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Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

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Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#251

Post by rockemsockem »

jhbadger wrote: post #148
Chris2048 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People starved while it was suggested they eat cake. Not sure how that relates - are the rights around art crit not the same as AI crit?

Of course they never were suggested to eat cake in reality. 1) The actual French quote was to brioche, a type of bread and mistranslated as cake because brioche wasn't common in English-speaking countries 2) Was never an actual suggestion -- the French philosopher Rousseau was making a sarcastic remark suggesting that if the people didn't have bread, they should eat brioche (a fancier kind of bread) instead. But for…

Glad to see someone else mention the falsehood of the original quote.

It's actually really fitting to see that (mis-)quote used in the context of this outrage since from reading through the original vitriolic Twitter thread it's clear that many of the most outraged are incorrect about what the product does.

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#252

Post by Planktonne »

mistermann wrote: post #96
Planktonne wrote: post #84

Quite apart from any content/copywrite issues, this wasn't a useful tool. It was a badly-made tool that didn't identify anything valid or worthwhile. The measurement of passive voice is a particularly clear example: that's not what passive voice is at all, and anyone who understands passive voice knows that it shouldn't be frowned upon [1]. "Just add tech" is not a recipe for usefulness. [1] http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~…

Similarly, saying that something is not true does not necessarily make it not true.

Yes, that's why I provided the very clear example of passive voice.

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#253

Post by dxbydt »

jmull wrote: post #67

If you want to do this kind of thing, let authors opt-in (or publishers). Yes, it will take effort and probably go slow, but if the tool is really useful and amazing, it should be doable. I suspect the authors are put-off by a couple things: - the text of the works scanned seems like it may be from pirated sources. That poisons the project, no matter what it does with the scans, for many authors. - the use of these s…

> it doesn’t engage authors’ concerns at all, and just portrays authors as stoopid AI-fearful luddites.

https://twitter.com/scumbelievable/status/168915466478730444...

So the two authors who are gloating about "killed that stupid fuckin AI thing" - I'm supposed to be engaged with their concerns ? Please.

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#254

Post by rockemsockem »

palata wrote: post #194
skjoldr wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is not their job to learn how the black box works If you have not learned the basics of how something works, you have no right for your opinion on it to be considered valid. Period. Invalid opinions do harm to democracy and endanger our way of life.

> you have no right for your opinion on it to be considered valid. Period. That is so wrong it is actually dangerous. Do I need to understand how a nuclear bomb works for my opinion on it to be considered valid? Obviously not. I only need to understand the consequences of it. It does not matter at all how it works, if I am against the fact that it will kill a whole lot of people. > Invalid opinions do harm to democra…

If you literally have no idea what a nuclear bomb does, i.e. don't know that it explodes, releases massive amounts of heat, or can kill many tens of thousands of people at once, then no your opinion should NOT be considered valid.

Understanding the consequences of something is a PART of how it works. Since you understand that it can kill a whole lot of people then I'd say you have passed the incredibly low bar.

In this case most of the authors do not understand the consequences of the tool, they think it will generate convincing sound text that sounds like them or that it is serving pirated copies of their books (sourcing that from the original Twitter thread that I unfortunately read a lot of).

This doesn't seem like the thread to debate whether technology is a good thing, but I can't help but call this assertion ridiculous. Technology is responsible for almost every single good thing in the world today.

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#255

Post by ineedasername »

palata wrote: post #121
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was the accusation, and it was misplaced here. So we agree, this is a smear campaign in this case, not a sensible reaction to a reasonable application of machine algorithms. The idea that counting adverbs is steal their work to the point they won't want to publish anymore is clearly FUD. As my remark made clear.

> The idea that counting adverbs is steal their work to the point they won't want to publish anymore is clearly FUD. I did not mean that, I am genuinely not sure if you rephrased my point to make it sound wrong or if you missed it. My point was that, IMO, it does not matter to the other whether counting adverbs is stealing their work or not. Probably if you counted them manually they would be fine (and most likely th…

This project was not generative AI. Comments are saying this project, which is not at all similar to generative ai, seemed to be okay. But you keep replying to say essentially “but if it was generative ai then authors have a legitimate reason to be angry”.

There is no need to shoehorn that debate into this particular situation, and I see no merit in defending authors that had a knee jerk reaction to this project on the grounds that they have reasonable fears about other types of projects.

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#256

Post by nkjnlknlk »

torginus wrote: post #135
LikelyABurner wrote: post #3

I’m with the artists on this one. Our obsession with converting everything into input for an algorithm that spits out an ill-defined number (what the hell is “vividness”?) needs to stop. We already tried this with human communication and gave birth to the dystopian nightmare that is social media, why keep repeating our mistakes?

I kind of don't understand the issue - IANAL, so I'm not going to delve on the legality of things, but I think making automated book recommendations better is absolutely fits the bill for 'transformative use' - as in book recommendations are in no way a substitute product for books themselves. And personally, I think book recommendations are an absolutely underserved market, if I liked a book, having the ability to f…

> And personally, I think book recommendations are an absolutely underserved market

I haven't read about the industry in years but isn't it the case that the job of "book recommendations" is essentially the publishers job? They unironically try to sell you more than a book. An algorithm would threaten their worth.

(There are, of course, other useful functions like publishing and the irreplaceable editors, but neither require the capital strength of marketing.)

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#257

Post by actuallyalys »

fenomas wrote: post #188
actuallyalys wrote: post #58

I found this article frustratingly vague on how prosecraft.io actually worked. As far as I can tell, the author scraped the web for books, including in-copyright books. Then he analyzed it with techniques based on "classical" natural language processing techniques, rather than transformers or deep learning. He appears to have retained the books he scraped for future analysis. The site itself seems to use only snippet…

> However, the apology [0] says that the creator did not "intend" to participate in AI that can "create zero-effort impersonations of artists." I'm not sure if the wording is unintentionally vague, or if there is some way his project could be used in that way. This seems FUDdy. "Intend" isn't in the apology at all, and the wording that is there says clearly that generative AI came after prosecraft, so there's no way…

I apologize for the quotes around intend. I wrote it without, then I forgot it was a paraphrase and added them back again. Unfortunately, I cannot edit my comment to fix that.

I do think “intend” is a reasonable paraphrase of “never wanted to.”

(Edited to add) I don’t think prosecraft was a finished project and he was definitely still working on his other tool for writers that incorporates some of the same tools.

> The tweet about fine-tuning an LLM came 5-6 years after the guy made prosecraft; why suggest they might involve the same dataset?

The reason being that he had mentioned he was planning to use the scraped books for future analysis.

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#258

Post by slg »

b112 wrote: post #241
slg wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm genuinely curious, why do you post here if you have this mindset?

This is not twitter, with its tiny little snippets of text, which are useless for meaningful communication, and its culture which incites groupthink. This is not Reddit, with its hostile, hate filled voting system, with its peer pressure laden culture. This is not Facebook, literally designed to drive hate, and anger, and upset, to increase engagement. This is Hackernews. It's not perfect, but it's far more palatable…

Your two comments here could each fit in a Tweet and Reddit has basically the same voting mechanism as HN. There is also plenty of groupthink here too. That was basically the reason behind my comment to see what distinction you are making. People here seem to often deride social media while pretending HN is not social media.

HN is effectively just Reddit with only a few subreddits and moderation that is stronger than average, but within the range you will find on certain subreddits.

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#259

Post by leach »

iamflimflam1 wrote: post #5

Something that we need to learn is that these brief outbreaks on social media burn themselves out pretty quickly. Everyone shouts for a bit and then moves onto to the next bit of manufactured outrage.

I agree, people get angry at something for a day and then the timeline tells them to be angry at the next thing.

Always feel bad for people who cave to the mob, usually if the mob is yelling at you you’re on the right track

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#260

Post by croes »

subroutine wrote: post #187
croes wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs make the scams better just like they will make spam better. If it's gibberish you know you got scammed, LLM texts look convincing so you don't know for sure.

I agree LLMs can make better spam. But good spam isn't real competition. It's not like anyone is debating whether they should buy the latest book from their favorite author or the latest book from their favorite author's clone LLM (which is known to have written some solid books). Again, this is an issue that needs to be solved by vendors (it seems like all they need is a system where authors get a copyright to their…

That's partly true for established authors,but how many readers will get fooled and think those books are real. See these 11 Harry Potter books from China

https://11points.com/11-amazing-fake-harry-potter-books-writ...

It's worse for new authors, they disappear between all the AI authors.

Publishers and readers will have to search a bigger haystack to find the needle.

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