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AlphaWrite: AI that improves at writing by evolving its own stories

tobysimonds.com

41–50 of 162 posts

Re: AlphaWrite: AI that improves at writing by evolving its own stories

#41
post #5

If there is something that I would like AI to never touch, it's that. Please stop making the world worse.

You cannot stop people from making the world worse or better. The best you can do is focus on your own life. In time many will say we are lucky to live in a world with so much content, where anything you want to see or read can be spun up in an instant, without labor. And though most will no longer make a living doing some of these content creation activities by hand and brain, you can still rejoice knowing that thos…

> A human who writes or produces art for monetary reasons is only just as bad as AI.

Or they're what you call "a professional artist," aka "people who produce art so good that other people are willing to pay for it."

Another HN commenter who thinks artfulness is developed over decades and that individual art pieces are made over hundreds of hours out of some charity... Ridiculously ignorant worldview.

Re: AlphaWrite: AI that improves at writing by evolving its own stories

#42
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More capable AI systems make the world better. If you don't like AI written material on principle, you can simply choose not to read it. Follow human writers who don't use AI.

That’s precisely the problem, though. The internet is already rapidly filling with AI-generated slop, and it takes a non-trivial amount of human brain power to determine whether the how-to article you’re reading is actually a reliable source or whether it was churned out to generate ad revenue. The infinite number of monkeys with typewriters are generating something that sounds enough like Shakespeare that it’s makin…

Determining the quality of a how-to or any other kind of information you're looking for is the same job whether it was created by a human or by an AI. Check sources, read horizontally, patronize trusted producers and get your information from there.

We've got a tragedy of the commons whereupon we've grown complacent that search engines and wisdom of crowds (of nameless strangers) would see us through, but that was never a good strategy to begin with.

AI slop does little but highlight this fact and give us plenty of reason to vet our sources more carefully.

Re: AlphaWrite: AI that improves at writing by evolving its own stories

#43
post #5

If there is something that I would like AI to never touch, it's that. Please stop making the world worse.

You cannot stop people from making the world worse or better. The best you can do is focus on your own life. In time many will say we are lucky to live in a world with so much content, where anything you want to see or read can be spun up in an instant, without labor. And though most will no longer make a living doing some of these content creation activities by hand and brain, you can still rejoice knowing that thos…

> A human who writes or produces art for monetary reasons is only just as bad as AI.

Tell that to all the Renaissance masters.

Re: AlphaWrite: AI that improves at writing by evolving its own stories

#44
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's fine as long as its output is watermarked so you can avoid it.

If you need to watermark it then you don't need to watermark it, though.

Ai content should absolutely be overtly marked imo. A beep should preceed ai speech, a visual for graphics, etc. This should have been a rule from the beginning.

Pretending to be human, like pretending to be a police officer, should have consequences.

Re: AlphaWrite: AI that improves at writing by evolving its own stories

#45
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's fine as long as its output is watermarked so you can avoid it.

If you need to watermark it then you don't need to watermark it, though.

What does that even mean

Re: AlphaWrite: AI that improves at writing by evolving its own stories

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More capable AI systems make the world better. Support that. Now support it while including direct costs and externalities.

If the cost and externality is that people are upset about it, I honestly don't care.

The cost and externality are:

1) Lesser cost: people start to not want each other for anything, and therefore lose income of any kind, and are gradually bred out of existence like with horses and oxen in the 20th century

2) Greater cost: bot swarms separate people and can bring about any sort of effect at scale, with people powerless to stop it — eg destroy reputations, bring about support for wars, take over control, or really anything

Re: AlphaWrite: AI that improves at writing by evolving its own stories

#47
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s precisely the problem, though. The internet is already rapidly filling with AI-generated slop, and it takes a non-trivial amount of human brain power to determine whether the how-to article you’re reading is actually a reliable source or whether it was churned out to generate ad revenue. The infinite number of monkeys with typewriters are generating something that sounds enough like Shakespeare that it’s makin…

Determining the quality of a how-to or any other kind of information you're looking for is the same job whether it was created by a human or by an AI. Check sources, read horizontally, patronize trusted producers and get your information from there. We've got a tragedy of the commons whereupon we've grown complacent that search engines and wisdom of crowds (of nameless strangers) would see us through, but that was ne…

This exact kind of oblivious response always appears like clockwork on HN underneath any criticism of AI. “It was always like this… AI does nothing new but…”

I wonder if this is itself a form of AI generation LOL

Re: AlphaWrite: AI that improves at writing by evolving its own stories

#48
post #9
post #5

If there is something that I would like AI to never touch, it's that. Please stop making the world worse.

Like it or not, this stuff will happen. Might as well have curiosity about it

Technological change doesn't happen independent of culture. Stop with the technological determinism.

Re: AlphaWrite: AI that improves at writing by evolving its own stories

#49
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More capable AI systems make the world better. If you don't like AI written material on principle, you can simply choose not to read it. Follow human writers who don't use AI.

That’s precisely the problem, though. The internet is already rapidly filling with AI-generated slop, and it takes a non-trivial amount of human brain power to determine whether the how-to article you’re reading is actually a reliable source or whether it was churned out to generate ad revenue. The infinite number of monkeys with typewriters are generating something that sounds enough like Shakespeare that it’s makin…

> AI-generated slop

This phrase is kind of interesting to me because it implies that everything AI-generated is "slop". What happens when the AI is generating decent content?

Like, what if we develop AI to the point where the most insightful, funny, or downright useful content is AI-generated? Will we still be calling it, "AI-generated slop"?

Re: AlphaWrite: AI that improves at writing by evolving its own stories

#50

Those examples seem quite unrelated to one another. The first reads as admitting intentional fraud and deceit, the second reads like dealing with imposter syndrome. I'd love to know the prompt. Also, not sure how you can judge a style to be clearly better than another. The workflow of generating a bunch of stories in the style of different authors and then voting on a favorite just seems like picking a favorite autho…

> Also, not sure how you can judge a style to be clearly better than another.

This one is actually easy: The writing style used for a horror is different than what you'd use for a romance novel. Example: If you give it a prompt that asks the AI to generate something in the style of a romance author but the rest of the prompt is describing a horror or sci-fi story you'll end up with something that most people would objectively decide, "ain't right."

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