The problem exist, the conclusion is wrong. LLMs DON'T produce great content, they PRETEND to produce great content, even in coding. They're as good as the statistical incidence. Writing a book with an LLMs, like with code, could lead to good results sure, but they're in the mean, sometimes slightly less sometimes slightly more. When it's good it looks good, because that's how it works, and it's broken way more subtly than ever
Pre-2022 Books
91–100 of 141 posts
Re: Pre-2022 Books
#92You are not alone. I like to read Harry Potter fan fiction [1] and I have started checking the publication date when Im searching for something new to read. I started doing this passively and realized it after the fact. Have you ever met someone who could say all and do the right things but never made you feel anything, or your gut was sensing an ulterior motive? It's a magic trick we are all bewitched by at some poi…
There are people churning out 40k word novels daily on AO3, and they get the eyes and feedback that up and coming writers desperately want. Real content is being drowned out and ppl are hurting because of it.
Well they aren't people churning out 40k words :)
I've spent very little time on ao3, but I imagine it's slightly better than RR where seemingly a mark of value is "huge length (word count and chapters)" with weekly updates.
Re: Pre-2022 Books
#93Hot take: I think it’ll be pretty much the same as it was. If anything it will get better. You will still have gatekeepers and taste makers. Publishing houses will screen fiction for well-written and interesting fiction. Word-of-mouth, personal recommendations, and endorsements from people you respect will continue to outweigh algorithms, if you care. For cheap reads, how much of a difference is there between James P…
publishing houses will gatekeep for well-selling fiction and non-fiction.
Re: Pre-2022 Books
#94Tech documentation has been kind of a three-decade race to the bottom, with some ups and downs along the way. From vendor documentation in the 70's to Windows Help in the 90s to the rise of tech books incl. O'Reilly to fill the gap, to PDF and Internet document, and now to often lacking-in-detail Javadocs, Python docs, API interface, API docs, event/parameter lists, and GitHub README files that are passed off as documentation today, often with no detail, use examples, illustrations, or though-through overall structure and organization.
In addition to the obvious negative effect on learning curves, I'd argue this dearth of "long-form documentation" has a negative impact on programming language and app development, as well as software usability in general (isn't CONTROL+COMMAND+SHIFT+3 for a MAC screen capture intuitive?)..
AI has become the new "teacher of record" to fill this documentation void, but it's very individualized and narrowly focused. There's no longer a shared mental model, where everyone has read the same books and are working somewhat off the same page. Ironically, it's probably never been easier to write a good tech book, but there's likely zero money in it and the search and AI giants are likely to hover it up and start serving snippets of it up for free before you see a dime, making people very unlikely to buy your book, even if you've written a technical masterpiece!
Re: Pre-2022 Books
#95And there might be no way to prove you really wrote something Post-2022. I wrote a long article, all by hand. I never used any LLMs, even for searching. I checked it with a couple of AI detection tools and they confidently said that 60% of the article was written by AI.
Every time I post something online (that I wrote myself), the first response I get is the smug:
If you can't take the time to write it, why should I take the time to read it?
I'm thinking about just leaving the online community entirely.
Re: Pre-2022 Books
#96Hot take: I think it’ll be pretty much the same as it was. If anything it will get better. You will still have gatekeepers and taste makers. Publishing houses will screen fiction for well-written and interesting fiction. Word-of-mouth, personal recommendations, and endorsements from people you respect will continue to outweigh algorithms, if you care. For cheap reads, how much of a difference is there between James P…
publishing houses will gatekeep for well-selling fiction and non-fiction.
Yes, and innovative writing sells well. There is room for the Da Vinci Code _and_ Lincoln in the Bardo.
Re: Pre-2022 Books
#97[flagged]
Re: Pre-2022 Books
#98If contents are generated instantly via llm and packaged as books, videos, podcasts, pull requests etc, then they don’t deserve human attention.
Why on Earth would I pay for a printed LLM written book when I can just ask the LLM to do it for me for cheaper? It is insane. When I buy a book I want the money to go to the human who wrote it, not the human who babysat a printer.
Re: Pre-2022 Books
#99Perhaps we need a 2022 version of this site
Re: Pre-2022 Books
#100> But I can’t help but feel that the effort meant something. Each person that put in the effort is one additional review point. Thinking, Writing, Editing, Proofing, Publishing, Distributing, Selling... At every step, a human had the opportunity to say "no, this is bad". And the fact that they didn't is a vote of quality and reputation. These days presumably every step can be automated without a human in the loop at…
At every step, a human had the opportunity to say "no, this is bad". And the fact that they didn't is a vote of quality and reputation.
Romantic image. Doesn’t hold. Traditional publishing has pushed out lots of poorly edited slop for decades; it didn’t start in 2022.