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The End of an Era

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Re: The End of an Era

#331

Post by lern_too_spel »

Planktonne wrote: post #227
lern_too_spel wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Also note that that is its own counter-example: it wasn't published, and the advance was retracted.

> it wasn't published, and the advance was retracted.

Not because they didn't think the writing was high quality. The quality of the writing is what led to the bidding war. The advance was retracted because the publisher can't get exclusivity if copyright protections don't hold due to the novel being AI generated.

Re: The End of an Era

#332

Post by rhdunn »

whazor wrote: post #19

Two of my favorite (sci-)fi writers both use crazy big Excel files that almost crash their computers when loading. For research but also keeping track of story loops. I can imagine something like ChatGPT Work with markdown/python/CSV's can do quite some magic for such writers.

A common writing tool is to use a story grid. You have chapters/similar along the Y axis and title, characters, plot elements, etc. along the X axis. That way you can keep track of what information you are revealing at each story beat/chapter, make sure that plot twists work (e.g. when outlining something like The Sixth Sense).

Depending on how big the story is and how many characters/plot threads there are, I can see the Excel files getting large.

Re: The End of an Era

#333

Post by ticulatedspline »

kriro wrote: post #211

""" Another prediction is that MOST readers will care about machine-vs-meat as much as they currently care about publishing imprints, which is to say almost none. """ This does not align with what I see in the fiction book space at all. At least in the communities that I frequent (fantasy, sci-fi, horror) there is no AI publication that I am aware of that is good. And readers react allergically to any notion of AI in…

Honestly I feel like I've already lived this when CGI began eating practical effects in movies. Lots of people hated CGI. then it got better, then it got worse again but by then it was the norm and people's complaints don't have much teeth.

Of course the best CGI back in the day was the CGI you didn't even notice was there. same with AI. when it's bad (and these days it's often bad) you notice, but then you don't notice all the places that. well you don't notice. And you didn't notice because there was nothing to notice.

I think this blog is pretty spot on, it's coming, people will seek out AI novels for, well their novelty (at least for a while), some will demand provenance regardless of quality, and everyone whether they like it or not will be consuming it and in many cases be none the wiser. eventually it will just be how things are.

Re: The End of an Era

#334

Post by danaris »

inigyou wrote: post #4

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…

> LLMs are writing as well as humans for people who think writing words is the goal.

Only if what you mean by this is "for people who think padding a word count is the goal".

LLMs absolutely do not write well, by human standards.

Re: The End of an Era

#335

Post by Sammi »

kriro wrote: post #211

""" Another prediction is that MOST readers will care about machine-vs-meat as much as they currently care about publishing imprints, which is to say almost none. """ This does not align with what I see in the fiction book space at all. At least in the communities that I frequent (fantasy, sci-fi, horror) there is no AI publication that I am aware of that is good. And readers react allergically to any notion of AI in…

I hate being a counterpoint poster on hn but here goes: derivative country and other boring music was already always popular before generative ai. The broad population listens to boring derivative music and don't give a shit. Never have, never will. It's the same with all art.

EDIT: before someone interjects saying "not all country is bad" I ask you to please notice that I did not imply that. Only the bad country music is bad mmkay.

Re: The End of an Era

#336

Post by lern_too_spel »

dspillett wrote: post #197
monkeywork wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Why would there need to be a stigma for getting paid based on a tool they used? Is it being used a tool, or is it being used as a ghostwriter? There is often stigma attached to that when done by humans. > Artist have a stigma for using photoshop instead of canvas? Yes, that used to very much be the case. Now it is often considered a different form of expression, so loses a lot of the stigma mostly by not pretending…

If it's being used as a ghostwriter, they don't get copyright protection, making it harder to profit off the work.

Re: The End of an Era

#337

Post by bigstrat2003 »

danaris wrote: post #334
inigyou wrote: post #4

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…

> LLMs are writing as well as humans for people who think writing words is the goal. Only if what you mean by this is "for people who think padding a word count is the goal". LLMs absolutely do not write well , by human standards.

LLMs don't do anything well by human standards. Not even the one thing (programming) they are supposed to be good at. It's disheartening how many people are prepared to accept the slop an LLM puts out just because it's fast.

Re: The End of an Era

#338

Post by visarga »

docfort wrote: post #330
bsenftner wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think the first goal of writing is to talk to yourself. Without an external, unchanging scratchpad, most people cannot keep their thoughts truly straight. It can feel otherwise, but trying to write something about any tricky topic even a few pages in length can take a long time to be self-consistent. Clarifying it takes even longer, especially when you intend to share it. Writing as thinking is definitely a thing.…

Don't just focus on the model, half the turns in a session belong to the human, it's an instrument that depends on how well the user wields it. It does not need to produce the novel insights, just to support the user to have them.

Re: The End of an Era

#339

Post by Planktonne »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #331
Planktonne wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> it wasn't published, and the advance was retracted. Not because they didn't think the writing was high quality. The quality of the writing is what led to the bidding war. The advance was retracted because the publisher can't get exclusivity if copyright protections don't hold due to the novel being AI generated.

Bidding wars are caused by all kinds of things, and quality is only one of them. It's the only one that gets said in marketing material though.

Re: The End of an Era

#340

Post by visarga »

sparsesignal wrote: post #205
xorcist wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. LLMs are text production machines. You can also view them as data expansion tools. They expand an input to an arbitrary long text. That text contains roughly the same amount of information as was contained in the input to begin with. This is not very useful unless your work is content production. More useful is when the output length is shorter than the input. Then it is a (lossy) data compression tool. These…

This assumes one-shot generation. I don't use it that way, and I don't think many people who find it useful do. I use it as a colleague I'm drafting with. I'll ask how a sentence lands, tell it to make a paragraph more friendly or more dramatic, have it argue against a point I'm making. The piece comes together over many turns, and the information arriving in each turn is mine — it's not expanding one prompt, it's he…

Many people make the mistake to think LLMs are stochastic parrots, but they are more like pianos, you play the keys and they make music, if you don't bring no new spices to the soup no wonder it comes out bland.
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