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Generative AI floods and dilutes the market for books
101–110 of 110 posts
Re: Generative AI floods and dilutes the market for books
#102Earlier 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
Show me some examples of good long form text please. Your hedging in reply (perfectly functional) does not inspire confidence.
This is something from early 2025. The situation and my own way of driving the models has improved somewhat in the intervening period.
Variations on a Theme of Saki
https://gist.github.com/s-i-e-v-e/b4d696bfb08488aeb893cce3a4...
Re: Generative AI floods and dilutes the market for books
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Show me some examples of good long form text please. Your hedging in reply (perfectly functional) does not inspire confidence.
This is something from early 2025. The situation and my own way of driving the models has improved somewhat in the intervening period. Variations on a Theme of Saki https://gist.github.com/s-i-e-v-e/b4d696bfb08488aeb893cce3a4...
I’m sorry but this isn’t very good, problems from a cursory look:
Stuffed full of adjectives, a common problem when LLMs attempt to make the text literary.
Stuffed full of incidental detail (window inexplicably open), which doesn’t quite make sense - why would you leave a window open for people to return?
Things which suddenly loom large in the narrative without any previous mention (roaring fire).
Overuse of certain mechanisms (for example here ellipsis).
Meanders without any discernable goal from one scene to the next.
So in short, it’s a tale told by an idiot savant, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Take this sentence as an example:
A biting incident, if I'm to be perfectly honest. Involving… several toes.
The ellipsis just gets in the way, the ‘perfectly honest’ likewise and this should be one better formed sentence. The several toes bit is overly explicit without being clear (he lost several toes, or toes were bitten?). Most of the text is like this - infuriatingly vague, clumsy in construction and full of non-sequiturs.
Compare this with real writing:
https://archive.org/stream/GrahamGreeneShorts/21%20Stories_d...
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3077/3077-h/3077-h.htm#link2...
Re: Generative AI floods and dilutes the market for books
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is something from early 2025. The situation and my own way of driving the models has improved somewhat in the intervening period. Variations on a Theme of Saki https://gist.github.com/s-i-e-v-e/b4d696bfb08488aeb893cce3a4...
I’m sorry but this isn’t very good, problems from a cursory look: Stuffed full of adjectives, a common problem when LLMs attempt to make the text literary. Stuffed full of incidental detail (window inexplicably open), which doesn’t quite make sense - why would you leave a window open for people to return? Things which suddenly loom large in the narrative without any previous mention (roaring fire). Overuse of certain…
Did you read the original by Saki (Exhibit 12)?
Ideally, you should read all 14 exhibits. Each has been produced by a different LLM, some local, others frontier models of the time.
E4 = Claude
E6 = ChatGPT
E8 = Mistral
E11 = DeepSeek V3
E12 = Original
Re: Generative AI floods and dilutes the market for books
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m sorry but this isn’t very good, problems from a cursory look: Stuffed full of adjectives, a common problem when LLMs attempt to make the text literary. Stuffed full of incidental detail (window inexplicably open), which doesn’t quite make sense - why would you leave a window open for people to return? Things which suddenly loom large in the narrative without any previous mention (roaring fire). Overuse of certain…
Did you read the original by Saki (Exhibit 12)? Ideally, you should read all 14 exhibits. Each has been produced by a different LLM, some local, others frontier models of the time. E4 = Claude E6 = ChatGPT E8 = Mistral E11 = DeepSeek V3 E12 = Original
Sorry, I'm not doing all that work for you, I read the first one and was sick of parsing it for meaning by the end.
The work you posted was distinctly unimpressive, particularly as it had a seed text to impersonate and improve. The 'window' is I assume a french door, which I suspect is a mistranslation. If you want to seed LLMs I'd start with texts that are not translated!
Honestly compare it to the human writing examples I showed you and consider the differences in intent and style, which are vast.
I see why you're interested in this, I myself am interested in what these models can do and have tried similar experiments, but you should always be aware when you're asking others to waste their time on word generator output.
Re: Generative AI floods and dilutes the market for books
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you read the original by Saki (Exhibit 12)? Ideally, you should read all 14 exhibits. Each has been produced by a different LLM, some local, others frontier models of the time. E4 = Claude E6 = ChatGPT E8 = Mistral E11 = DeepSeek V3 E12 = Original
Sorry, I'm not doing all that work for you, I read the first one and was sick of parsing it for meaning by the end. The work you posted was distinctly unimpressive, particularly as it had a seed text to impersonate and improve. The 'window' is I assume a french door, which I suspect is a mistranslation. If you want to seed LLMs I'd start with texts that are not translated! Honestly compare it to the human writing exa…
> The 'window' is I assume a french door, which I suspect is a mistranslation.
It is a french door/window. The original story is by Saki (HH Munro), one of the greatest short story writers of all time. He was English. The story is literally called "The Open Window."
> Sorry, I'm not doing all that work for you
Well, you asked. And I gave you stuff that I generated for comparative analysis. I am quite satisfied with the output. Most human writing, including genre writing, is subpar. LLMs are far superior to that. If you want to read only Faulkner and Eliot, then stick to them I guess?
> human writing examples
You must provide a solid prompt. And you must use a strong model. Deciding LLMs suck at writing based on output from Gemini 2 Flash, and expecting writing like Graham Greene is a bit much. The day LLMs start writing like him based on one-line prompts, writers will have no option but to look for other jobs.
Re: Generative AI floods and dilutes the market for books
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry, I'm not doing all that work for you, I read the first one and was sick of parsing it for meaning by the end. The work you posted was distinctly unimpressive, particularly as it had a seed text to impersonate and improve. The 'window' is I assume a french door, which I suspect is a mistranslation. If you want to seed LLMs I'd start with texts that are not translated! Honestly compare it to the human writing exa…
> The 'window' is I assume a french door, which I suspect is a mistranslation. It is a french door/window. The original story is by Saki (HH Munro), one of the greatest short story writers of all time. He was English. The story is literally called "The Open Window." > Sorry, I'm not doing all that work for you Well, you asked. And I gave you stuff that I generated for comparative analysis. I am quite satisfied with t…
In the past window could mean a glass door? I wasn’t aware of that, please forgive my ignorance. A minor point anyway and most problems were stylistic. I think it is clearer in the original work that it is more a door than a window in the contemporary sense, which is interesting.
I would not be satisfied with this output, I mean if your goal is mildly satisfying potboiler fiction I guess it could be ok?
Re: Generative AI floods and dilutes the market for books
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The 'window' is I assume a french door, which I suspect is a mistranslation. It is a french door/window. The original story is by Saki (HH Munro), one of the greatest short story writers of all time. He was English. The story is literally called "The Open Window." > Sorry, I'm not doing all that work for you Well, you asked. And I gave you stuff that I generated for comparative analysis. I am quite satisfied with t…
In the past window could mean a glass door? I wasn’t aware of that, please forgive my ignorance. A minor point anyway and most problems were stylistic. I think it is clearer in the original work that it is more a door than a window in the contemporary sense, which is interesting. I would not be satisfied with this output, I mean if your goal is mildly satisfying potboiler fiction I guess it could be ok?
I have read almost every kind of fiction under the sun. My standard for what is great is pretty high. This is why I am perfectly willing to accept LLM output as lot as the writer has put in sufficient work into the same. Because this kind of writing can produce middling to good enough fiction, like most genre fiction. Which I enjoy for the plot, characters and environment.
If a great writer used LLMs, then the output would be outstanding. Of that I have no doubt.
Re: Generative AI floods and dilutes the market for books
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> doesn’t seem like there is much benefit at that point
That depends on the problem you're trying to solve.
I found it to be of great benefit when trying to overcome "writer block". Mediocre prose - but at least some prose to work with, tailored to what you want to write - can be a much better starting point than a blank sheet of paper.
Also, editing can be fast: the output is mediocre in predictable ways; it's not hard to quickly identify everything of value in a paragraph and rewrite the rest. It probably takes longer than writing the paragraph from scratch - but only if you already know precisely what you want to write, which is far from "always" when writing prose, IME.
Re: Generative AI floods and dilutes the market for books
#110I don’t see how this market ("mostly" AI-written books) won’t get arbitraged to death with the cheaper and open-weight models that keep coming out
The problem is not about money it is that we are made massively culturally poorer by the flood of ahistorical, amoral, incoherent, rococco, contradictory yet plausible shit produced by LLMs. Both the internet and books have been flooded with ‘content’ which appears like human content but has no coherence or intention to it and tends to fall apart completely the longer form the story. Even our autocomplete is being in…
Id argue the true source of poor culture is this globalized bland/blended talking points and memes that propagate 24/7/365 over multimedia comunication. Boring "hipster" cafes found in burkina faso and new york is just one manifestation of this.