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Tom Lesley has published 40 books in 2023, all with 100% positive reviews

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Re: Tom Lesley has published 40 books in 2023, all with 100% positive reviews

#131
It is an interesting hack, buy 5 star reviews and use ChatGPT to write books. Amazon "print on demand" service to make physical books for you.

I wish folks like this would do a transparent web site on how much they made on the scam[1]

[1] It is a scam because we know ChatGPT will produce authoritative prose that is 100% provably not correct, so these aren't "books" so much as they are "printouts" being sold as books.

Re: Tom Lesley has published 40 books in 2023, all with 100% positive reviews

#132
Hm... The back cover of the data mesh book reads: "Data Mesh: Architecting Data Infrastructure for Agility and Innovation with Data Mesh" is a groundbreaking book that presents a new paradigm for managing data at scale. Written by Zhamak Dehghani, a software engineer and thought leader at ThoughtWorks, the book ..."

Re: Tom Lesley has published 40 books in 2023, all with 100% positive reviews

#133
Tom Lesley! The man's a writing machine. I wonder if we can get him to do an Author Q&A.

As for recognizing the voice of AI: I asked AI to write its response in such a way that Stack Overflow's algorithm wouldn't detect it as AI. Fail!

Re: Tom Lesley has published 40 books in 2023, all with 100% positive reviews

#135
post #120
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> irrefutable proof Anything coming directly from a customer is probably refutable. For example, the incentives I normally see are on these little cards they include with the product encouraging reviews in exchange for a gift card or something similar. What's to stop a competitor from falsely reporting it using a fake incentive card they created? Amazon could take your report then actually open the product and see if…

> Anything coming directly from a customer is probably refutable. For example, the incentives I normally see are on these little cards they include with the product encouraging reviews in exchange for a gift card or something similar. What's to stop a competitor from falsely reporting it using a fake incentive card they created? Maybe the two of you have different definitions of "irrefutable." If I say, "They ship pa…

> Amazon didn’t take any action at all

This suggests they wanted amazon to accept their "irrefutable proof".

I hate fake reviews. I'm not defending them. But the fact that literally every site of significant size that offers reviews struggles to control fake ones should be a clue that it isn't so easy to manage.

Just google/bing "{big site name} fake reviews" and you'll find this issue plagues everyone, not just amazon.

Re: Tom Lesley has published 40 books in 2023, all with 100% positive reviews

#136

This is comedy From one review: “ One paragraph starts with "As an AI language model I can't....". Unfortunately we don't have an AI who can correct a book written by an AI. Fortunately I can send it back.” Sauce: https://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/B0BWVH451G/ref=acr_dp...

This is golden. Just as I expected this LLM craze to go down.

Grifters gonna grift.

Re: Tom Lesley has published 40 books in 2023, all with 100% positive reviews

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I genuinely feel that chatGPT has been neutered. It used to be much better at writing like a human given the right prompt. Now I can't get it to write like one at all. Which makes me wonder what they're using the non-neutered chatGPT for...

It could be that our pattern recognizers are outsmarting the AI after a while. In the beginning noone noticed the difference and now anything written by AI has a bit of fake/dusted off feel to it. I'm sure the next generation will outsmart us again.

Maybe. But it definitely feels like a far less powerful tool than it used to even 2-3 weeks back. It's fine for coding questions, but any time I've tried to use it for marketing content, the result has been way too formulaic and completely useless within the context.

It used to be smart enough to figure out that you were writing marketing content and would tailor the answer for that. Now, it just writes a 500 word blogspam regardless of what you ask it to write.

Re: Tom Lesley has published 40 books in 2023, all with 100% positive reviews

#138

Amazon reviews were exploited and devalued years ago. I don't mean there aren't genuine reviews; I mean they've been gamed to the point that they don't really matter anymore. Amazon knows this.

Amazon reviews and ratings are still useful signal if you know how to interpret: 1. Anything less than 4.6 is probably junk. 2. Ignore the 4-5 star reviews, only read the 1-3 star reviews 3. Really read them. 4. A good product will still generally have 2-3% of reviews at 1 star. Less than 2% is a red flag, more than 4% is also a red flag.

Or, even better, just don't buy from Amazon. I honestly can't think of any advantage to buying from Amazon anymore.

Re: Tom Lesley has published 40 books in 2023, all with 100% positive reviews

#139
post #11

This was an inevitable outcome of ChatGPT/LLMS, no? I expect to see a lot more of this by a lot of different people. I feel like a ton of the examples I’ve seen to date are effectively regurgitating Stack Overflow (sometimes verbatim!) and in a kind of abstract way, I feel like this is exactly the same as someone opportunistically publishing a bunch of auto-generated books… publishing a model trained on a bunch of we…

Even here on HN, people are using ChatGPT to write replies. You can spot it by the very verbose answers that don't say anything meaningful. Someone else commented here that AI would raise the noise level everywhere and I unfortunately have to agree.

> You can spot it by the very verbose answers that don't say anything meaningful.

Although, in all fairness, I have been known to write verbose answers that don't say anything meaningful, too, and I'm not a bot. I think.

Re: Tom Lesley has published 40 books in 2023, all with 100% positive reviews

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even here on HN, people are using ChatGPT to write replies. You can spot it by the very verbose answers that don't say anything meaningful. Someone else commented here that AI would raise the noise level everywhere and I unfortunately have to agree.

[flagged]

I completely agree with your perspective. The onus of using AI-generated responses responsibly does lie with the users. AI tools, like any other technology, can be used for both productive and unproductive purposes. The key is to strike a balance and use AI-generated responses in ways that contribute positively to online conversations.

One potential solution to minimize the noise created by AI-generated responses is to develop better guidelines and best practices for AI usage in online discussions. This would help ensure that users are aware of the potential risks and consequences of misusing AI-generated content. Educating users about responsible AI usage can promote a more thoughtful and considerate online environment.

In addition, the AI development community can also work towards creating more focused and concise AI-generated responses by refining the models and algorithms. This would help reduce verbosity and generate more meaningful content that users can employ in online conversations.

Ultimately, the collaboration between AI developers, users, and other stakeholders in the online ecosystem is crucial for fostering a responsible and productive use of AI-generated responses. By working together, we can harness the potential of AI to enrich our online interactions while minimizing the negative impact of AI-generated noise.

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