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Generative AI floods and dilutes the market for books

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Re: Generative AI floods and dilutes the market for books

#91

Post by sieve »

skeledrew wrote: post #80
sieve wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have hundreds of plot ideas from 40 years of reading and watching crappy books and films/tv. Never had the time or energy to explore those. LLMs let me try out various plots. To see which ones work and which don't. I haven't really thought about publishing anything though. Too much work and bureaucracy. The thing is ... ideas matter just as much as the writing. You cannot simply say: "Hey Claude, write me a Sherloc…

Just self-publish! That's the route I think many authors are moving towards.

Yeah, if I think something is worth publishing, I might do that. I don't do this for the money. I do it because I enjoy building a completely lived in world from character sheets and outlines

Re: Generative AI floods and dilutes the market for books

#92

Post by klibertp »

grey-area wrote: post #78
sieve wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not expect the LLMs to do everything. They are assistants. You still bear the responsibility of stitching everything together into a cohesive whole. Make changes as required. That is where expectations differ I guess.

But they generate objectively bad text. Why do you need an assistant to do that? Perhaps for some uses (say a summary of some business document, or generating code which is then discarded or edited) that's acceptable. For literature, do you really feel they are useful tools? So many changes would be required IMO that you're better off just writing the story you want to tell.

> But they generate objectively bad text.

By default, yes. That's exactly the same for code: by default, even with planning and patient nudging towards best practices, you get passable code at best. Not elegant, not performant, and not particularly readable, either. Basically, an uninspired salaryman type of code.

In both domains, you can get much better results in some specific circumstances. Prompt, skills, memory, and the task must align, but when they do, you can get good quality building blocks that you can then work with. It's crucial to recognize the instances where there's a chance of getting better-than-average results and ones where you could dump your whole week of tokens into and still end up with a mess. This is a skill of the LLM operator.

Once get that skill, the only issue is capitalizing on it: basically, how you fit handling of the generated building blocks into your workflow. If it's seamless, it can be a big win. If it's not - yeah, writing by hand from scratch is often better.

Re: Generative AI floods and dilutes the market for books

#93

Post by rvz »

inigyou wrote: post #22
rvz wrote: post #11

This is what "Abundance" is.

What is "Abundance"?

Whenever you hear anyone from an AI lab talking about "Abundance", it is the deliberate over-supply of goods (generated by them) on the market; with prices reaching near 0.

This is what is happening with the low-hanging fruit of digital software, art, music and writing.

"Abundance" can be a great thing depending on who you ask but a nightmare for those who are selling quality.

Re: Generative AI floods and dilutes the market for books

#94

Post by garganzol »

obscurette wrote: post #64

I grew up and went into school in seventies in Soviet Union. I remember myself discovering local libraries, bookstores etc. I still love books, I have a lot of them, but process of discovery is very different. When I was young almost every book I found in library or bookstore about topic I was interested in, was almost certainly worth to read. Publishing books was slow and expensive process and there was a very slim…

Shallow, haphazardly-written books full of mistakes were a thing even back then. It looks like the publication process expensiveness wasn't a good-enough filter since 1970s.

Re: Generative AI floods and dilutes the market for books

#95

Post by illwrks »

sieve wrote: post #87
grey-area wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they generate objectively bad text. Why do you need an assistant to do that? Perhaps for some uses (say a summary of some business document, or generating code which is then discarded or edited) that's acceptable. For literature, do you really feel they are useful tools? So many changes would be required IMO that you're better off just writing the story you want to tell.

> But they generate objectively bad text. They don't. I don't think people are taking full advantage of their capabilities. They produce perfectly functional prose. Sometimes, they produce something genuinely amazing to read. But that is quite rare. People should stop expecting brilliant prose from LLMs without doing the preparatory work themselves first. Very few human authors can manage that in any case

I’d partially agree. They can generate very good descriptive text however the issue I’ve found is that when something is implied it’s not fully ‘understood’ in the context of everything else and then gets ignored by the agent.

Re: Generative AI floods and dilutes the market for books

#96

Post by sieve »

illwrks wrote: post #95
sieve wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But they generate objectively bad text. They don't. I don't think people are taking full advantage of their capabilities. They produce perfectly functional prose. Sometimes, they produce something genuinely amazing to read. But that is quite rare. People should stop expecting brilliant prose from LLMs without doing the preparatory work themselves first. Very few human authors can manage that in any case

I’d partially agree. They can generate very good descriptive text however the issue I’ve found is that when something is implied it’s not fully ‘understood’ in the context of everything else and then gets ignored by the agent.

My solution to this, as the human-in-the-loop, is pretty simple. If the generated draft is missing something that was implicit in the chapter outline, I ask the LLM to incorporate it and rewrite the para/section. Then I fix the outline to make the point explicit so that a reroll does not make the same mistake again

Re: Generative AI floods and dilutes the market for books

#97

Post by grey-area »

klibertp wrote: post #92
grey-area wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they generate objectively bad text. Why do you need an assistant to do that? Perhaps for some uses (say a summary of some business document, or generating code which is then discarded or edited) that's acceptable. For literature, do you really feel they are useful tools? So many changes would be required IMO that you're better off just writing the story you want to tell.

> But they generate objectively bad text. By default, yes. That's exactly the same for code: by default, even with planning and patient nudging towards best practices, you get passable code at best. Not elegant, not performant, and not particularly readable, either. Basically, an uninspired salaryman type of code. In both domains, you can get much better results in some specific circumstances. Prompt, skills, memory,…

I’ve certainly heard from LLM operators that there is a lot of skill in developing prompts and guiding their agents, but frankly it doesn’t seem like there is much benefit at that point unless you’re willing to accept mediocre results or spend lots of time rewriting and trying to find errors.

Given the examples of writing I’ve seen so far from them I’m skeptical that LLMs are useful for any writing where quality and truth are important.

Re: Generative AI floods and dilutes the market for books

#98

Post by grey-area »

sieve wrote: post #87
grey-area wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they generate objectively bad text. Why do you need an assistant to do that? Perhaps for some uses (say a summary of some business document, or generating code which is then discarded or edited) that's acceptable. For literature, do you really feel they are useful tools? So many changes would be required IMO that you're better off just writing the story you want to tell.

> But they generate objectively bad text. They don't. I don't think people are taking full advantage of their capabilities. They produce perfectly functional prose. Sometimes, they produce something genuinely amazing to read. But that is quite rare. People should stop expecting brilliant prose from LLMs without doing the preparatory work themselves first. Very few human authors can manage that in any case

Show me some examples of good long form text please. Your hedging in reply (perfectly functional) does not inspire confidence.

Re: Generative AI floods and dilutes the market for books

#99

Post by swat535 »

podgietaru wrote: post #4
jdw64 wrote: post #2

Why do people use Gen AI for writing? What's the motivation? For academic papers, it's probably citation metrics and the number of publications. For novels, it's likely economic factors. If those factors disappear, would people still use Gen AI for writing?

Get rich quick scams, this market existed before GenAI. They’d hire ghost writers, and then put them on audible. Now it’s easier than ever. So the market explodes. But it makes legit writers harder to find. Its bleak.

Ironically, I wonder if all these AI stuff is going to spin up a new industry for "organic content" that is verified to be human produced.

Then they would be selling at a higher price due to this, increasing the profits for digital authors.

Re: Generative AI floods and dilutes the market for books

#100

Post by altmanaltman »

grey-area wrote: post #70
altmanaltman wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly my point. Self publishing does not have these entry problems or that level of money. This is the opposite of flooding the market with generative AI

GAI is also being used by prospective authors applying to publishing houses, and they are in fact flooded with dross created with it, which is a serious problem for them. To the extent that their reviewers get lazy and are not reading entire texts, as evidenced by this slipping through and then being caught by an editor (who did read the whole thing). So no, this does not prove your point.

It got rejected and that's the proof that these things get accepted by the system? Sure, AI can flood publishing houses with submissions but they have dedicated people and proper vetting process before they publish. That protects slop from getting published. No such safeguards exists in self publishing which is why its easier to see effects of slop there since nothing can stop you from publishing your AI work in that market.
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