Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection

marhamilresearch4.blob.core.windows.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 195 posts

Re: The Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection

#141

Post by satvikpendem »

mvdtnz wrote: post #122
m463 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every advance in AI is "how can we replace people and save money?" I think what happens is that the repeat jobs are automated, and the (remaining) people get the hard corner cases.

I think the thing that has surprised everyone in this revolution is that the opposite has happened. Musk wasted billions trying to automate vehicle manufacturing while AI is threatening to take the jobs of novelists and graphic designers.

It hasn't been a surprise to anyone in the field. Turns out it's much easier to read digital content in the form of bits then to read real world data. Hardware is harder than software.

Re: The Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection

#142

Post by satvikpendem »

janekm wrote: post #29
xrd wrote: post #20

When I read Rikki Tikki Tavi to my 8 yr old daughter, we play a game. She asks me to change one of the words in the page and she tries to listen and see if she can figure it out. It is mentally taxing at the end of a long day to do that on the fly without pausing to figure out the word to slip in. And, my daughter is very sharp and catches them. I listened to a few of these. The voice sounds muted at times, as if the…

Elevenlabs is a lot closer to compelling audiobook narration (needs a better way to deal with multiple characters in a story without manual use of multiple voices): https://pub-a24da573c61f4b2d905bdebb2d0ecf88.r2.dev/ElevenLa... (an H.G.Wells example I just asked it to read).

Any open source alternatives?

Re: The Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection

#143

Post by IggleSniggle »

dirtyid wrote: post #96
tmountain wrote: post #49

I was kind of hoping this was going to be human beings contributing read aloud versions of Gutenberg content. Since it’s not, I’ll propose a cool project. Raise money to enlist high quality voice actors to create audiobooks from Gutenberg. Release these audiobooks to the world for free. Which books come first could be voted upon. As someone who has used TTS a Lot in recent projects, I’m not excited about listening to…

>As someone who has used TTS a Lot in recent projects, I’m not excited about listening to AI read a book to me. It feels soulless. AI TTS still uncanny valley enough to distract. I prefer even more soulless traditional TTS which sounds "neutral" after habituation. To the point where my brain can start layering on characterization as if I was reading. AI TTS feels like listening to to medicore voice actor, where it's…

I agree completely! I kinda like the neutral tone of a soulless robot when it knows how to stay out of the way. Far better than a bad AI _or_ a poor human reading.

Re: The Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection

#144

Post by mcpackieh »

eole666 wrote: post #15
pjmlp wrote: post #6

Yet another example on how jobs will go away, goodbye voice actors.

For now, actual voice actors make audiobooks listening way more enjoyable. Those AI voices are convincing but lack the soul, emotions and art direction of actual voice acting. Think about listening to a book for 8 hours with a monotonous AI voice reading it...

I mostly listen to real audiobooks now so I understand their appeal, but I have also listened to dozens of books using the primitive TTS built into my old Kindle (keyboard model). TTS was rough at first but I knew it could work, because I know blind people use it, so I stuck with it and I found that after a few hours I no longer perceived the awkwardness and it became an effective and satisfying way for me to 'read' books. Brain plasticity is a marvel.

Re: The Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection

#145

Post by brigandish »

mvdtnz wrote: post #122
m463 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every advance in AI is "how can we replace people and save money?" I think what happens is that the repeat jobs are automated, and the (remaining) people get the hard corner cases.

I think the thing that has surprised everyone in this revolution is that the opposite has happened. Musk wasted billions trying to automate vehicle manufacturing while AI is threatening to take the jobs of novelists and graphic designers.

On the other hand, I am reminded of a quote by Christopher Hitchens (from memory), “They say that everyone has a book in them. For most of them, it would be better if it stayed there".

Some of the films and TV programmes I've watched recently have made me wonder, as I gaze across at the writers on strike who have some legitimate concerns but who have also provided some bloody awful writing, if I wouldn't prefer AI to take over the production of art - it certainly wouldn't be able to produce a messy bed, would it? That'd be a win too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Bed

Re: The Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection

#146

Post by davidzweig »

floren wrote: post #137
davidzweig wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

floren: In epochs bygone, a mere decade hence, I would have proffered thee the epithet of an egregiously unhinged denizen, were thou to embark upon such an endeavor. However, in these current times, wherein the domain of artificial intelligence doth teem with preposterous and morally indefensible machinations, thy conduct emerges as naught but a faint ember in the vast tapestry of perplexities that now envelop us. da…

The example doesn't change my mind. It throws away the flavor of the original text. Why reword the great works of literature into YA-level blandness? Might as well just read the Cliffs Notes at that point. 1984 isn't a particularly challenging work, either, and I think readers do themselves a disfavor if they don't read the original. Edit: hey I do want to apologize my tone in the first comment though, it was too muc…

Well, the filtering prompt could have caused offense to someone that enjoys literature. It was the prompt I used after some iterations. If you go through gutenberg (~70,000 books), much of it is pretty undigestable to a modern reader, never mind a learner. Personally I'm finding a learning curve with chatGPT etc. where you have to relearn to directly ask for what you want.

Re: The Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection

#147

Post by lolinder »

c0pium wrote: post #127
ecshafer wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The photo slide show of someone's vacation was a stock scene in comedies. But have you never sat down with family and went through old photos? Having conversations about where was that? who was this? who was this as a baby? Its a very different and much more personal experience than flipping through facebook.

Sure have, it’s hellacious. I don’t give a fuck about who that baby was, why would I? Relations who my parents only vaguely remember going somewhere boring that I would never go, or someone’s 12th trip to the same lake, is a great use for Facebook. Most people are crazy boring, if I care I can always ask.

To quote a GP comment:

> But most tech advancements I think have been harmful to society in the last 30 years or so.

I thought this was overly cynical until I read your comment. Now I'm not so sure. Has our attention span really become so shot that just being with family has become a chore, and we'd rather our parents just post their life stories into the void that is Facebook?

Re: The Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection

#148

Post by noufalibrahim »

A good human reader doesn't read as much as he dramatises the book. This conveys ideas and feelings more than what is just written. He takes liberties doing that which makes the narration interesting. I don't know if that's possible in the same way with an AI voice. I read to my kids often and try to dramatise the books in a similar way.

The libre vox project which is contributer driven audio books is, I think, a more valuable contribution to human culture than AI generated audio files

Re: The Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection

#149

Post by systemvoltage »

noufalibrahim wrote: post #148

A good human reader doesn't read as much as he dramatises the book. This conveys ideas and feelings more than what is just written. He takes liberties doing that which makes the narration interesting. I don't know if that's possible in the same way with an AI voice. I read to my kids often and try to dramatise the books in a similar way. The libre vox project which is contributer driven audio books is, I think, a mor…

Yeah it’s still robotic, I just tried. When enunciating long conjugate parts of a sentence such as “A long windy snow filled country road”, it doesn’t know that this is a one set of adjectives describing a country road. It’s a dead give away it’s AI. Maybe they can fix this.

Re: The Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection

#150

Post by WalterBright »

jzb wrote: post #91
ecshafer wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like Louis CK said: "Everything is amazing and no one is happy." Everything is not amazing. Sure things are amazing from a technical perspective. But most tech advancements I think have been harmful to society in the last 30 years or so. Its awesome that computers are so powerful and we have awesome video and photos and can share things so easily. But technology should better lives, and not cheapen it, which it oft…

I forget the exact quote but the thing I've seen making the rounds sums it up pretty well: Computers were supposed to do the work so people could make art and write poetry. Now the computers are making art and writing poetry and I still have to have a job. In another life I'd love to do voice over work. (I even have a face for radio!) But, instead, technology is being used to avoid even having humans do that type of…

> what the fuck do we do with all these jobless people who've been replaced?

Around 1800, 93% of labor in America worked on farms. Today we have jobs that were unimaginable in 1800.

> "how can we replace people and save money?" and not "how can people have better lives and work less?"

Those two are actually the same thing.

Post reply on HN