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Lost all my content writing contracts. Feeling hopeless as an author

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Re: Lost all my content writing contracts. Feeling hopeless as an author

#21

Post by xg15 »

gregjor wrote: post #13
xg15 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How much reshuffling of stuff already written a hundred times can we put up with? I mean, if you look at the barrage of reboots, franchise installments and "memberberry" sequels that make up the bulk of cinema blockbusters...

Good point. Every superhero movie looks the same to me. I always assumed that was due to my age. The thought of LLM-generated "Marvel Universe" sequels going on forever seems depressing, though I long ago learned to just ignore that Hollywood compost bin.

If it were just Marvel. My impression is, we'll soon have every movie that was moderately impactful in millennial childhoods be reanimated in some endless loop of seqels or turned into a "cinematic universe". Probably with LLMs streamlining and automating that process.

Re: Lost all my content writing contracts. Feeling hopeless as an author

#22

Post by UncleEntity »

ftxbro wrote: post #14

> "Everyone saying the government will pass UBI. Lol. They can't even handle providing all people with basic Healthcare or giving women a few guaranteed weeks off work (at a bare minimum) after exploding a baby out of their body. They didn't even pass a law to ensure that shelves were restocked with baby formula when there was a shortage. They just let babies die. They don't care. But you think they will pass a UBI l…

I wonder about this point.

Let’s say there’s a UBI, there’s still a ton of jobs that won’t be taken over by the robots for at least the rest of my life that will still need to be done. If we learned anything from the Covid unemployment benefits it is given a chance people will sit at home instead of working for essentially the same amount of money.

What they don’t ever explain is how they plan on incentivizing people to do all the crap jobs. Everyone always talks about the writers and programmers needing to get compensation for their lost jobs but for every one of those there’s probably a dozen people who would get a raise from a UBI and just stop working.

Unless there’s an underclass that is prevented from collecting the same UBI as the displaced white collar workers I can guarantee you there will be nobody taking that job to suck out your septic system.

And I’m intentionally ignoring any economic impacts of a UBI because I’m more interested in how people propose to solve this without creating a virtual caste system.

Re: Lost all my content writing contracts. Feeling hopeless as an author

#23

Post by _heimdall »

ftxbro wrote: post #14

> "Everyone saying the government will pass UBI. Lol. They can't even handle providing all people with basic Healthcare or giving women a few guaranteed weeks off work (at a bare minimum) after exploding a baby out of their body. They didn't even pass a law to ensure that shelves were restocked with baby formula when there was a shortage. They just let babies die. They don't care. But you think they will pass a UBI l…

Regulations protecting paid leave after the birth of a child feels like a no breaker to me and honestly falls into the bucket of worker protections.

Arguing for a UBI and universal Healthcare as though government welfare programs are an obvious must for any government is ridiculous. By all means, arguing for why they're necessary federal expeditures is on thing, assuming that it's a given part of any government is completely ignoring the tradeoffs that must be accepted for such programs.

Re: Lost all my content writing contracts. Feeling hopeless as an author

#24

Post by gregjor »

xg15 wrote: post #21
gregjor wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point. Every superhero movie looks the same to me. I always assumed that was due to my age. The thought of LLM-generated "Marvel Universe" sequels going on forever seems depressing, though I long ago learned to just ignore that Hollywood compost bin.

If it were just Marvel. My impression is, we'll soon have every movie that was moderately impactful in millennial childhoods be reanimated in some endless loop of seqels or turned into a "cinematic universe". Probably with LLMs streamlining and automating that process.

[flagged]

Re: Lost all my content writing contracts. Feeling hopeless as an author

#25

Post by commandlinefan »

enempi wrote: post #20
ftxbro wrote: post #14

> "Everyone saying the government will pass UBI. Lol. They can't even handle providing all people with basic Healthcare or giving women a few guaranteed weeks off work (at a bare minimum) after exploding a baby out of their body. They didn't even pass a law to ensure that shelves were restocked with baby formula when there was a shortage. They just let babies die. They don't care. But you think they will pass a UBI l…

I mean, as someone who had a newborn during that time it was pretty stressful and upsetting trying to feed them. But I can understand if you have been completely insulated from these issues in your life why you might take more issue with the authors tone.

Well, how could the government have enforced a law requiring baby formula to be available?

Re: Lost all my content writing contracts. Feeling hopeless as an author

#27

Post by yolo11 »

I used ChatGPT to generate stories. I'm not a writer or native English speaker, so it helps with wording and writing more fluently.

But it actually needs a lot of guiding and editing to get something you want. I'd say it's similar to code generation, LLM can generate something not quite right or just broken, and you need to ask to fix it or tweak the prompt until it gets what you need. Or you might need to combine pieces from separate generations.

So it seems strange a professional writer would get replaced with just ChatGPT and "$0 overhead". Maybe you could hire someone for less pay, but it's like hiring a ChatGPT-assisted junior dev and expecting good output.

Re: Lost all my content writing contracts. Feeling hopeless as an author

#28

Post by revertmean »

commandlinefan wrote: post #25
enempi wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, as someone who had a newborn during that time it was pretty stressful and upsetting trying to feed them. But I can understand if you have been completely insulated from these issues in your life why you might take more issue with the authors tone.

Well, how could the government have enforced a law requiring baby formula to be available?

Very easily. There's no baby formula shortage in the UK or EU, so why not pass emergency legislation that allows them to provide the US market and pay the EU/UK producers up front to ramp up their production until the issue is resolved.

Re: Lost all my content writing contracts. Feeling hopeless as an author

#29

Post by mjrpes »

chs20 wrote: post #16
gregjor wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truman Capote once said (of actual writer Jack Kerouac), "That's not writing, that's typing." Junk like Buzzfeed news and similar sites that just regurgitate other content existed before ChatGPT, I guess those serve some purpose, though I've always thought they mainly exist to host ads and to trap people in a maze of links and pop-ups. ChatGPT can write that junk just as well as a person. At this point LLM-produced "…

I'm pretty sure you can't reliably distinguish LLM text from real person text.

ChatGPT is pretty easy to spot (in some circumstances). Just look for text that has absolutely no voice and reads like a high school essay where what should be a 20-word answer is stretched out to meet a 750 word count. Example: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-maximum-data-capacity-for-...

Re: Lost all my content writing contracts. Feeling hopeless as an author

#30

Post by Smaug123 »

commandlinefan wrote: post #25
enempi wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, as someone who had a newborn during that time it was pretty stressful and upsetting trying to feed them. But I can understand if you have been completely insulated from these issues in your life why you might take more issue with the authors tone.

Well, how could the government have enforced a law requiring baby formula to be available?

"Make this supply-limited good available" is a problem that markets love to solve; in fact we do quite a lot of work to place constraints on many markets so that their solutions take forms with specific properties. In principle, we can relax constraints. USA baby formula at the time had very strong constraints ("nutritional labelling must take this precise form", https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cms_ia/importalert_116.html) which could be relaxed.
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