The End of an Era • Hacker News Board

Re: The End of an Era

#221

Post by kriro » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 2:18 PM UTC

argentinian wrote: post #112

jmartrican wrote: post #77

What if we remove the stigma of authors using AI. We say, have at it, use all the AI you want. What then? The market is still finite. The authors are still competing with each other. They will still have to be good at creating compelling books that people want to read. Will the whole thing just blow over and AI would be "just another tool" that authors use to get their work out?

That sounds to me like the most reasonable attitude. If a story is compelling for a certain person, why care about how it was created?

This mindset is called "death of the author" [1] and the quick summary is that the author's intent doesn't matter. Most book people I know disagree with it.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_the_Author

Re: The End of an Era

#222

Post by harimau777 » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 2:18 PM UTC

monkeywork wrote: post #139

dude250711 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as we add the stigma of them getting paid for their AI's effort too. Then it could absolutely work.

Why would there need to be a stigma for getting paid based on a tool they used? Do other authors have a stigma for using a word processor instead of a typewriter? Artist have a stigma for using photoshop instead of canvas?

The issue is that word processors and photoshop replace the traditional technique of art. AI replaces the expression of art. Since the invention of the camera made representation trivial, the art community has moved towards viewing expression as the soul of art.

Re: The End of an Era

#223

Post by okzgn » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 2:19 PM UTC

fidotron wrote: post #99

okzgn wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting standpoint. Do not forget what makes you human, and that's why there are a lot of different opinions and valuable, subjective literary articles.

> and valuable, subjective literary articles There you go again. I suspect if everyone on earth produced subjective literary articles at the rate of ten a day you would cease to consider them valuable, let alone a machine that can create them on demand.

Thank you for your opinion. To be more specific, there are many subjective views on what value is. I didn't mean a literary piece always has market value if nobody is buying it, but it can still be valuable educationally as a masterful or sublime example of literature.

Re: The End of an Era

#224

Post by un-diletante » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 2:20 PM UTC

ChrisLTD wrote: post #196

un-diletante wrote: post #190

I feel like writing has traditionally had two purposes, to communicate some internal feeling or idea of the writer, and to entertain. For the reader, even if their primary purpose was to be entertained, they would have no choice but to also engage with the internality of the writer. This latter point is what is changing. I fully admit that we have been surpassed by the machine in the ability to entertain. And the big…

> I fully admit that we have been surpassed by the machine in the ability to entertain. Why though? Daily here on HN, posts are pilloried for being AI generated and full of AI tropes. AI generated content might be drowning out human generated content, but I wouldn’t say that it’s surpassed human content in a qualitative way.

I think in order to notice and take offense to those tropes, you already have to be prejudiced against them. And you probably also have the pretense that what you're reading was thought important enough by another person to write. So when you realize that this isn't the case you become disappointed.

But some people just don't care, and are just in it for novel rearrangements of the narrative structure. I'll give you that I don't notice this so much with literary content, but I have seen people being entertained by AI generated music and videos quite a bit, especially children and those who in general are uncritical of what they consume.

For example, the other day I was at a restaurant where they were playing some AI abomination of Frank Sinatra called "Take me to the Moon", and nobody really seemed to notice or care while I was becoming nauseous to my stomach. You have to already be biased to notice it, let alone to even be bothered by it.

Re: The End of an Era

#225

Post by harimau777 » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 2:20 PM UTC

fidotron wrote: post #140

dude250711 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as we add the stigma of them getting paid for their AI's effort too. Then it could absolutely work.

Surely having the idea and curating the result actually is work? And pricing is determined by what someone else will pay for something, so if people want to read it and the author is charging for it . . . that's up to them if they want to make a trade about it. The odd thing is this attempt at gatekeeping what other people value.

Price is determined by what someone is willing to pay but value isn't. If the value from art comes from expression, then LLMs directly attack the core value of art.

Re: The End of an Era

#226

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 2:21 PM UTC

1dom wrote: post #153

delis-thumbs-7e wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now though, I have to wonder if people who think this with such conviction are falling for the toupee fallacy. If this is the case it should be quite easy for you to provide examples of excellent AI-fiction. As for the “well-known author”, Occam’s razor says he (like most “well-known accomplished authors”) doesn’t know what the hell he is talking about.

> If this is the case it should be quite easy for you to provide examples of excellent AI-fiction. I feel that's the opposite of the toupee fallacy. The lack of labelled excellent AI fiction supports the idea that there's a lot of excellent fiction that was written by largely by AI but nobody was able to identify it as AI, because they were looking for writing that makes them vomit. Regardless, how about this: https:…

[deleted]

Re: The End of an Era

#227

Post by Planktonne » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 2:23 PM UTC

lern_too_spel wrote: post #155

Planktonne wrote: post #29

> Artificial Intelligence is writing about as well as humans This is just untrue. There's a lot of money in claiming it's true, with varying levels of hedging and insincerity, but AI writing follows the pattern of AI everything else: if you're not competent to judge quality, then you think it is high quality.

Author gives an example with a bidding war and multimillion dollar advance.

Which is an excellent example of AI writing being potentially lucrative, but not good. Also note that that is its own counter-example: it wasn't published, and the advance was retracted.

Re: The End of an Era

#228

Post by 999900000999 » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 2:23 PM UTC

I actually think AI has great potential to help low budget movies, shows and even books.

CGI is so expensive only the most generic and safe sci fi movies get made. I want a 30k movie with amazing effects.

As for writing, AI is great at filler. But a lot of books are brought for Instagram photos and social validation. Not to be actually read.

Self help books are like this. Maybe a few are good. Many are slop to funnel you into buying other products.

But with AI telling us what to buy, how long until we have books written specifically for LLMs ?

I’m sure they’ll be absolutely gibberish, but you can still pose with them on Instagram?

Re: The End of an Era

#229

Post by taude » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 2:24 PM UTC

adamfletcher wrote: post #87

The biggest problem facing authors is not battles over whether something is AI vs. human. Most readers don't care. AI has made creating content almost free. What it hasn't done is add free hours to our day to consume all this new content. The number of people who want to read a book this month is roughly what it was five years ago, and roughly what it'll be five years from now. Supply is exploding into demand that is…

This is pretty much what I've been saying for 20 years, but with content in general. People's time is fixed: 168 hours per week to: work, sleep, eat, excercise, commute, and then....

- read

- watch content: a movie at a theater, youtube, short-form socials, streaming services, etc..

- read a book

- scroll on the phone (won't list all the apps out)

- play a video game

- play a board game

- listen to music

etc.

So much content, fixed amount of time.

Re: The End of an Era

#230

Post by Schlagbohrer » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 2:27 PM UTC

Nice blog post but this one part is so irritating:

"In my dream world, the robots do all the boring jobs and humans spend all their time being creative, connecting with one another, learning about the universe, and sharing our ideas and creations in a great big prosperous circle. I believe such a utopia is possible. It does not violate the laws of physics, so much the laws of human nature."

What irritates me is when people say "human nature" but what they actually mean is "capitalism" or "the profit motive". Common among people who have fallen into the trap of what Mark Fisher called "capitalist realism", a capturing of the imagination by the cultural concept in the west that capitalism will be with us forever, or that it is the natural state of humanity.