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The latest Hunger Games novel may have been co-authored by AI

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Re: The latest Hunger Games novel may have been co-authored by AI

#11

Post by OJFord »

'Embellishment' seems absolutely standard for a novel, some authors more than others, and it's exactly what you're taught to do clumsily in school.

The actions in the train scene didn't seem so bizarre to me, and even if they did we can still write bizarre events and characters? Similarly the spiderweb skin, where's the line between 'no human would ...' and writing a strange character?

I don't have anything like the OOP's experience with literature or even AI, but I'm not really convinced. It is nevertheless interesting that they believe they've identified it, and to think of the ramifications, aside from whether it's a correct analysis or not.

Re: The latest Hunger Games novel may have been co-authored by AI

#12

Post by dns_snek »

precompute wrote: post #2

I have a lot of experience with "LLM voice" as well, and none of that sounds even remotely LLM-written. The smoking gun for LLM-written text is when the text is a "linked list". It can only ever directly reference the previous thing. That's not the case here. And the latest Hunger Games book isn't yet another amazon-published slopfest. It's been through a couple of rounds of editing, at the very least. I'm not saying…

LLMs can change their "voice" with a simple instruction. If detecting LLM-generated text was as easy as you think it is then services in this space wouldn't suffer any false-positives or any false-negatives.

Re: The latest Hunger Games novel may have been co-authored by AI

#13

Post by lyu07282 »

With that in mind, most negative reviews seem to have this in common:

> If you want to read something very similar to The Hunger Games, this is your book. It goes reaping > dress-up > training > rating > games. The characters are different, but the plot is virtually the same.

> the book reads like a hunger games #1 rewrite

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/214331246-sunrise-on-the...

Although most fans seem to love it.

Re: The latest Hunger Games novel may have been co-authored by AI

#14

Post by lapcat »

What I found more disturbing was this:

> It would be considered standard industry practice to hire a ghostwriter for these prequels

The use of ghostwriters is the main problem, I think. AI is just another ghostwriter.

I recently read a book that's 3rd in a trilogy. I loved the first 2 books but didn't like the 3rd at all and indeed stopped reading after about 100 pages. It felt like the 3rd book was just a perfunctory response to the publisher's request for another sequence in the series, a mere money grab. But now, suddenly, I'm starting to wonder whether the 3rd book was even written by the author...

I was aware that non-writers, e.g., politicians, use ghostwriters when they publish a book, but it would have never occurred to me that experienced, accomplished fiction writers would also use ghostwriters.

Re: The latest Hunger Games novel may have been co-authored by AI

#15

Post by precompute »

pjc50 wrote: post #4
lloydatkinson wrote: post #3

This is truly an abysmal revelation. I can't really put into words how horrified I am that actual real physical books are now getting AI slop enshitifcation.

There's nothing magic about physical books in a way that might protect them, and it's a terribly low-margin industry that's vulnerable to this kind of behavior.

That's a broad statement that's untrue for most genres, at least right now. However, it is true for the YA lit / chic-lit and the smut-disguised-as-fantasy genres. These already have authors pumping out a book every few months with different characters jammed into similar situations. And people have personalized these kinds of interactions already (CharacterAI and others). Literature is literature, whether human or LLM-generated and will sell like hot cakes if it caters to the common denominator well enough.

It can also be seen in newer fanfics. If you visit AO3 you might get to see a few that are completely written with LLMs and the authors sometimes don't even bother reading it themselves before publishing it. The lower quality is almost always apparent from the get-go.

LLMs can be very useful for writing, but I don't see serious writers using LLMs except for maybe checking facts / as a knowledgebase. The lowest tier of readers was already one-shot by LLMs over a year ago.

Re: The latest Hunger Games novel may have been co-authored by AI

#16

Post by precompute »

dns_snek wrote: post #12
precompute wrote: post #2

I have a lot of experience with "LLM voice" as well, and none of that sounds even remotely LLM-written. The smoking gun for LLM-written text is when the text is a "linked list". It can only ever directly reference the previous thing. That's not the case here. And the latest Hunger Games book isn't yet another amazon-published slopfest. It's been through a couple of rounds of editing, at the very least. I'm not saying…

LLMs can change their "voice" with a simple instruction. If detecting LLM-generated text was as easy as you think it is then services in this space wouldn't suffer any false-positives or any false-negatives.

Oh I don't think it's easy or that one can be completely sure about it. And in my experience, LLMs aren't very good at changing their voice. If you have any examples to the contrary, I'd like to see em.

Re: The latest Hunger Games novel may have been co-authored by AI

#17

Post by glimshe »

lapcat wrote: post #14

What I found more disturbing was this: > It would be considered standard industry practice to hire a ghostwriter for these prequels The use of ghostwriters is the main problem, I think. AI is just another ghostwriter. I recently read a book that's 3rd in a trilogy. I loved the first 2 books but didn't like the 3rd at all and indeed stopped reading after about 100 pages. It felt like the 3rd book was just a perfunctor…

Writing is tough. If you are famous author and not invested in the publisher's cash grab request, it would make sense to have someone else writing it while you perform basic QA for branding purposes.

Its not good at all, but makes financial sense.

Re: The latest Hunger Games novel may have been co-authored by AI

#18

Post by herculity275 »

glimshe wrote: post #17
lapcat wrote: post #14

What I found more disturbing was this: > It would be considered standard industry practice to hire a ghostwriter for these prequels The use of ghostwriters is the main problem, I think. AI is just another ghostwriter. I recently read a book that's 3rd in a trilogy. I loved the first 2 books but didn't like the 3rd at all and indeed stopped reading after about 100 pages. It felt like the 3rd book was just a perfunctor…

Writing is tough. If you are famous author and not invested in the publisher's cash grab request, it would make sense to have someone else writing it while you perform basic QA for branding purposes. Its not good at all , but makes financial sense.

My issue with that as a reader is that when I purchase a book authored by Suzanne Collins I expect it to have been actually written by Suzanne Collins, not by somebody she contracted to imitate her style.

Re: The latest Hunger Games novel may have been co-authored by AI

#19

Post by OJFord »

herculity275 wrote: post #18
glimshe wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Writing is tough. If you are famous author and not invested in the publisher's cash grab request, it would make sense to have someone else writing it while you perform basic QA for branding purposes. Its not good at all , but makes financial sense.

My issue with that as a reader is that when I purchase a book authored by Suzanne Collins I expect it to have been actually written by Suzanne Collins, not by somebody she contracted to imitate her style.

It's interesting though isn't it, because if she contracts someone good, the ghostwriter does an excellent job of imitating her style, then really you do get exactly what you wanted? I don't like the idea of it either, fwiw, but it's hard to rationalise.

(But then why stop there, have the estate of the esteemed author go on contracting ghostwriters! Does it only work if you keep the death a secret, or would a licensed P.G. Wodehouse ghostwriter do as well today as if he were a recluse and never proclaimed dead?)

Re: The latest Hunger Games novel may have been co-authored by AI

#20

Post by dns_snek »

precompute wrote: post #16
dns_snek wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs can change their "voice" with a simple instruction. If detecting LLM-generated text was as easy as you think it is then services in this space wouldn't suffer any false-positives or any false-negatives.

Oh I don't think it's easy or that one can be completely sure about it. And in my experience, LLMs aren't very good at changing their voice. If you have any examples to the contrary, I'd like to see em.

I don't have examples, I'm asking you to provide evidence which supports your extraordinary claim.

You claimed, with a high level of confidence, that the text isn't written by AI because it lacks obvious "tells" which you believe to be present in any LLM generated text. But if the absence of these "tells" reliably indicated human writing then LLM detectors would have false negative rate of approximately 0%, do they?

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