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Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop

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Re: Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop

#181

Post by Jtarii »

brrrrrm wrote: post #145
keiferski wrote: post #138

Not to be intentionally contrarian, but I have thought a lot about this: I think good fiction is actually the antithesis of AI, fundamentally. LLMs are really only capable of combining different things into output. This can give you some creative results, but it is ultimately kind of limited. I cannot imagine that prompting an AI a thousand times would give you something truly original in the way many high-quality fi…

Models are increasingly showing their ability to extrapolate into the human unexplored (math proofs being the most apparent). What gives you confidence the absurdity of life is uniquely difficult for models to source?

Being able to write a series of logically correct sentences down is not the same thing as intuiting human emotional experience. Or even related.

Re: Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop

#182

Post by keiferski »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #173
keiferski wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And? Can you tell me what it feels like to eat a hamburger by asking a thousand people about it?

Yes, of course.

That’s a pretty lacking theory of knowledge. How can you know what taste is, if you’re never tasted anything?

If you read a thousand books about living in New York City, is that the same thing as the experiential knowledge that comes from living there in person? I certainly don’t think so.

Re: Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop

#183

Post by keiferski »

lordnacho wrote: post #177
keiferski wrote: post #138

Not to be intentionally contrarian, but I have thought a lot about this: I think good fiction is actually the antithesis of AI, fundamentally. LLMs are really only capable of combining different things into output. This can give you some creative results, but it is ultimately kind of limited. I cannot imagine that prompting an AI a thousand times would give you something truly original in the way many high-quality fi…

So now we'll have to investigate what "original" means? From what I can see, AI is absolutely able to create new work. Things that are not in the dataset, but look like they could be. This is pretty much what generalising means, they can make a wide variety of things that aren't actually in the original set but can hide in that set pretty well. When you are an original piece of culture, what do you mean by it?

Can an AI write a story about living as an artist in NYC in 2026, the cultural environment, etc. without that information being added to the dataset immediately as it happens?

It seems pretty obvious to me that there are cultural trends which are happening instantaneously and aren’t merely some sort of consequence of past historical data.

Re: Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop

#184

Post by seanmcdirmid »

keiferski wrote: post #183
lordnacho wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So now we'll have to investigate what "original" means? From what I can see, AI is absolutely able to create new work. Things that are not in the dataset, but look like they could be. This is pretty much what generalising means, they can make a wide variety of things that aren't actually in the original set but can hide in that set pretty well. When you are an original piece of culture, what do you mean by it?

Can an AI write a story about living as an artist in NYC in 2026, the cultural environment, etc. without that information being added to the dataset immediately as it happens? It seems pretty obvious to me that there are cultural trends which are happening instantaneously and aren’t merely some sort of consequence of past historical data.

Ideally the AI would get none of its world knowledge from its model weights and would rely entirely on context. This is just an ideal though, we haven’t figured out how to completely separate world knowledge from the model.

Re: Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop

#185

Post by keiferski »

awongh wrote: post #174
keiferski wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit like saying “there are only five fundamental flavors” and everything is some combination of them. Maybe, but that has basically zero effect on the experience of actually eating food. Just because the form may be the same doesn’t mean an LLM will be able to supply original content.

I’m not sure I understand the analogy. You could say that the reason why artificial flavors work in food is because we know how to recreate flavors from first principle chemistry. The dislike of the artificialness of cheetos also doesn’t stop many many people from eating them. I would say human made slop writing isn’t any better or worse quality than LLM writing. Knowing if it was made by a real person makes a differ…

Just because the form of a story is the same as another story does not imply that the content is interchangeable.

I could write you a story right now about being an expat living in Poland in 2026. It’s unclear to me how an LLM would have the cultural knowledge or experience to write such a story that is actually accurate and up to date, without already having something like my story already in its dataset.

Re: Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop

#186

Post by Jtarii »

slim wrote: post #154
keiferski wrote: post #138

Not to be intentionally contrarian, but I have thought a lot about this: I think good fiction is actually the antithesis of AI, fundamentally. LLMs are really only capable of combining different things into output. This can give you some creative results, but it is ultimately kind of limited. I cannot imagine that prompting an AI a thousand times would give you something truly original in the way many high-quality fi…

LLMs are really only capable of combining different things into output what makes believe humans can do more than this ? it's a real question. I've seen a lot of people stating that the human mind "is more than this" as if it was obvious

I would say the inherently chaotic and continuous nature of the human brain can create novelty in a fundamentally different way than LLMs can.

Like a human can reach into the chaos of their own emotions and pull something unique out. There is some layer of the human experience where ideas can ferment and change based on all your memories is weird ways, and LLMs completely lack this, which makes things LLMs create very blunt and obvious. Like there is no nuance to anything they do.

Re: Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop

#187

Post by ModernMech »

awongh wrote: post #167
keiferski wrote: post #138

Not to be intentionally contrarian, but I have thought a lot about this: I think good fiction is actually the antithesis of AI, fundamentally. LLMs are really only capable of combining different things into output. This can give you some creative results, but it is ultimately kind of limited. I cannot imagine that prompting an AI a thousand times would give you something truly original in the way many high-quality fi…

> LLMs are really only capable of combining different things into output In terms of how writers think about creativity this doesn’t reflect reality- there’s the old writer’s saying that there are only 7 stories (and other variations of this idea) and that writing is about creatively remixing these well-worn ideas. The LLM’s capability to write acceptable fiction and nonfiction is coming soon if it’s not already here…

Which would you rather watch:

Superhero Wars Trek 42 - the latest franchise installment, billion dollar Hollywood budget, financed and produced by billionaires, audience tested committee-made script, lots of people involved, designed primarily to push merchandise.

Personal Story - a movie about someone's personal reality or fantasy, something typically not made by studios because the story isn't profitable to a wide audience, painstakingly generated and edited by one person using AI, designed primarily to tell a story.

I put up a different strawman because your strawman is too beatable. As humans, of course we're all interested in what other humans have to say. But you haven't explained why you feel people can't use AI to say things, or why AI output can't be based on a real human's life experiences.

Personally, it seems like movie studios are the ones with only 7 stories to tell, and I've seen the movie and its sequel, the prequel, the requel, the remake, the gritty reboot, the musical, and the animated series. I'm excited that AI will let people skip the studio gatekeepers to tell some new stories for a change.

Re: Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop

#188

Post by zkiihne »

Not to be that guy but your site is terrible.

It does not do the most important function well, giving me a list of award winning books that is easy to sort through. It is not clear what is a link and what is not.

It looks fine though somewhat generic. But it is not actually functional in a real sense.

Re: Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop

#189

Post by [deleted] »

keiferski wrote: post #172
rahimnathwani wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT has had more conversations than you or I have. And it's conversed with people from a wider range of backgrounds in a wider range of situations.

And? Can you tell me what it feels like to eat a hamburger by asking a thousand people about it?

[deleted]

Re: Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop

#190

Post by kraai »

exe34 wrote: post #166
snakeboy wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And therefore, if an AI had more data that mirrors that experience in some way would it be sufficiently creative to create something "truly original"? An important distinction seems to lie in a human having original experiences to draw from, while an AI has only "data that mirrors" experiences.

> while an AI has only "data that mirrors" experiences. True for a lot of current AI. With more robotic bodies, loads more access to cameras/audio/satellite/science measurements, an AI can have original experience on a level that can only be described as god-like compared to humans.

You could argue AI already partly has access to these measurements. You could easily tap into smart sensor data etc, same voor video/audio etc.

The part that AI can't (yet) truly replicate is 'feelings/emotions'. Experiences such feeling dread, loneliness, happiness. Or being anxious, nervous or having goosebumps. You can describe all these states but they are differently experienced for each individual and also dependent on each unique situation.

Ofcourse this also then comes down to how you exactly define emotions.

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