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AI children's books, body horror edition

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61–70 of 83 posts

Re: AI children's books, body horror edition

#61
post #51

This just seems like laziness vs AI = bad. It's not like publishers are putting out masterpieces with human writing. They're cranking out minimum viable content as well. I've found that by putting meaningful effort into AI storytelling, I can create bespoke stories that my kids love night after night. My workflow is below: Caveat that it costs about $0.25-$0.50 to weave a book like this with Claude Sonnet and Gemini…

There is something unsettling knowing that AI takes over literal parenting. I mean, I'm not trying to argue with your particular use case of AI, but the general idea that AI might be better at raising children than humans. Imagine knowing that if you give your child a tablet with AI and never speak to it, it'll turn out as a better human being than anything you could reasonably do manually.

Of course your current method requires quite a few steps, but it's not hard to imagine a tablet where you just prompt "hey Claude, please take care of my child" and Claude automatically generates things that are engaging for the child while teaching it things. Things you'd never ever be able to do yourself. Your role is to just feed the child. You don't even need to be present - Claude automatically reacts in case of an emergency. Claude even taught the child how to maintain cleanliness so you don't need to do that, how convenient.

Re: AI children's books, body horror edition

#62
post #35
post #8

I've been wondering what the long term result on peoples perceptions of reality will be after all this AI slop. I've noticed a lot of the times I can spot AI slop videos because they just don't match what I know to be true, I can think "That's an AI video of a fox because I know foxes don't act/move like that" But then the only reason I know that is because I've seen hundreds of videos on the internet before AI gener…

One of the scariest things to me about getting older is that there's entire generations younger than me who don't realize a growing number of things we used to have and lost. Because, like you said, they grew up without it. And they don't believe things even can be better because they regularly hear one of the dumbest ideas of our time: that the past wasn't actually better, we only remember it that way.

I did read somewhere that Gen X are the last gen in modern societies to see anything real. Everything is just a simulation of older things. All the stupid bars nd cafes with rustic wood and old timey aesthetics for example.

Re: AI children's books, body horror edition

#63
post #51

This just seems like laziness vs AI = bad. It's not like publishers are putting out masterpieces with human writing. They're cranking out minimum viable content as well. I've found that by putting meaningful effort into AI storytelling, I can create bespoke stories that my kids love night after night. My workflow is below: Caveat that it costs about $0.25-$0.50 to weave a book like this with Claude Sonnet and Gemini…

There is something unsettling knowing that AI takes over literal parenting. I mean, I'm not trying to argue with your particular use case of AI, but the general idea that AI might be better at raising children than humans. Imagine knowing that if you give your child a tablet with AI and never speak to it, it'll turn out as a better human being than anything you could reasonably do manually. Of course your current met…

Tht whole tone of your comment is just unsettling implications and fabulations.

I think that creating books customised for their kid(s) interests and then editing the book and reading it to them sounds awfully like great parenting.

Way better than reading sacharrine Disney books with their unsubtlety degraded morals.

Re: AI children's books, body horror edition

#64
post #51

This just seems like laziness vs AI = bad. It's not like publishers are putting out masterpieces with human writing. They're cranking out minimum viable content as well. I've found that by putting meaningful effort into AI storytelling, I can create bespoke stories that my kids love night after night. My workflow is below: Caveat that it costs about $0.25-$0.50 to weave a book like this with Claude Sonnet and Gemini…

There is something unsettling knowing that AI takes over literal parenting. I mean, I'm not trying to argue with your particular use case of AI, but the general idea that AI might be better at raising children than humans. Imagine knowing that if you give your child a tablet with AI and never speak to it, it'll turn out as a better human being than anything you could reasonably do manually. Of course your current met…

Now that's a Black Mirror episode. It's the story of all technology though, caveat emptor.

For me it's still about human connection though. I read the stories we create together. It's just a great tool. It makes any topic relatable. I.e. even crazy fun ones like "Claude weave a bedtime story about how the 5nm chip fab process works including EUV lithography and clean rooms".

Quick short 5-10 minute read and next thing you know we're talking about lasers and how sand becomes computers.

Re: AI children's books, body horror edition

#65
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the scariest things to me about getting older is that there's entire generations younger than me who don't realize a growing number of things we used to have and lost. Because, like you said, they grew up without it. And they don't believe things even can be better because they regularly hear one of the dumbest ideas of our time: that the past wasn't actually better, we only remember it that way.

I did read somewhere that Gen X are the last gen in modern societies to see anything real. Everything is just a simulation of older things. All the stupid bars nd cafes with rustic wood and old timey aesthetics for example.

> All the stupid bars nd cafes with rustic wood and old timey aesthetics for example.

Surely that's been a thing for decades. In the 70s, there were bars that harked back to the 1920s. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug

Re: AI children's books, body horror edition

#66
post #51

This just seems like laziness vs AI = bad. It's not like publishers are putting out masterpieces with human writing. They're cranking out minimum viable content as well. I've found that by putting meaningful effort into AI storytelling, I can create bespoke stories that my kids love night after night. My workflow is below: Caveat that it costs about $0.25-$0.50 to weave a book like this with Claude Sonnet and Gemini…

I really think that a genAI picture book is like a microwave dinner. You can try to pick out a good one, but a corporation has done most of the deciding for you. Ultimately, it will not be as wholesome as something homemade, or as good as something made by an expert, and it will always taste like plastic.

Re: AI children's books, body horror edition

#67
post #51

This just seems like laziness vs AI = bad. It's not like publishers are putting out masterpieces with human writing. They're cranking out minimum viable content as well. I've found that by putting meaningful effort into AI storytelling, I can create bespoke stories that my kids love night after night. My workflow is below: Caveat that it costs about $0.25-$0.50 to weave a book like this with Claude Sonnet and Gemini…

There is something unsettling knowing that AI takes over literal parenting. I mean, I'm not trying to argue with your particular use case of AI, but the general idea that AI might be better at raising children than humans. Imagine knowing that if you give your child a tablet with AI and never speak to it, it'll turn out as a better human being than anything you could reasonably do manually. Of course your current met…

There's something deeply disturbing seeing you start with

"of course now you're behaving like a fantastic parent, taking time, money and effort to create custom stories, ensuring they'll never forget it"

And then follow with:

"it's not hard to imagine that at some point you'll just get bored and throw them a tabled and Ai chatbot".

Not just disturbing but dare I say, malicious.

Re: AI children's books, body horror edition

#68

The concept of consuming AI generated content for children has always baffled me. We collectively have a virtually infinite collection of already existing hand crafted quality content filtered over the years in the form of children stories and tales that we can pick and chose from to read to our children. We love telling stories especially to our children. Why would ANYONE be enticed by the idea of using AI to genera…

Some of the older quality content uses language which is now considered inappropriate. Of course, it wouldn't be hard to replace those words and there are plenty of books that do, but we can't just use the older books as they were.

Re: AI children's books, body horror edition

#69
post #51

This just seems like laziness vs AI = bad. It's not like publishers are putting out masterpieces with human writing. They're cranking out minimum viable content as well. I've found that by putting meaningful effort into AI storytelling, I can create bespoke stories that my kids love night after night. My workflow is below: Caveat that it costs about $0.25-$0.50 to weave a book like this with Claude Sonnet and Gemini…

Great workflow and a fantastic illustrations! Well done :)
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