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New Kindle feature uses AI to answer questions about books

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Re: New Kindle feature uses AI to answer questions about books

#101

Post by KaiserPro »

akersten wrote: post #6
Mouvelie wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Amazon DID NOT answer PubLunch’s questions about “what rights the company was relying upon to execute the new feature was not answered, nor did they elaborate on the technical details of the service and any protections involved (whether to prevent against hallucinations, or to protect the text from AI training).”

> what rights the company was relying upon to execute the new feature what rights does a bookstore clerk need to answer questions about a product on the store's shelves? what a presumptuous question

Either the Clerk would have read it, because they bought it, or borrowed it from the library.

I mean they could have read it on company time as well.

However, let us not use a straw man here. Its not some company clerk, its one of the largest company on earth using other people's copy right to make more money for them selves.

Re: New Kindle feature uses AI to answer questions about books

#102

Post by KaiserPro »

gwbas1c wrote: post #73

> To ensure a consistent reading experience, the feature is always on, and there is no option for authors or publishers to opt titles out. > It also sounds as though authors and publishers were, for the most part, not notified of this feature’s existence. This is perfectly reasonable fair use. I'm starting to realize that a lot of content creators either don't understand fair use, or otherwise are unreasonable contro…

> This is perfectly reasonable fair use.

Well thats questionable actually

Sure the _result_ is transformative, but it had to consume the content in the first place to make a transformative. (grey area).

Yes, you _could_ argue that its a plain review, but you need to prove that its actually reviewing it rather than just quoting. But as its the machine doing it, that further muddies the water. Is it the end user whos generating the review? does the kindle license actually allow them to do that?

However, the other thing to note is that there is a contract between publishers and amazon that go over and above copyright. It will say how and where works can be distributed and how they can be processed. For example you're not able to distribute the book and then create your own audiobook version of it.

Re: New Kindle feature uses AI to answer questions about books

#103

Post by furyofantares »

idontwantthis wrote: post #99
renewiltord wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The LLM just working on its own is just generative intelligence. You have to ground it if you want the real stuff. The Kindle app has the text of the book and I'd want it to put that in the LLM context.

The entire book in the context at once?

That's probably 100k-150k tokens for most novels.

Re: New Kindle feature uses AI to answer questions about books

#104

Post by JumpCrisscross »

dpark wrote: post #82
Rebelgecko wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. The user doesn't own the book, the user has a revocable license to the book. Amazon has no qualms about taking away books that people have bought 2. I doubt the Kindle version of the LLM will run locally. Is Amazon repurposing the author-provided files, or will the users' device upload the text of the book?

I am so confused by some of the comments in this thread. All these weird mental gymnastics to argue that users should have less rights. “Oh, you think you should be able to use an LLM with a book you paid for? Well you don’t own and book.” Ok, and you like that? You want even less ownership? Less control?

> All these weird mental gymnastics to argue that users should have less rights

We probably agree more than not. But users getting more rights isn’t universally good. To finish an argument, one must consider the externalities involved.

Re: New Kindle feature uses AI to answer questions about books

#105

Post by charcircuit »

idontwantthis wrote: post #98
dcre wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you give it the text of the book and tell it to answer based on that?

Does this feature put the entire text of the book into the context?

I hope not, it probably only goes up to the page you are on in order to avoid spoiling the later content.

Re: New Kindle feature uses AI to answer questions about books

#106

Post by danielbln »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #29
charcircuit wrote: post #5

This sounds useful for when you forget something that happened chapters earlier or when you space out and need to figure out what's happening. This feature should work for the user, author's shouldn't be able to deprive me of this tool.

Fantasy series seem like they've gotten longer and longer and it's often years between volumes. Many authors have started doing recaps of their previous books at the start of later volumes, but not all. I could see this being useful for that.

I use LLMs for that all the time. Most frontier models have books trained in, so I just ask for a spoiler free recap or ask about certain characters. Works well in my experience, and made jumping back into Wheel of Time a lot easier

Re: New Kindle feature uses AI to answer questions about books

#107

Post by zingar »

I was imagining a feature that allowed me to search across all my books, which is something that O’Reilly Learning does (actually it gives you answers from their entire range since their model is a license to access all content).

Come to think of it, given how early O’Reilly had this it’s shocking to me that Amazon hasn’t done this sooner.

The O’Reilly Learning search was simultaneously the best and worst of all the early LLM applications. They have tons of high quality content that underpins very useful answers. I’ve also found a bunch of worthwhile books by looking through the sources.

It’s the worst because their template response is extremely unimaginative. I can be asking process questions about managing tech debt and it still gives me a code sample with every response as though I was asking “how do I add this button to my app”.

Re: New Kindle feature uses AI to answer questions about books

#108

Post by hasbot »

charcircuit wrote: post #5

This sounds useful for when you forget something that happened chapters earlier or when you space out and need to figure out what's happening. This feature should work for the user, author's shouldn't be able to deprive me of this tool.

Or were away from the book for a while and are coming back to it. I've read 1000 page books that I just got tired of reading, so put 'em down for a bit to read something else. Anathem by Neal Stephenson comes to mind.

Re: New Kindle feature uses AI to answer questions about books

#109

Post by hasbot »

Google AI does a pretty good job of this already:

> I'm on page 750 of Anathem. Please give me a recap.

> You are currently reading the section of the book where the main characters have been launched into orbit aboard a repurposed military rocket and are preparing to board the alien starship, the Daban Urnud.

more recap details follow....

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