281–290 of 480 posts
Is the AI that writes "about as well as humans" in the room with us right now?
Did you stop reading at the em-dash? > Artificial Intelligence is writing about as well as humans — at least well enough to cause confusion and speculation No matter your opinion on AI writing, this is just a fact.
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Not sure if it's what you meant, but archive.is and archive.org are unrelated.
TIL. It's easy to confuse because archive.is uses several domains like archive.ph and archive.today so you can see how easy it is to think they are related.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Archive
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive.today#Attack_on_Gyrova...
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Finally, someone else understands that writing is not the goal, the entire point of all of this is our communications between one another and this market for narrative stories is a nice departure and it does convey important knowledge and moral lessons that larger society needs. But it is an indirection, an indirection to the mission of communicating solutions to how to live as a human and that is why we care, why th…
Many of us understood that, and tried to tell it over and over. My keyboard is worn, my mind is numb, my soul is weary from typing/telling that the output is not the aim, but the content it carries, the substance it holds. Yet a very vocal group advocates integrating LLMs into every aspect of their lives, and the other group watch in dismay. On the other hand, I used a sentence form used by LLMs in a comment during a…
point is: maybe llm output is best not shared. maybe, like a dream, the only audience who can appreciate the content of the writing is the first party
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Part of the appeal of literature generally and the novel in particular is that it provides you with an incredibly intimate connection to the subjectivity of another person, though they may be long dead, or the speaker of another language, or from a far away part of the world that you would never be able to visit yourself.
I would argue that a story can mainly provide a connection with your own subjectivity. If it moves something in you, that's what mainly matters. If your goal by reading is too learn about the subjectivity of another real person, then yes, read human authors. You said it, that's it's part of what a book can offer, but there can be other reasons for reading
This is a values question. Many would say that literature has a role in modeling certain behaviors and teaching lessons that are functional in society. Basically the fables and proverbs idea. Simply catering to what feels nice and what reinforces the biases and wishes of readers is not the same thing. Yes, most of literature is already crap and simply caters to readers instead of challenging them. But if you RLHF your way to AI literature that people "engage with" the most, you will get unvirtuous literature that doesn't do this function. Of course you're welcome to disagree with this entire framing and purely see reading as hedonistic pleasure and nothing else.
LLMs are writing as well as humans for people who think writing words is the goal. Printing presses also write words better than humans. LLMs are solving the problem one layer higher than printing presses, but still several layers down from the top. Note that LLMs aren't useless, since they have other strengths which can make them equal or better than humans in certain applications. For instance, they can tirelessly…
I’d be interested to know what you think the “several layers” above a system that solves open mathematical problems in an afternoon, and writes entire operating systems from scratch, are.
We had this exact drama about 3 weeks ago in the SFF community, when a bunch of editors admitted to accepting and paying for submissions from very clearly AI author[^1], which led to some more interesting revelations: there are many Editors in this space that care _more for the premise of the idea shown to them_ than the actual quality of writing. I have a suspicion this is what happened here too. Agents, Editors, et…
That is a path to extinction.
LLMs are writing as well as humans for people who think writing words is the goal. Printing presses also write words better than humans. LLMs are solving the problem one layer higher than printing presses, but still several layers down from the top. Note that LLMs aren't useless, since they have other strengths which can make them equal or better than humans in certain applications. For instance, they can tirelessly…
He talks about this in TFA: Yo, this blog post could’ve been a freakin’ prompt. I have years and years of blogging for an AI to learn from, and over 20 novels, and tons of short stories. One prompt, and all this spills out. And if your goal is a blog post, you’re gonna love this era. If your goal is the joy of thinking in words, nothing has changed. So this is the real part, right here: Doing a thing for the love of…
I see all of this as the cognitive dissonance created when humans are confronted with what scientists have been telling us forever: we’re not that special. We’re just piles of atoms, as are rocks, dogs, computers, and all of the other intelligent life that the universe must surely be teeming with. Building something that supersedes us may have always been our purpose. Until skynet turns on us I’ll be happy to say I l…
This is just religion, but without even any serious philosophical/theological grounding.
Not so long ago the author / creator would have to be very skillfull and prolific to write-and-write-and-write… nowaways I fee like I (we?) are drowning in more and more content…
I'd take back substance over volume :/
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> AI writing makes me vomit. I think this was fairly obvious and fair 1 - 2 years ago. Now though, I have to wonder if people who think this with such conviction are falling for the toupee fallacy. You said it yourself: someone you consider a well known (and presumably accomplished?) author thinks AI is pretty good at writing.
I haven't tried using an AI to write prose, but I use Claude to write code daily and it spits out the worst comments I've ever seen, along with some surprisingly good ones. Would we not expect AI fiction to be the same? A stream of poor and excellent taste, not particularly original or surprising, samey in hard-to-define ways, but capable of being hammered into a good story by an editor.
Replace Microsoft with LLMs and the same quote applies. They have no culture, no connection. The code or comments they produce will not effect any future LLM session and they current have no concern how it will effect future humans except for maximizing engagement for the human at the console today.
Fiction is no different. Unless there’s a feedback loop the LLM just spits out text and will never see it again. The LLM will never meet the readers at book signings, weave in personal details that could only be known for experience.
It’s probably perfect for the write-by-committee style of movies and shows being created today. Just like organic food or locally made products, there are already creators putting Human Intelligence badges on their work and there will probably be a market (though niche) for that until human supremacist laws push it underground.