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I won't read LLM authored fiction

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Re: I won't read LLM authored fiction

#101

Post by navane »

ghtbircshotbe wrote: post #98
unparagoned wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But your view of art is based on who you “think” made it. So if someone lies about who made the art your views on the art changed. That’s a strange position that doesn’t make sense to me.

It seems like a pretty normal behavior. Just look at the whole tabloid industry that follows actors and musicians around. You might like bland architectural paintings, but knowing they were made by Hitler sort of changes your impression.

It used to be justified and respected stance to separate the art from the artist.

At the same time, blatant copying was excepted, painters today can take Rembrandts like you wouldn't know the difference. But art fruits in a time and place.

I still think LLMs won't generate art worth anything, of course I make genai pictures of my dog with a pet bird.

Re: I won't read LLM authored fiction

#102

Post by navane »

j4yav wrote: post #97
thunky wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Million Little Pieces was a popular book about addiction that inspired a lot of people. Turned out the story wasn't true, and so a lot of inspiration turned into anger. Always thought that was interesting, because if the lies weren't exposed the readers would have remained inspired. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Million_Little_Pieces

One time I called in sick to work, they even sent me flowers. Later they found out I was lying and wasn't really sick and they got angry about it. Humans are strange.

One time someone asked me to paint their house, so I made a 5 square inch watercolour of it. Unfortunately this didn't protect the walls from moisture and they ended up with mold in their house.

Re: I won't read LLM authored fiction

#103

Post by Planktonne »

theshrike79 wrote: post #91
Planktonne wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're underselling those books and overselling AI; people have tried generating romantasy and power fantasies, and it's very obvious that it's not up to par. People want tropes, sure, but that's not the same as wanting trash; our culture is built on satisfying narratives treading well-worn paths, and there's a skill to it. Pratchett, for example, was only able to do what he did because he was deliberately playing wi…

What's the difference between "trash" and "tropes" in your mind? For example the good old Harlequin books were pretty much trash: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlequin_Enterprises But when the expectation is trash, they deliver. They're the Hallmark Movies of books. It's not Citizen Kane, but sometimes you just want a predictable plot of a big city girl coming back to her home town and falling in love with the rugg…

That's what I'm saying; even the 'trashiest' of human literature is an awful lot more sophisticated than AI madlibs.

Re: I won't read LLM authored fiction

#104

Post by Planktonne »

Art requires intentionality, and this is most clear in long-form fiction. Without guiding intention, you can't have consistent characters, or satisfying plots, or meaningful themes. There has to be a mind guiding it, and LLMs don't have the intentionality or interiority to do so.

Theoretically, a sufficiently skilled and dedicated prompter could guide AI precisely enough to produce a good result, but

1. There are no examples of this.

2. Anyone with the focus & talent to do that would rather not.

As a result, AI produces--and is likely to continue to produce--extremely bad fiction (though bad in totally distinct ways from bad human writers).

Re: I won't read LLM authored fiction

#105

Post by Devasta »

cognitiveinline wrote: post #99
Devasta wrote: post #12

English teachers around the world have loathed that "The curtains were blue" meme, and are absolutely right to do so, but what happens when you ask what an author meant by the blue curtains and the answer is a fairly definitive "it's just the probabilistic output of the model the author used, it doesn't mean anything"? Sure some people are just piggies lining up at the trough to consume content like it's the custard…

I think it's unhealthy, your attitude. When you have such disdain for "piggies", and hold your opinion as the true one, on a very subjetive question, well, it's very pitiable.

Someone who likes Shakespeare is going to be able to talk about what they like about Shakespeare, his impact on language, his works, and so on.

Someone who likes Austen is going to be able to talk about the themes of the books, how funny Pride and Prejudice is, maybe how Jane Austen's position in society informed her works, etc.

How is anyone going to be able to do the same for an AI generated book? "Reading book 894 from batch 60 of the Booktron V2.46.01 collection was formitive for me, it was very reminiscent of the early works from the Automatic Grammatizator." Is this really a discussion we expect will be had in schools, or in any art discussion? Absolutely not.

Re: I won't read LLM authored fiction

#106

Post by JohnFen »

unparagoned wrote: post #81
imathew wrote: post #29

I won't (if I know) either, but for me it's because a very big part of reading fiction or enjoying any art is that you have a relationship of a kind with its creator. When a passage surprises me or a song lifts me or a painting inspires me it's partly because I'm amazed that someone was able to do that, and that they were able to reach me like that. Everyone borrows or steals from prior art but I'm still amazed by th…

But your view of art is based on who you “think” made it. So if someone lies about who made the art your views on the art changed. That’s a strange position that doesn’t make sense to me.

I think it depends on what you value in art. For me, the value of art is that it's an emotional communication from a person. What the art actually looks/sounds/feels like is completely secondary to that. Machine-generated art is fundamentally empty and meaningless to me, and therefore uninteresting.

Also, if someone lies about using genAI I discover it, that makes the "artist" a liar who cannot be trusted.

Re: I won't read LLM authored fiction

#107

Post by JohnFen »

j4yav wrote: post #68
amberjack wrote: post #19

I would like to read "actual" LLM fiction in the same sense I would like to read fiction from a lion. I wonder if that kind of alien writing is even possible with this kind of technology. The RL process would have to be quite different at least and even then it is still using human content as the base. Anyone seen any good or even decent or OK fiction of this type?

Whenever people say they like AI music or fiction, I've only ever been able to determine they are something like the equivalent of people with no taste buds describing how delicious the gruel is.

A little disclaimer before the rest of my comment: I think machine-generated art (fine art, anyway. Commercial and functional art have different nuances) is objectionable.

Many people with fully-functional taste buds genuinely find gruel delicious. Oatmeal is a variety of gruel.

People like what they like and aren't ever "wrong" for having their own tastes. I think claiming that other people have no or bad taste isn't really a supportable stance. It's totally valid to say that someone doesn't share your tastes, but not that either of you are right or wrong for having those tastes.

Also, tangentially related, you know that cliche "the customer is always right"? That's only the first half of the sentence that is a quote of. The second half is "in matters of taste". The reason the cliche is obviously wrong is because it omits that.

Re: I won't read LLM authored fiction

#108

Post by x1n13y84issmd42 »

amberjack wrote: post #19

I would like to read "actual" LLM fiction in the same sense I would like to read fiction from a lion. I wonder if that kind of alien writing is even possible with this kind of technology. The RL process would have to be quite different at least and even then it is still using human content as the base. Anyone seen any good or even decent or OK fiction of this type?

One of my favorite childhoods stories was told from a perspective of an arctic fox. It wasn’t a cartoonish “Lion King” type of story but pretty serious and mature stuff.

Re: I won't read LLM authored fiction

#109

Post by JohnFen »

dgellow wrote: post #66
lilerjee wrote: post #9

How to detect which fiction, article, or review is created by fake AI or LLM? There are too many texts generated by LLM on Internet now. The experience of exploring Internet is very bad now.

Look at the publishing date. Unfortunately I don’t think we will have a more reliable way to do it

If the artist isn't one that I already know and trust, then this is how I do it.

It's very sad, but I have to view any recently-created work from an unfamiliar artist with great suspicion. It does make me less interested in recent works by default, because of the work of vetting the artist.

Re: I won't read LLM authored fiction

#110

Post by JohnFen »

cung wrote: post #49
INTPenis wrote: post #4

Afaik I have yet to encounter LLM fiction, but I have seen plenty of AI generated music and it truly disgusts me. Each to their own but to me a large part of music was always the life experience of the person making it. I'm listening to their life, their love, their pain in music form. Without an interesting human behind it, art loses all magic to me. That's why it's beyond annoying that my own brother absolutely lov…

I have been listening to a whole lot of AI music and it is often better than human generated. I foresee an immense unavoidable shift in the music industry due to this. It is already impossible to distinguish what is AI and and what is human generated music.

> I foresee an immense unavoidable shift in the music industry due to this.

If this happens then I'll take some solace in that at least we have a very large existing collection of older music guaranteed to be made by people, so I won't have to do without.

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