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The End of an Era

hughhowey.com

141–150 of 480 posts

Re: The End of an Era

#141

What if we remove the stigma of authors using AI. We say, have at it, use all the AI you want. What then? The market is still finite. The authors are still competing with each other. They will still have to be good at creating compelling books that people want to read. Will the whole thing just blow over and AI would be "just another tool" that authors use to get their work out?

AI destroys your writing voice. There are authors who I enjoy not only because they write a compelling story, but they do so in such a way that is lyrically enjoyable. Engineers fall into the trap of thinking that if the slop machine emits the Internet-average sentence to describe a character’s actions, then it will suffice for all audiences and works of literature. “Add more adjectives and flowery language” will only net you a novel that reeks of cheap perfume. I guess we’ve lumped all of this under “taste” these days, but that’s what the AI author lacks. Without it, it’s probably going to be fine for producing summer beach reads (which could be quite lucrative!), but it needs to escape the mean it was trained on to be a truly unique, compelling voice.

Re: The End of an Era

#142
> I watch videogame streamers play games. Millions of people do. There will be authors who livestream the entire book-writing-process (just typing that out makes me want to launch one today). No one person will watch the entire process, but enough people will tune in here and there, and it’ll on be on YouTube

I would definitely watch this.

Re: The End of an Era

#143
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you stop reading at the em-dash? > Artificial Intelligence is writing about as well as humans — at least well enough to cause confusion and speculation No matter your opinion on AI writing, this is just a fact.

The average person, yes. A professional, competent writer, editor, journalist? Not even close (currently).

Again - did you even read the article you are commenting on? The author gives an example of a novel that had a huge advance offered on it and then pulled because of AI concerns... in order to get to the point of having the offer a bunch of competent writers, editors etc didn't notice.

Re: The End of an Era

#144

If a novel is 70,000 to 100,000 words, then a whole novel can fit in the context window for AI. That has to be good for the editing process. I.e. you can use AI to scan the whole book for various issues over and over again until all those issues are found and fixed.

Well, but then they would’ve just hopped on the eagles to fly to Mordor and just throw the damn ring into the volcano.

Re: The End of an Era

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finally, someone else understands that writing is not the goal, the entire point of all of this is our communications between one another and this market for narrative stories is a nice departure and it does convey important knowledge and moral lessons that larger society needs. But it is an indirection, an indirection to the mission of communicating solutions to how to live as a human and that is why we care, why th…

Many of us understood that, and tried to tell it over and over. My keyboard is worn, my mind is numb, my soul is weary from typing/telling that the output is not the aim, but the content it carries, the substance it holds. Yet a very vocal group advocates integrating LLMs into every aspect of their lives, and the other group watch in dismay. On the other hand, I used a sentence form used by LLMs in a comment during a…

It must be a distinction between engineer-type brains and leader-type brains. If you're focused on social status climbing, the fact that you produced a report, and the length of that report, is far more important than whether the contents of the report have any relation to reality beyond the surface level. This is true if you're trying to get VC funding as well. It's even in institutional academia, as seen by the Sokal affair.

Re: The End of an Era

#146
post #111
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thankyou! Didn't realise archive.is is back up. I have been using: https://periscope.corsfix.com/

Not sure if it's what you meant, but archive.is and archive.org are unrelated.

TIL.

It's easy to confuse because archive.is uses several domains like archive.ph and archive.today so you can see how easy it is to think they are related.

Re: The End of an Era

#147
This is AI-writes-too-well is a problem with many solutions. Here's a slightly unconventional one: if an author has enough skin in their book, they could just do as Tolkien and sing their songs[^2], in public. Taking that one step further would be to establish rapport with readers by teaching them how to play those songs, e.g. in a piano or a guitar. It's like going back in time, to when the Iliad was sung and performed instead of written. Though there's no need to negate technology; if a writer is sufficiently technologically inclined, they could forego the linear story and instead release interactive fiction for musical instruments...Hm, I'll see myself out now.

[^2]: https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Category:Songs

Re: The End of an Era

#148
post #137

What if we remove the stigma of authors using AI. We say, have at it, use all the AI you want. What then? The market is still finite. The authors are still competing with each other. They will still have to be good at creating compelling books that people want to read. Will the whole thing just blow over and AI would be "just another tool" that authors use to get their work out?

Discoverability starts to break for new authors when more new books are published each day than humans on the earth. Established authors have the name recognition to compete as you say.

What if other LLMs were charged to read the work as well? And those other LLMs were actually in the persona of aspiring authors hoping to learn so they can later sell their work?

There's an entire potential economy there without humans necessarily involved at all, kind of busted by recent Anthropic precedent admittedly.

Re: The End of an Era

#149
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds to me like the most reasonable attitude. If a story is compelling for a certain person, why care about how it was created?

Part of the appeal of literature generally and the novel in particular is that it provides you with an incredibly intimate connection to the subjectivity of another person, though they may be long dead, or the speaker of another language, or from a far away part of the world that you would never be able to visit yourself.

I would argue that a story can mainly provide a connection with your own subjectivity. If it moves something in you, that's what mainly matters.

If your goal by reading is too learn about the subjectivity of another real person, then yes, read human authors. You said it, that's it's part of what a book can offer, but there can be other reasons for reading

Re: The End of an Era

#150
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Writing has always been a solitary act.

'act' as in a play, but now with no audience. So all that hard work of memorizing lines, rehearsing, and vocal lessons becomes an experience only the actors can enjoy by themselves.

I've never heard about writers writing with an audience. A real one at least. Of course there's always an imaginary reader.

Performing and writing couldn't be any more different or attract different types of people.

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