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

tobysimonds.com

51–60 of 162 posts

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

#51
post #5

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

AI is a great writing assistant, if a human is in the driver's seat determining WHAT to write and retaining creative control over the outputs it can only lead to better creative writing. This is because the human can spend less time (re)writing and more time refining and tuning, and AI is a great brainstorming partner/beta reader.

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

#52

I can't imagine LLMs are good judges of good writing.

LLMs are fairly good judges of writing, in fact they're better at evaluating writing than they are at actually writing. I use Gemini as a beta reader, and I've had a lot human beta readers look at the same material, and Gemini consistently gives significantly better than average feedback, though it's stronger at structural and prose evaluation and weaker at emotional and "wishlist" style feedback as you would probably expect.

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

#53
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…

> 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"?

Now that the machines are coming for the white collar, the Luddites those same people once mocked are starting to look more reasonable.

In the end the intelligence revolution will be a net benefit to society. In the short term there will be untold suffering.

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

#54

I can't imagine LLMs are good judges of good writing.

I've pasted whole chapters (of my own writing) into ChatGPT and Claude that I know need drastic improvements. Basically, they were first draft, "get the concept down; don't think too hard" paragraphs with occasional run-on sentences and whatnot. This is my very first novel (ever) so of course the initial draft is going to be bad.

Both ChatGPT and Claud always say something like, "a few grammar corrections are needed but this is excellent!"

So yeah: They're not very good at judging the quality of writing. Even with the "we're trying not to be sycophants anymore" improvements they're still sycophants.

For reference, I mostly use these tools to check my grammar. That's something they're actually quite good at. It wasn't until the first draft was done that I decided to try them out for "whole work evaluation".

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

#55

I can't imagine LLMs are good judges of good writing.

LLMs are fairly good judges of writing, in fact they're better at evaluating writing than they are at actually writing. I use Gemini as a beta reader, and I've had a lot human beta readers look at the same material, and Gemini consistently gives significantly better than average feedback, though it's stronger at structural and prose evaluation and weaker at emotional and "wishlist" style feedback as you would probabl…

How are you using it as a beta reader? What prompts do you use? I'd love to try it.

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

#56
post #5

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

Not everyone shares your same world view, and some people do want to apply machine intelligence to their writing process.

You don't have to participate; ignore AI-generated or AI-assisted content just like you ignore some other thing you don't enjoy that already exists today. But you also don't have to devalue and dismiss the interests of others.

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

#57
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What does that even mean

"If an artificial label/watermark is the only criteria by which you can differentiate from , by definition there's nothing wrong with the unwanted product itself"

Of course, "art" isn't one fixed standard of quality/features, and you can get "watermark-requiring parity" with average/bad/unmemorable creations but not the top percentile that's actually valued, for example.

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

#58
post #5

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

Not everyone shares your same world view, and some people do want to apply machine intelligence to their writing process. You don't have to participate; ignore AI-generated or AI-assisted content just like you ignore some other thing you don't enjoy that already exists today. But you also don't have to devalue and dismiss the interests of others.

All the people generating AI-assisted writing are all the people that never had enough passion or talent to do it before. If you weren't inclined to write fiction or poetry etc before AI was here to do it for you, you probably shouldn't be doing it now.

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

#59
post #57
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does that even mean

"If an artificial label/watermark is the only criteria by which you can differentiate from , by definition there's nothing wrong with the unwanted product itself" Of course, "art" isn't one fixed standard of quality/features, and you can get "watermark-requiring parity" with average/bad/unmemorable creations but not the top percentile that's actually valued, for example.

Can you apply the same logic to, say, factory farm meat, or conflict diamonds?

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

#60
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.

So if I can make an AI agent which talks to you just like your husband/wife/girlfriend etc, I can just send you messages without identifying myself as an AI?

I mean, if you can't tell the difference it doesn't matter right?

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