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The Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection

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Re: The Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection

#161

Post by totetsu »

crop_rotation wrote: post #70
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…

I have used TTS in the past and in the last few years there has been a quantum leap in TTS quality. A similar such leap in the next few years and it will dominate the audiobook scene for good or bad.

Does anyone know of and TTS available now that doesn't completely muck up foreign words? I know you can make custom pronouncing dictionaries to use with some of the open source ones, but I wonder if any of the more modern systems are good for this. I have been listening to the english news podcast from a japanese news paper that is made with TTS and it gets its one job, pronouncing Japanese names and places completely jarringly wrong.

Re: The Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection

#162

Post by noufalibrahim »

systemvoltage wrote: post #149
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.

I'm sure they will but even if they do and produce something that's exactly the same as a human narrator, there's something intangible that's lost. That's more or less my point. To make it even more intangible, I think the loss is greater to the narrator than to the listener as is the case with many of these AI generated creative pieces.

Re: The Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection

#163

Post by RichEO »

WalterBright wrote: post #151
cxr wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As software developers, we know what getting workers to have better lives while working less looks like. There's some sleight of hand at play, though, in the employer/employee relationship (favoring the employer). > Every advance in AI is "how can we replace people and save money?" and not "how can people have better lives and work less?" It's not just AI, but technology generally. And it's because when it comes to m…

Wealth in a free market is not concentrated, it is created. It does not "flow", either, as free trades are an exchange of value, not a flow of value. Wealth disparity comes from people creating different amounts of value.

On what do you base these statements?

Re: The Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection

#164

Post by RichEO »

WalterBright wrote: post #150
jzb wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Those two are actually the same thing.

How exactly are they the same thing? It seems that the savings are made by the employer here at the expense of the employee.

There’s no guarantee that the savings will be passed on as price cuts.

Re: The Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection

#166

Post by cxr »

WalterBright wrote: post #151
cxr wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As software developers, we know what getting workers to have better lives while working less looks like. There's some sleight of hand at play, though, in the employer/employee relationship (favoring the employer). > Every advance in AI is "how can we replace people and save money?" and not "how can people have better lives and work less?" It's not just AI, but technology generally. And it's because when it comes to m…

Wealth in a free market is not concentrated, it is created. It does not "flow", either, as free trades are an exchange of value, not a flow of value. Wealth disparity comes from people creating different amounts of value.

You haven't responded (clearly) here to anything I actually said. You just posted two short, dismissive comments consisting of glib non-specifics.

If you want to dispute what I'm saying, how about starting with the example I gave (an employee figures out how to automate part of their job, enabling them to either 1. deliver the same amount of value to their employer at a fraction of the effort, or 2. deliver something like 2x–10x or more value, owing to the fact that they've been able to automate it)?

Re: The Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection

#167

Post by bstpierre »

davidzweig wrote: post #50

Oh, snap, we've been working on importing Gutenburg to LR: https://www.languagereactor.com/m/t_en_- We're ranking them using the download count, and also this prompt to chatGPT (it's primarily for language learners): "Is this text engaging and interesting for a modern reader, someone not into fine literature? Rate the text excellent, good, ok or poor. I don't want crusty, flowery, contorted language, talking about bu…

This is a cool project. I'm learning French and am always on the lookout for sources of books -- and especially audio -- at the right level.

To others questioning the need for rewriting: language changes over the course of a century! It's no problem for me, as a native English speaker, to read English from around the turn of the 20th Century. However, it increases the degree of difficulty for me to try to read French or Spanish from the same time period. Also, to get through an old book I have to learn a bunch of useless words that have fallen into disuse; it's much more effective for me to learn the version of the language that is relevant in today's world.

It looks like the French TTS isn't working properly yet? At least on the couple of titles I tried. The selection of titles you have listed looks great.

Re: The Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection

#168

Post by tcmb »

ecshafer wrote: post #48
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…

> 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…

Please don't dissect an aphorism by a standup comedian like it was a Ph.D. thesis.

Re: The Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection

#169

Post by korginator »

I'm not even sure what this project is supposed to accomplish. I tried a few books, and gave up within a few seconds. Pauses and punctuations, intonations, the spacing of words, and a whole lot more are really out of whack - it takes me a lot of effort at times to figure out what's being said. After a short while, it was really starting to stress me out so I gave up.

Re: The Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection

#170

Post by zelphirkalt »

WalterBright wrote: post #151
cxr wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As software developers, we know what getting workers to have better lives while working less looks like. There's some sleight of hand at play, though, in the employer/employee relationship (favoring the employer). > Every advance in AI is "how can we replace people and save money?" and not "how can people have better lives and work less?" It's not just AI, but technology generally. And it's because when it comes to m…

Wealth in a free market is not concentrated, it is created. It does not "flow", either, as free trades are an exchange of value, not a flow of value. Wealth disparity comes from people creating different amounts of value.

Only until your business is targetted by big corp and goes bust/bankrupt.

Or acquired. Then the wealth flows upwards, employees are cut, to make things more profitable, and the people who originally created something great are not getting much for it. Instead, if they are not let go, they are under new lords, who take a big chunk of the profits.

Or a competitor gets VC funded and by means of marketting and sales, instead of actually making a better product and your business' product's adoption is dwarfed.

I think there are many reasons why some business can fail, and most of them are not about the amount of created value. The free market is not a rationally acting person.

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