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AI vs. Professional Authors Results

mark---lawrence.blogspot.com

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Re: AI vs. Professional Authors Results

#21

Post by vunderba »

The story plot was "Meeting a dragon". As both a human and a writer, challenge accepted:

Long ago, there lived a golden dragon whose fractal-like scales gleamed in the glow of the morning in her cave. She was known for her kindness, and many came not with sword or spear, but with humble requests - for you see, it was widely believed that the mystical scales of a dragon would heal illness, cure ailments, and provide fortune.

One such visitor timidly looked up at her great shining body and beseeched, "Oh glorious dragon, might I have a single scale?"

Of course, the dragon replied warmly. She delicately, almost lovingly, with a slight twinge, used a single claw to prise off a single golden scale, leaving a dull patch.

Over the eons, more and more people would come as supplicants. The scales were used for good luck, for warmth, to ward off evil, as the draconic equivalent of a rabbit's foot.

In the end, the poor dragon was stripped bare - the fire from her burning furnace now showed clearly through to her patchwork, sensitive, and naked skin.

When winter came, she huddled in the cold darkness. And still, when a peasant would come asking for a scale - just one, a single scale nothing more, she would not refuse. In her eternal generosity she would carefully break off another. This time it took longer to find one left upon her body, as the humans had stripped her bare like a tree come winter.

Then thus came a knight. "I'm sorry, good sir, but I have no scales left to give," she said pitiably.

"Why, your scale was a choking hazard and wasn’t labeled not for ages under 5! Prepare for a class-action lawsuit and also to be impaled upon a lance."

The End.

I'll pretend I intended it as a parable of the destructive nature of mass tourism or something something Lorax something something truffula trees.

Re: AI vs. Professional Authors Results

#23

Post by thwarted »

xenotux wrote: post #12

I think this is similar to AI generated images: it puts a new creative tool in the hands of people who might have had good ideas, but didn't have a mastery of the medium. In that respect, it's cool: if you had a great idea for a sci-fi story but no talent for writing, and if an LLM let you realize your vision, that's neat. It has some negative externalities for the craftsmen, but overall, more creativity is hardly a…

> I think this is similar to AI generated images: it puts a new creative tool in the hands of people who might have had good ideas, but didn't have a mastery of the medium.

Reading this sentence reminded me of the classic HN position of "ideas are worthless, what matters is the execution", usually mentioned in the context of an "ideas person" looking for their "technical cofounder" and the ideas person thinking they deserve at least 50%, often more, of the ownership of what would be built because without them there'd be no idea.

> if you had a great idea for a sci-fi story but no talent for writing, and if an LLM let you realize your vision, that's neat.

If your "vision" is only the "idea for a sci-fi story", is that really a vision? Good books leave the reader changed/influenced in some fashion, through the way the idea is presented and developed over the course of the story, not just from a blurb on the book jacket.

> overall, more creativity is hardly a bad thing.

Is coming up with an idea for a for a sci-fi story the meat of creative act such that that flooding the market with ideas counts as an increase in creativity overall?

Re: AI vs. Professional Authors Results

#24

Post by eulgro »

vunderba wrote: post #21

The story plot was "Meeting a dragon". As both a human and a writer, challenge accepted: Long ago, there lived a golden dragon whose fractal-like scales gleamed in the glow of the morning in her cave. She was known for her kindness, and many came not with sword or spear, but with humble requests - for you see, it was widely believed that the mystical scales of a dragon would heal illness, cure ailments, and provide f…

Thanks, I love it.

Re: AI vs. Professional Authors Results

#25

Post by perching_aix »

gtowey wrote: post #17
xenotux wrote: post #12

I think this is similar to AI generated images: it puts a new creative tool in the hands of people who might have had good ideas, but didn't have a mastery of the medium. In that respect, it's cool: if you had a great idea for a sci-fi story but no talent for writing, and if an LLM let you realize your vision, that's neat. It has some negative externalities for the craftsmen, but overall, more creativity is hardly a…

And they haven't even gotten around to adding advertising into them yet! Imagine when chat assistants subtly steer you towards certain products. Would you even know it was manipulating you?

They kind of did though. Thing tries to make me generate diagrams every step of the way (as a kind of feature demo), even though they're rarely ever a good idea, and even when they are, the pictures and diagrams generated are useless.

Re: AI vs. Professional Authors Results

#26

Post by vunderba »

thwarted wrote: post #23
xenotux wrote: post #12

I think this is similar to AI generated images: it puts a new creative tool in the hands of people who might have had good ideas, but didn't have a mastery of the medium. In that respect, it's cool: if you had a great idea for a sci-fi story but no talent for writing, and if an LLM let you realize your vision, that's neat. It has some negative externalities for the craftsmen, but overall, more creativity is hardly a…

> I think this is similar to AI generated images: it puts a new creative tool in the hands of people who might have had good ideas, but didn't have a mastery of the medium. Reading this sentence reminded me of the classic HN position of "ideas are worthless, what matters is the execution", usually mentioned in the context of an "ideas person" looking for their "technical cofounder" and the ideas person thinking they…

Agreed. Have a read through the 10 dragon stories - the majority of them are rich in spices, but bereft otherwise.

LLMs seem to revel in throwing layer after layer of decorative paint in the hope that people will fail to notice that they're not actually painting anything.

As a writer, the best advice that I can give is to build your house upon the rock and not upon the sand.

Re: AI vs. Professional Authors Results

#27

Post by Aeolun »

sram1337 wrote: post #10
Aeolun wrote: post #5

Personally I’m having a blast reading AI generated fiction. As long as the direction is human, and often enough corrected to keep the minor inconsistencies out, the results are pretty good. For me it’s no different from generating code with Claude, except it’s generating prose. Without human direction your result ends up as garbage, but there’s no need to go and actually write all the prose yourself. And I guess that…

I would love to read some of this. Where do you find AI generated fiction?

https://www.royalroad.com/fictions/search?globalFilters=fals...

Though I’ll admit I can’t speak to the quality of that except my own stuff (which I’m naturally predisposed to like).

This was my attempt at fully AI generated (though edited by human):

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/101072/inherited-wounds

Re: AI vs. Professional Authors Results

#28

Post by hyperadvanced »

thwarted wrote: post #23
xenotux wrote: post #12

I think this is similar to AI generated images: it puts a new creative tool in the hands of people who might have had good ideas, but didn't have a mastery of the medium. In that respect, it's cool: if you had a great idea for a sci-fi story but no talent for writing, and if an LLM let you realize your vision, that's neat. It has some negative externalities for the craftsmen, but overall, more creativity is hardly a…

> I think this is similar to AI generated images: it puts a new creative tool in the hands of people who might have had good ideas, but didn't have a mastery of the medium. Reading this sentence reminded me of the classic HN position of "ideas are worthless, what matters is the execution", usually mentioned in the context of an "ideas person" looking for their "technical cofounder" and the ideas person thinking they…

I also think that just having “an idea” isn’t exactly the same as increasing net creativity. Oftentimes with art, the impact of something truly creative results in changing the parameters of the medium or genre itself, not merely sticking to the script and producing a new work in the style of X. If you take, for example, J Dilla and his impact on hip-hop, the fact that there’s an entire subgenre or two focused on some of his hallmark innovations (micro-rhythm/wonky beats, neo-soul, lofi sampling/creative use of samples) speaks to that kind of “real” creativity. I frankly think that kind of genre-bending is possible with the use of LLMs, but if you just say, “here’s my story idea, make it so”, without any eye towards the actual technique or craft, you won’t be getting the next Blood Meridian out of it.

Re: AI vs. Professional Authors Results

#29

Post by spondylosaurus »

bsder wrote: post #20

Perhaps what this is pointing out is that a lot of writers of the genre of "fantasy" produce mostly formulaic, trope-laden piles of crap that AI is pretty good at mimicking? This is neither new nor news. "The Well-Tempered Plot Device" is almost 4 decades old (see: https://news.ansible.uk/plotdev.html ). It does suggest that publishers might want to screen new writing with a quick "Did AI write this?" and only publis…

I thought it was interesting/telling (but maybe not surprising) that the AI-generated stories scored the highest according to reader rankings, yet pinged to me as immediately flat and generic. But I really liked the idiosyncrasies of a few of the human-authored entries!
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