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

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

#91

Post by km144 »

gabriel666smith wrote: post #89
km144 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creative works carry meaning through their author. The best art gives you insight into the imaginative mind of another human being—that is central to the experience of art at a fundamental level. But the machine does not intend anything. Based on the article as I understand it, this product basically does some simulated annealing of the quality of art as judged by an AI to achieve the "best possible story"—again, as…

Ah, fair enough. I believe quite strongly that creative works' meaning exists for the reader / audience / user. I don't think interpretation of art is towards an authorial, authoritative truth - rather that it's a lens to view the world through, and change one's perspective on it - so this is where we differ. But I understand your viewpoint. I do agree that the LLM's idea of achieving the 'best possible story' is def…

I think that is a fair perspective. When I say "to what end" I am mostly implying the "end" of a product for the market. I think writing in particular is always a thing where if you tell people you do it as a hobby, they assume your goal is a published book, not the process itself. Creativity as the end is a wonderful thing, but I just have a feeling AI is going to be more widely adopted to pump out passable (or even arguably "good") content that people will pay money for.

Again the same thing with writing software, where you can be creative with it and it can enhance the experience. But most people just use AI to help them do their job better—and in an era where many software companies appear to have a net negative effect on society, it's hard to see the good in that.

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

#92

Post by deadbabe »

sorcerer-mar wrote: post #82
deadbabe wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t think there are? Then what do you care if masters go extinct and all masterworks are produced by AI? The end result is the same.

Give me examples please. If you think the end state is the same, it's because you misunderstand the argument being made. Try being more curious and less fortune-cookie! Nobody said "making money from art is bad."

I have no examples.

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

#93

Post by frozenseven »

sorcerer-mar wrote: post #88
frozenseven wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about money? You can't force me to want (or not want) someone's goods and services. If you're worried about large scale automation and so forth, I'm fine with something like UBI.

> More capable AI systems make the world better [so long as we also include the mitigations necessary due to the known and unknown downsides of AI] I guess that's what you meant?

In reference to automation and UBI? I don't see automation as a downside. Of course you need to readjust, as with any large scale change.

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

#94

Post by frozenseven »

EGreg wrote: post #83
frozenseven wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, seems like you walked back a bit on that. In any case, I don't see why you're so concerned about how other people choose to live their lives. For instance, if someone doesn't want kids, so what? You can't control that. Nor should you.

Just to be clear, you are supporting a world where humans are powerless, few in number, and don’t interact much with each other anymore. As I’ve been saying for a decade, we are building a zoo for ourselves.

I support a world of radical abundance, one where humans and super-smart AIs have the maximum about of freedom (without harming one another, of course).

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

#95

Post by sorcerer-mar »

deadbabe wrote: post #92
sorcerer-mar wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give me examples please. If you think the end state is the same, it's because you misunderstand the argument being made. Try being more curious and less fortune-cookie! Nobody said "making money from art is bad."

I have no examples.

Does that disprove your thesis that people cannot make great art (or become “true masters”) with commercial incentives?

What does this imply for your broader thesis that nothing is lost if AI destroys commercial incentive for humans to master and develop art further?

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

#96

Post by whoisyc »

gabriel666smith wrote: post #69
zorked wrote: post #5

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

Wow! Why? Personally, I'm fascinated by the question of what Joyce would have done with SillyTavern. Or Nabokov. Or Burroughs. Or T S Eliot, who incorporated news clippings into Wasteland - which feels, to me, extremely analogous with the way LLMs refract existing text into new patterns.

There is no answer to the question “what Joyce would have done…”. None. Nil. They are dead and anything done it their name is by definition not what they would have done, but what future generations who are convinced that they know better than the men themselves did.

It is better to leave unanswerable questions unanswered.

I am not against LLM technologies in general. But this trend of using LLMs to give a seemingly authoritative and conclusive answer to questions where no such thing is possible is dangerous to our society. We will see an explosion of narcissistic disorders as it becomes easier and easier to construct convincing narratives to cocoon yourself in, and if you dare questioning them they will tell you how the LLM passed X and Y and Z benchmarks so they cannot be wrong.

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

#97

Post by smitty1e »

contagiousflow wrote: post #48
nougati wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The proper counter will be cultural determinism, if sufficient people insist upon supporting human writers crafting real books.

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

#98

Post by gabriel666smith »

km144 wrote: post #91
gabriel666smith wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, fair enough. I believe quite strongly that creative works' meaning exists for the reader / audience / user. I don't think interpretation of art is towards an authorial, authoritative truth - rather that it's a lens to view the world through, and change one's perspective on it - so this is where we differ. But I understand your viewpoint. I do agree that the LLM's idea of achieving the 'best possible story' is def…

I think that is a fair perspective. When I say "to what end" I am mostly implying the "end" of a product for the market. I think writing in particular is always a thing where if you tell people you do it as a hobby, they assume your goal is a published book, not the process itself. Creativity as the end is a wonderful thing, but I just have a feeling AI is going to be more widely adopted to pump out passable (or even…

> "but I just have a feeling AI is going to be more widely adopted to pump out passable (or even arguably "good") content"

Absolutely! And, as you say - the vast majority of books are already written to be passable-enough for publication. I guess it'll be slightly less charming when it's unclear whether a book you're buying has had at least one human believe it is good. Maybe this is already the case on Amazon!

> "that people will pay money for."

Haha - authors aren't making much money as it stands. I do really hope that a (much) higher volume of 'slop-work' means audiences value 'good-work' more, as 'good-work' will be harder to seek out, and that as a result of this better revenue models for creators of freely-duplicatable work (like books and music) are forced into creation. That's the best possible outcome. But - I think we agree that material reward isn't a good incentive for the creation of art.

I'm not wildly concerned about the arts, in this sense - I think it's (over a long enough timespan) a highly meritocratic world. I trust readers / audiences / users. Good work finds its audience and time and floats eventually. And DRM-locked, Kindle-Unlimited-type work will, by design, not be on anybody's shelves in fifty or a hundred years.

The alternative, I think, is that LLMs start making beautiful art completely unprompted (something I've seen zero evidence of being possible thus far). That's a universe I would be fascinated to exist in. A shame its probably paradoxical - I can imagine it being like whalesong :-)

Software is very different, as you say, not least because of its contingency on utility and temporality. Another thing that I find nice to imagine is a future canon of 'classical' software. I'm sure that this will exist at some point, given how young a form it is, relatively speaking. That too, I hope, will be predicated on beauty of design, as we've done with all our other canons.

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

#99

Post by deadbabe »

sorcerer-mar wrote: post #95
deadbabe wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no examples.

Does that disprove your thesis that people cannot make great art (or become “true masters”) with commercial incentives? What does this imply for your broader thesis that nothing is lost if AI destroys commercial incentive for humans to master and develop art further?

No, because commercially motivated artists are inherently more well known than people who master an art but don’t need to promote it. Ultimately if one wants to master an art, money cannot be the incentive, it’s only a byproduct.

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

#100

Post by bluefirebrand »

gabriel666smith wrote: post #89
km144 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creative works carry meaning through their author. The best art gives you insight into the imaginative mind of another human being—that is central to the experience of art at a fundamental level. But the machine does not intend anything. Based on the article as I understand it, this product basically does some simulated annealing of the quality of art as judged by an AI to achieve the "best possible story"—again, as…

Ah, fair enough. I believe quite strongly that creative works' meaning exists for the reader / audience / user. I don't think interpretation of art is towards an authorial, authoritative truth - rather that it's a lens to view the world through, and change one's perspective on it - so this is where we differ. But I understand your viewpoint. I do agree that the LLM's idea of achieving the 'best possible story' is def…

> The joy of creating should be in the creation

> I think LLMs are the most interesting paintbrush-for-words we've come up with since the typewriter

I cannot reconcile these thoughts in my head

For me, the joy of creating does not come from asking the computer to create something for me. It doesn't matter what careful prompt I made, I did not create the outcome. The computer did

And no, this is not the same as other computer tools. A drawing tablet may offer tools to me, but I still have to create myself

AI is not a "tool" it is the author

Prompt engineers are editors at best

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