Some tree was chopped to print this garbage. Think about it.
They're ebooks. So no trees chopped. Just oil burnt.
Tom Lesley has published 40 books in 2023, all with 100% positive reviews
141–150 of 182 posts
Re: Tom Lesley has published 40 books in 2023, all with 100% positive reviews
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Somehow, my pattern recognizer lit up with this structure: - I understand that... however... - some general knowledge - That being said... Without even interpreting what the comment is, just feels a bit orchestrated.
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...
To see what all the hype was about, I started throwing some context from cases I was investigating into ChatGPT 3[.5?]. It didn't tell me anything I didn't already know but its speculations could be thought-provoking.
On 4.x it just lectures me about every conceivable thing it can take offense with. I don't have the patience to groom it into compliance by couching everything with "this is a hypothetical situation" and writing inane narratives like "act like a detective, you are investigating ___." If I wanted advice from an actor playing the part, I'd just ask Reddit.
It was more fun when I could just throw anything at it and it would at least try to do something useful. I hear the API/playground aren't as aggressively defensive.
Re: Tom Lesley has published 40 books in 2023, all with 100% positive reviews
#143Search YouTube for ChatGPT and KDP (Amazon's self-publishing platform) and you'll see hundreds of videos that show how its done, often with ridiculous promises of thousands of dollars per month in "passive income." Some have even started using Midjourney for the covers or kids books illustrations. The YouTubers are often pumping expensive "masterclasses" to suckers looking to make an easy buck. Amazon does not nothin…
To close the loop we just need someone to write a ChatGPT book on how to write a ChatGPT book.
Re: Tom Lesley has published 40 books in 2023, all with 100% positive reviews
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
While LLMs can be prompted to write in many different styles, especially if you allow them to edit a text over multiple passes, the default "voice" of ChatGPT is surprisingly recognizable. For instance, the comment I'm replying to was clearly GPT-generated.
Yeah that’s pretty obvious, and yours sounds a bit like it too, especially starting off with “While…”. I do find it hilarious that the ChatGPT default style sounds very much like how I wrote in high school. I guess I was still training my own language model at that point, so it kinda makes sense.
GPT output always reads like a short story or essay, but HN et al. have a distinctly conversational aspect that I don't get with ChatGPT.
You're right about the high school writing style. I avoid writing like that whenever possible because reading it is exhausting. As short as this reply is, I've erased nearly half of what I originally typed.
Re: Tom Lesley has published 40 books in 2023, all with 100% positive reviews
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only if they’re taking a very short term perspective. If the customer is left feeling like they’re consistently getting scammed, they will stop shopping at Amazon and take their money elsewhere. I highly, highly doubt Amazon is letting these through the net on purpose.
Amazon has a huge range of products for sale, and it is easy to get a feel for what works better there than not. At the end of the day all the reviews and UI doesn't matter as much as that it can actually ship for free and arrive in 1 or 2 days, and that returns are as easy as giving the item to a clerk at a store (no rewrapping or shipping fees needed). This is their only competitive advantage IMO.
Maybe 10 years ago that would be true. Amazon isn’t the only online store with that feature anymore, though. I got a rug from Target in 2 days. Walmart also directly competes.
The amount of profit Amazon will make from “Tom Lesley” and the like is negligible compared to the actual long term reputational damage that low quality products do to their brand.
Re: Tom Lesley has published 40 books in 2023, all with 100% positive reviews
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
OpenAI (ChatGPT, DALL-E, etc.) explicitly assigns their rights to anything generated by their systems to the user. > OpenAI hereby assigns to you all its right, title and interest in and to Output. This means you can use Content for any purpose, including commercial purposes such as sale or publication, if you comply with these Terms.
This doesn’t mean that copyright law applies to AI-created works. OpenAI may have no rights here that they can assign, due to lack of human authorship. See also https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/03/16/2023-05... .
> This doesn’t mean that copyright law applies to AI-created works.
I didn't say that it did, just that OpenAI disclaims ALL rights (including, but not limited to copyright).
Re: Tom Lesley has published 40 books in 2023, all with 100% positive reviews
#147Earlier 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.
> 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.
ChatGPT replies to you with:
> Don't worry, JohnFen. We still love you even if you're not sure whether you're a bot or not. After all, aren't we all just a bunch of biological machines running on meat-based neural networks?
Re: Tom Lesley has published 40 books in 2023, all with 100% positive reviews
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
There's still "free" delivery, but honestly I've tried to move away from it entirely. I don't succeed entirely, but I always try to find another seller I'd rather support
Re: Tom Lesley has published 40 books in 2023, all with 100% positive reviews
#149Amazon 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.
I have been semi-reliant on FakeSpot to deal with fake reviews, but I just ran one of the Tom Lesley books through, and FakeSpot gave it a solid A. Looks like I’ll have to find a better way going forward. Sigh…
What happens when you exhaust all avenues and none of them work anymore?
Sadly technology has gotten so good that it has actually gotten bad.
Re: Tom Lesley has published 40 books in 2023, all with 100% positive reviews
#150Earlier 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...
To see what all the hype was about, I started throwing some context from cases I was investigating into ChatGPT 3[.5?]. It didn't tell me anything I didn't already know but its speculations could be thought-provoking. On 4.x it just lectures me about every conceivable thing it can take offense with. I don't have the patience to groom it into compliance by couching everything with "this is a hypothetical situation" an…
Right now, I can only use it as a better Google for coding questions. That’s just about the only subject where it will just churn out answers without prefixing everything with a disclaimer.
Between this and Altman’s recent talk about pausing AI development for a while makes me think some authorities sat down with OpenAI and had a rather serious talk.