorse and Andrea Stewart.
A crowdfunding appeal has been launched to raise $5,000 to pay for the venue and other expenses. At this writing $1,770 of donations have come in, of which over $500 was contributed by author David Levine.
Business Meeting chair Jesi Lipp provided visuals to familiarize viewers with the basic appearance of their participation screen and the way virtual platform provider, Lumi Global will facilitate the Zoom sessions. Lipp described how the chair will be able to identify people’s requests to speak for or against motions, points of order, and other claims of parliamentary priority.
Lumi Global’s services will cost $20,000, said Lipp, some part being paid by the Scalzi Family Foundation.
Seattle’s decision to hold the Business Meeting in a virtual format for the first time ever is touted as a way to “open participation to both attending and virtual attending members of the Worldcon, and hopefully enable broad participation without the need to sacrifice other convention activities.” Today’s Town Hall drew around 42 participants, the vast majority Seattle committee division and department heads and staff, the rest identifiable business meeting regulars and a few others.
One Town Hall participant challenged the legitimacy of convening a virtual Business Meeting, citing WSFS Constitution section 5.1.1: “Business Meetings of WSFS shall be held at advertised times at each Worldcon”. Business Meeting chair Jesi Lipp said that the committee had the authority to “define their own boundaries” – which is to say, give “at each Worldcon” a novel meaning. Lipp indicated their decision would be issued as one of the rulings of the chair at the virtual meeting, and said that the meeting has the procedural ability to challenge a ruling of the chair, and if it votes to overrule the chair there would just be an in-person meeting at Seattle. (Presently, the only in-person session planned for is the one where Site Selection voting results will be announced.) This was an unexpected concession.
While only Seattle 2025 WSFS members admitted to the Zoom session will be able to participate and vote, the virtual Business Meeting will be publicly livestreamed, and also recorded, with the livestream recordings made available on YouTube. Chair Jesi Lipp noted that if the meeting enters executive session – for example, to receive the report of the Committee on Investigation into the Chengdu Hugo Awards vote which was appointed at Glasgow 2024 – that portion of the meeting will not be livestreamed.
Business Meeting sessions will be supported by a Discord channel where people can carry on side discussions. The Discord will only be available for use for a number of hours beginning before the meeting and sometime afterwards, and made read-only the rest of the time. (Lipp pointed out that people obviously still have the use of other social media venues which they already use to discuss WSFS issues.) The Discord will be subject to the convention’s Code of Conduct.
The deadline to submit items for the Business Meeting agenda is June 4. Send them to bm-submit@seattlein2025.org.
The dates of the virtual Business Meetings are:
Friday, July 4, 9 a.m.–12:30 p.m., Pacific Daylight Time (UTC-7) Sunday, July 13, 9 a.m.–12:30 p.m., Pacific Daylight Time (UTC-7) Saturday, July 19, 9 a.m.–12:30 p.m., Pacific Daylight Time (UTC-7) Friday, July 25, 9 a.m.–12:30 p.m., Pacific Daylight Time (UTC-7)
Seattle Worldcon 2025 chair Kathy Bond posted a new “Message From the Chair” on May 13 following up last week’s statement about the way ChatGPT was used in the panelist selection process.
Last week, I promised an update about the progress Seattle Worldcon 2025 has made regarding our next steps related to remedying our mistakes related to the use of ChatGPT in panelist vetting. Much of this update can be summed up as “we’re waiting to hear back from the people we have invited to help.”
Regarding re-vetting, we have invited two people, new to our team, to join, and we are waiting to hear back from them. We are still searching for at least three to four more people to join that team. If you would like to volunteer, please email feedback@seattlein2025.org. This new team will be working with our existing program team but be reporting to the chair.
We have reached out to a team of two people with prior Worldcon programming experience to audit our program process and the remedial steps. We are still waiting to hear back from them.
We have processed all refund requests that we have received; former members will be receiving them this week.
Our next update will be once we have identified who is helping with re-vetting and performing our program audit or in three weeks, whichever comes sooner.
Bond says ChatGPT was not used in deciding who to invite as a panelist, it was used “in the discovery of material to review after panelist selection had occurred.”
Morgan adds, “This process has only been used for panelists appearing on site in Seattle; panelists for our Virtual program have not yet been selected.”
Bond stresses that “ChatGPT was used only for one tailored task that was then followed by a human review and evaluation of the information,” and that “no selected panelist was excluded based on information obtained through AI without human review and no selected panelist was chosen by AI.”
As part of their remediation, the Seattle committee is redoing the part of the program process that used ChatGPT, with that work being performed by new volunteers from outside their current team.
Morgan also makes her own apology (the chair published her own several days ago).
I want to apologize specifically for our use of ChatGPT in the final vetting of selected panelists as explained below. OpenAI, as a company, has produced its tool by stealing from artists and writers in a way that is certainly immoral, and maybe outright illegal. When it was called to my attention that the vetting team was using this tool, it seemed they had found a solution to a large problem. I should have re-directed them to a different process. Using that tool was a mistake. I approved it, and I am sorry. As will be explained later, we are embarking on the process of re-doing the vetting stage for every invited panelist, completely without the use of generative AI tools.
And Morgan has provided the text of the ChatGPT query that was used in the vetting process.
The committee will be making their next update about the subject on May 13.
The Seattle Worldcon 2025’s WSFS Division Head Cassidy, Hugo Administrator Nicholas Whyte, and Deputy Hugo Administrator Esther MacCallum-Stewart today announced their resignations from the committee in the following statement:
Effective immediately, Cassidy (WSFS DH), Nicholas Whyte (Hugo Administrator) and Esther MacCallum-Stewart (Deputy Hugo Administrator) resign from their respective roles from the Seattle 2025 Worldcon. We do not see a path forward that enables us to make further contributions at this stage.
We want to reaffirm that no LLMs or generative AI have been used in the Hugo Awards process at any stage. Our nomination software NomNom is well-documented on GitHub for anyone to be able to review. We firmly believe in transparency for the awards process and for the Finalists who have been nominated. We believe that the Hugo Awards exist to celebrate our community which is filled with artists, authors, and fans who adore the works of our creative SFF community. Our belief in the mission of the Hugo Awards, and Worldcon in general has guided our actions in the administration of these awards, and now guides our actions in leaving the Seattle Worldcon.
Cassidy
Nicholas Whyte
Esther MacCallum-Stewart
The Seattle Worldcon’s WSFS Division administers the Hugo Awards, Business Meeting, and Site Selection. The committee’s remaining WSFS Division leadership includes Deputy Division Heads Kathryn Duval and Rosemary Parks (who is also Site Selection Coordinator).
Those who had registered for the online event received notifications from Eventbrite, and the announcement was posted in social media.
The town halls are designed for members to ask questions about the business meeting process. The fate of the second town hall announced for May 25 is unknown.
Kathy Bond today posted an “Apology and Response From Chair” at the Seattle Worldcon 2025 website to address the brewing controversy about the committee using ChatGPT as part of its process for screening program participants.
First and foremost, as chair of the Seattle Worldcon, I sincerely apologize for the use of ChatGPT in our program vetting process. Additionally, I regret releasing a statement that did not address the concerns of our community. My initial statement on the use of AI tools in program vetting was incomplete, flawed, and missed the most crucial points. I acknowledge my mistake and am truly sorry for the harm it caused.
There is much more that needs to be done to address this harm, but it will take some time to develop a comprehensive response and fuller apology over the weekend. We will release a response by Tuesday of next week that provides a transparent explanation of the process that was used, answers more of the questions and concerns we have received, and openly outlines our next steps.
The fallout from Seattle Worldcon 2025 Chair Kathy Bond’s public statement attempting to defend the use of ChatGPT as part of the screening process for program participants now includes Yoon Ha Lee’s rejection of his status as a Lodestar Award finalist:
SEATTLE 2025 SOCIAL MEDIA. The original Seattle Worldcon 2025: “Statement From Worldcon Chair” post on Bluesky continues to be a magnet for criticisms of the committee, shaming, demands for resignations, a call for all panelists to reject their invitations, and ridicule of the Worldcon in general, which can be read at the link.
Back on Bluesky, Jasmine Gower asserts “Their own Privacy Policy does NOT give them permission to share your personal data (even ‘just’ your name) with genAI”, and says after contacting the con to object, they are getting a full refund of their membership.
… I also want to express that the disconnect between the concom and the larger SF community on this issue is, to me, even more concerning than the narrower technical decisions. The ethical, environmental, and practical issues with AI are loudly, widely, and routinely discussed in the science fiction community, with many artists directly impacted by AI plagiarism; community members of all backgrounds frequently voice their positions against it. Even very slight familiarity with this topic—on social media, as discussed at other conventions, at all levels of publication from professional journalism to personal blogs—would have warned against using AI for this purpose and predicted this community response. Whether or not Seattle’s vetting program was practically or ethically sound, the decision to use ChatGPT scripts, and the language in this disclosure, speak to either ignorance of or disregard for an intense opinion vocally held by a very large portion of the SF community.
I was—and still am—incredibly delighted and honored to be a Hugo finalist. And, as someone who rarely gets to meet other fans in person, and who can rarely afford to travel to Worldcon, I was incredibly excited to attend and participate this year. It’s personally crushing that, unless the concom takes major steps to address this controversy, this will be another Worldcon that will always have an asterisk next to it, another Worldcon that unnecessarily creates a lot of bad feelings and bad blood in the community. Whether or not it’s accurate to the situation, “the Worldcon where panelists were selected by the racist plagiarism machine” is going to be what it’s remembered for if significant steps are not taken, and quickly.
I urge the concom to take the reputational damage being incurred extremely seriously, and not to dismiss the practical concerns about how LLM usage affected panelist selection. I ask that you look at the response to this statement—on all channels—equally seriously, to see the level of anger, hurt, and division it is causing. In a year when the host country’s institutional bigotry is already significantly affecting who will or can attend Worldcon, it feels particularly important to set this right…
I am… currently mulling my options concerning the whole mess. I don’t particularly want to go the rest of my life and my career with “AI VETTED” hanging around my neck like a scarlet letter, especially after I’ve been so vocal in disavowing it, of distancing myself from it, in stating unequivocally that I do not want or accept the presence of AI anywhere near my creative endeavours. I am in contact with a number of other authors who feel the same way.
Shawn Marier, who runs Seattle’s film festival, stood up for the Worldcon’s use of LLM.
David Gerrold is another rare instance of someone who supports the committee.
More than one writer raised the spectre of ChatGPT’s reputation for racial bias in its results.
One commenter feels the skillset of Worldcon runners needs to be expanded.
The present controversy is also feeding on the discontent which follows when some applicants are not selected as panelists, and the various ideas that notability, awards, or longevity in the field should govern who is picked.
… Let’s talk WC for just a moment. I haven’t attended many, usually because they happen close to Dragon Con, which is a place I do most of my business for the following year. But I wanted to do WC this year, not only because it’s a city I love, but I have a big release from Arc Manor Publishers coming out that, for the first time, might be something the Hugos might consider worthy of notice. This was important to me, being there, among my friends, my peers, my publisher. So, I submitted my application, expecting the best.
When I got my denial, it was from Sunny Jim, who I’d hoped had learned that I wasn’t that same naïve baby-author of the past. I also found it weird, having seen so many posts about international authors cancelling their memberships because their afraid to fly here (that’s a can of worms I don’t want to open here, and please, please don’t in the comments). that they didn’t have space for more people on programming.
But then it comes out that the programming staff didn’t even vet the authors until after their names through an LLM program, which is notoriously unreliable. I don’t know if I was kicked then, or when they did their “review” later, or if I made it to the final round before being voted off the island. There’s a lot that’s unclear about this process. All I know is that I’ve heard from friends that they got on programming with a lot fewer credits than I have, and don’t have a major, Hugo-worthy release coming out later this year. They didn’t attend NWC and did everything that was expected of them to earn their consideration. And now this frickin’ AI bullcrap after being one of the tens of thousands of authors to have the majority of their work stolen and loaded up into similar programs?
I know every WorldCon ConCom starts anew, and you can’t blame them for past mistakes. I agree. The problem is, the new committee is so focused on not repeating the mistakes of the last committee that they leave themselves open to new mistakes. This was a doozy!
I have a flight, I have a hotel, and I have a membership, but all the excitement is gone. There’s an empty feeling inside where once there were possibilities. Yes, I can still attend, network, promote. None of that has been taken away from me. But being on programming, showcasing everything you’ve learned and accomplished in the years since you last attended a WC is important. It’s validation. And yes, I still get that from Dragoncon, as well. And the many other cons I attend. And every time I sell something new, and every time I do the big shows like San Diego Comic Con, etc. But my heart wanted this. I debuted at Denvention in 2008. I got my current agent at Kansas City. I wanted this.
But it’s very possible a computer, not a living being, said No….
Seattle Worldcon 2025 Chair Kathy Bond today issued a public statement attempting to defend the use of ChatGPT as part of the screening process for program participants. The comments have been highly negative.
…We received more than 1,300 panelist applicants for Seattle Worldcon 2025. Building on the work of previous Worldcons, we chose to vet program participants before inviting them to be on our program. We communicated this intention to applicants in the instructions of our panelist interest form.
In order to enhance our process for vetting, volunteer staff also chose to test a process utilizing a script that used ChatGPT. The sole purpose of using this LLM was to automate and aggregate the usual online searches for participant vetting, which can take up to 10–30 minutes per applicant as you enter a person’s name, plus the search terms one by one. Using this script drastically shortened the search process by finding and aggregating sources to review.
Specifically, we created a query, including a requirement to provide sources, and entered no information about the applicant into the script except for their name. As generative AI can be unreliable, we built in an additional step for human review of all results with additional searches done by a human as necessary. An expert in LLMs who has been working in the field since the 1990s reviewed our process and found that privacy was protected and respected, but cautioned that, as we knew, the process might return false results.
The results were then passed back to the Program division head and track leads. Track leads who were interested in participants provided additional review of the results. Absolutely no participants were denied a place on the program based solely on the LLM search. Once again, let us reiterate that no participants were denied a place on the program based solely on the LLM search.
Using this process saved literally hundreds of hours of volunteer staff time, and we believe it resulted in more accurate vetting after the step of checking any purported negative results….
On April 23, the 2025 Hugo Awards voter packet became available for download by WSFS Members of the Seattle 2025 Worldcon. The packet is an electronic collection which helps voters become better informed about the works and creators on the ballot. Works which are included have been made available through the generosity of finalists and their publishers.
The Hugo Voter Packet will be available for download until the voting deadline on July 23 at 11:59 p.m. PDT. Voters can make as many changes as they wish to their ballot until the deadline.
The voter packet contains complete texts of many Hugo-nominated works, preview versions of some works, and directions for finding some finalists’ works online. Some items have been made available through NetGalley, which requires a user account for access (registration is free).
The packet contains all of the finalists in these categories: Best Novel, Best Novella, Best Novelette, Best Short Story, Best Related Work, and Best Poem.
As for the other categories:
Best Series. Excerpts (or single works in a series) are provided.
Best Graphic Story or Comic. Complete versions of five finalists and an excerpt of the sixth are provided.
Best Dramatic Presentation: Long Form. Only three finalists provided anything, trailers and images in two cases, and a link to view the entire movie Wicked.
Best Dramatic Presentation: Short Form. Complete episodes of Fallout, plus the two Doctor Who and two Star Trek: Lower Decks finalists are provided. The sixth finalists did not respond.
Best Game or Interactive Work. In addition to other material, four of the finalists have included information on how to request an evaluation code to play the game.
Best Editor: Short Form. Most finalists have accompanied their statements with samples of edited stories. Brozek and Strahan have included complete copies of anthologies.
Best Editor: Long Form. Finalists have submitted statements, and in three cases copies of completed books.
Best Semiprozine. Samples of works from issues.
Best Fanzine. Finalists have provided various articles, excerpt Journey Planet has provided all eligible issues.
Best Fancast. Finalists have provided multiple episodes.
Best Fan Writer. Finalists have provided an introduction and multiple articles.
Best Professional Artist and Best Fan Artist. Sample works provided. In some cases, links to websites, with caution the works included there may have been published outside the eligibility period.
Lodestar Award: Five of six finalists have furnished complete works. The sixth is an excerpt.
As in previous years, WSFS and Seattle 2025 ask that voters honor publishers’ and creators’ request that they reserve these copies for their personal use only, and that they do not share these works with non-members of Seattle 2025.
Only members of Seattle 2025 can access the 2025 Hugo Award Voter packet and vote on the 2025 Hugo Awards. To become a member of Seattle 2025, see the registration page.
