By tech publishing I mean the books from Manning and Oreilly. I was shopping those books of late, but somehow I found it is harder to convince myself they are useful comparing to ChatGPT
Ask HN: Is ChatGPT making tech publishing obsolete?
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Re: Ask HN: Is ChatGPT making tech publishing obsolete?
#2Tech books will still be useful in the future in a few ways:
- When you're first learning a topic, ChatGPT isn't as useful because you don't really know what questions to ask. It's useful to get a broad overview guided by an expert so you can learn the concepts, and more importantly the vocabulary, which you can then use to dive deeper into parts you're interested in with ChatGPT.
- For really new stuff, ChatGPT obviously won't have any training data. So the books will be the only real resource until the models are updated.
Re: Ask HN: Is ChatGPT making tech publishing obsolete?
#3AI doesn't make writing obsolete, it makes it even more important because human inputs are necessary for all existing systems.
Re: Ask HN: Is ChatGPT making tech publishing obsolete?
#4How do you know if these LLMs are stating facts instead of hallucinating? Also, where would these things learn about new topics?
Re: Ask HN: Is ChatGPT making tech publishing obsolete?
#5Tech books will still be useful in the future in a few ways: - When you're first learning a topic, ChatGPT isn't as useful because you don't really know what questions to ask. It's useful to get a broad overview guided by an expert so you can learn the concepts, and more importantly the vocabulary, which you can then use to dive deeper into parts you're interested in with ChatGPT. - For really new stuff, ChatGPT obvi…
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Re: Ask HN: Is ChatGPT making tech publishing obsolete?
#6AI doesn't make writing obsolete, it makes it even more important because human inputs are necessary for all existing systems.
What is the business model that would ensure the authors (whose work is necessary to train the LLM) get paid (considering everyone will just pay MS for using the LLM, and MS would not pay authors)?
Re: Ask HN: Is ChatGPT making tech publishing obsolete?
#7Tech books will still be useful in the future in a few ways: - When you're first learning a topic, ChatGPT isn't as useful because you don't really know what questions to ask. It's useful to get a broad overview guided by an expert so you can learn the concepts, and more importantly the vocabulary, which you can then use to dive deeper into parts you're interested in with ChatGPT. - For really new stuff, ChatGPT obvi…
For new things, ChatGPT is a big improvement over internet searches because of how it can generate examples and respond to followup questions. I've been able to ramp up insanely quickly on new tools with it.
Even before CGPT existed, I've always felt like online searches/examples can get me 75% of the way there (i.e. good enough) in way less time than reading a book. As nice as the O'Reilly media is, I've got too many tools to learn on the job and not enough time to read dozens of books.
Re: Ask HN: Is ChatGPT making tech publishing obsolete?
#8Published works are more authoritative. With ChatGPT you're getting something broader, more creative, and possibly wrong.
Re: Ask HN: Is ChatGPT making tech publishing obsolete?
#9How do you know if these LLMs are stating facts instead of hallucinating? Also, where would these things learn about new topics?
>How do you know if these LLMs are stating facts instead of hallucinating?
At runtime. When trying to do something I know is even slightly unusual I don't even bother with ChatGPT and friends.
Re: Ask HN: Is ChatGPT making tech publishing obsolete?
#10AI doesn't make writing obsolete, it makes it even more important because human inputs are necessary for all existing systems.
What is the business model that would ensure the authors (whose work is necessary to train the LLM) get paid (considering everyone will just pay MS for using the LLM, and MS would not pay authors)?
Who says the authors will always be human? LLMs have the potential to write their own books. There will be a time when humans and LLMs work in tandem, and eventually the LLMs will get good enough to write the book itself and the human just edits and provides the raw source material. This does not seem particularly far away.