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Someone Used AI to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me

nytimes.com

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Re: Someone Used AI to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me

#11

Post by javcasas »

gherkinnn wrote: post #4
aanet wrote: post #2

> "Two business school professors, curious about A.I. books and whether anyone actually likes them, gathered data about 10 million books published on Amazon over the last five years. They found that the number of e-books published per month had tripled since the release of ChatGPT, to more than 300,000 at the end of last year, from around 100,000 in 2022. (Amazon said that its internal metrics did not show that level…

> As economists, they told me, they’re less concerned with literary quality or customer satisfaction than revenue growth and market expansion. As a human, I am concerned with these economists.

Don't be. They are maximizing economy, at the cost of everything else. If anything, they are _perfect_ economists.

Re: Someone Used AI to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me

#12

Post by dylan604 »

jambalaya8 wrote: post #7
aanet wrote: post #2

> "Two business school professors, curious about A.I. books and whether anyone actually likes them, gathered data about 10 million books published on Amazon over the last five years. They found that the number of e-books published per month had tripled since the release of ChatGPT, to more than 300,000 at the end of last year, from around 100,000 in 2022. (Amazon said that its internal metrics did not show that level…

This is good . It should eventually make writing not a viably profitable career for anyone also. How the heck will people ever stand out and not just be grey goo? How will anyone know what is good versus garbage?

Would publishers be willing to go to the level of pulling a Milli Vanilli where they hire people to make appearances as the author? Or would a litmus test to see if an author has attended any book signings be valid?

Re: Someone Used AI to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me

#13

Post by dylan604 »

shimman wrote: post #6
aanet wrote: post #3

If sloppy digital pollution is the state of things to come, I fear for our species.

People are allowed to reject things and we've seen the public around the world overwhelming reject LLMs, what SV + VC doesn't like are being told no (shocker). Honestly believe they would rather destroy the planet than be forced to help others, which tracks seeing what you hear coming out of the mouths of these supposed "leaders" (deeply anti-human + anti-democratic sentiment). It's no wonder they are worried for the…

Right now, most people are more than happy slurping in the slop. The push back is only in niche corners of the interwebs. Even the obvious issues with slop like "count the fingers" level of issues are being used for entertainment and embraced rather than rejection. So there's no real pressure to fix things with the slop generators. So many people are oblivious to the content they are consuming is slop or not bothered by it if they are told it is slop. So I'm really not buying your premise that "we've seen the public around the world overwhelming reject LLMs"

Re: Someone Used AI to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me

#15

Post by Retric »

javcasas wrote: post #11
gherkinnn wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As economists, they told me, they’re less concerned with literary quality or customer satisfaction than revenue growth and market expansion. As a human, I am concerned with these economists.

Don't be. They are maximizing economy, at the cost of everything else. If anything, they are _perfect_ economists.

Economics has long recognized the distinction between GDP and value creation, but not everyone in a field is going to produce the best work.

Intangibles and unpaid work get ignored not because they cannot be included but because doing so is harder.

Re: Someone Used AI to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me

#16

Post by gtowey »

jambalaya8 wrote: post #7
aanet wrote: post #2

> "Two business school professors, curious about A.I. books and whether anyone actually likes them, gathered data about 10 million books published on Amazon over the last five years. They found that the number of e-books published per month had tripled since the release of ChatGPT, to more than 300,000 at the end of last year, from around 100,000 in 2022. (Amazon said that its internal metrics did not show that level…

This is good . It should eventually make writing not a viably profitable career for anyone also. How the heck will people ever stand out and not just be grey goo? How will anyone know what is good versus garbage?

We are going to go back to human-only networks for filtering the garbage into a trusted set of recommendations. Maybe where the only music you can trust are local artists you can see live. Or where the books you read are from a friend-of-a-friend who knows the author. Maybe the world of tomorrow looks more like the world we left behind.

Re: Someone Used AI to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me

#18

Post by MrGilbert »

gtowey wrote: post #16
jambalaya8 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is good . It should eventually make writing not a viably profitable career for anyone also. How the heck will people ever stand out and not just be grey goo? How will anyone know what is good versus garbage?

We are going to go back to human-only networks for filtering the garbage into a trusted set of recommendations. Maybe where the only music you can trust are local artists you can see live. Or where the books you read are from a friend-of-a-friend who knows the author. Maybe the world of tomorrow looks more like the world we left behind.

So the algorithmic system could potentially destroy itself.

Neat!

Re: Someone Used AI to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me

#19

Post by ameliaquining »

adyavanapalli wrote: post #17

Honest question, but since when were biographies ever _authorized_? I would assume you would simply inform the subject out of politeness if at all.

If a biography is authorized, then you can interview the subject, and in some cases those interviews provide a lot of the material. Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs was like this, for example.

Re: Someone Used AI to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me

#20

Post by devindotcom »

adyavanapalli wrote: post #17

Honest question, but since when were biographies ever _authorized_? I would assume you would simply inform the subject out of politeness if at all.

I know what you mean, but there is a reasonable distinction to be made especially for living persons. An "authorized" biography would be something like what Isaacson does, where they get exclusive access, anecdotes, and importantly confirmation or denial of certain facts or stories.

An "unauthorized" biography is not necessarily suspect but it is kind of a subgenre. Consider the difference between Isaacson's Musk biography and the work done by Kate and Ryan for Character Limit (https://www.amazon.com/Character-Limit-Elon-Destroyed-Twitte...) - not exactly a biography but the legwork is fundamentally different, reportorial or even adversarial where the narrative gets challenged, as opposed to accepted by the "authorized" Isaacson.

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