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Someone Used AI to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me

nytimes.com

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Re: Someone Used AI to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me

#61

Post by vidarh »

shimman wrote: post #52
vidarh wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and we've seen the public around the world overwhelming reject LLMs Have we? Where do you see people rejecting them?

Sure, the immediate response is have you been paying attention at all to the data center buildouts and the responses by US civilians? If you can't even acknowledge how Americans are already turning to active resistance of these buildouts + the attempts to assassinate leaders of these technology companies, you are quite behind the plot my friend. Refusing data centers is a truly bipartisan issue where you even have sa…

And yet a huge proportion of people are using LLMs daily.

That people don't want data centers in their back yard does not translate to opposition to LLMs. Anyone who hopes it is will be setting themselves up for disappointment when people keep using them.

Re: Someone Used AI to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me

#62

Post by janalsncm »

mcphage wrote: post #58
janalsncm wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, and I feel something for the authors who are in it to write a high-quality novel. For the authors who are in it for the game, writing bottom of the barrel airport checkout line garbage, they were already trying to game people’s attention and they lost to a robot.

The existence of someone buying AI slop and being okay with it isn't the same as losing to a robot. Unless you mean losing that specific sale, but they're not outselling human authors yet, and it's not clear they will until their quality improves immensely.

I do mean losing that specific sale. I’m also referring to the economists who saw an increase in sales.

This means there are marginal readers who previously didn’t buy any book but now buy AI slop books, or buy slop books in addition to human ones.

Re: Someone Used AI to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me

#63

Post by bahbahbahbah »

mcphage wrote: post #59
bahbahbahbah wrote: post #36

I expect I'll get a lot of hate for this, and potentially deservedly so, but I've been doing something similar since late last year when Opus came out. > Because romance sells, the professors thought it would be the genre most susceptible to A.I. intervention, but instead it was nonfiction... I've been working mostly in erotica but have shifted to some nonfiction series lately. I stopped for a while, but Fable and GP…

> So far I have made a little over $40, compared to probably $800 in AI subscription fees. > If anyone is curious, I'd be happy to talk about any of it. So you've spent $750 to publish AI slop. I guess my question is... why? Why are you doing this? Like, what do you get out of it?

There's a preconception that all AI generated content is slop. But it's really a spectrum, just like with human generated content.

I take an iterative process where I get to experiment with the technology, building agent harnesses, building workflows and processes, adversarial critiquing, and of course I spend a good amount of time hand editing.

Everything I've published I find sincerely good and to have value. My most recent book (~200 pages), published last week, has been read exactly one time and has one 5 star review. So right now it's not a commercial success, but I both enjoyed making the book and I think I made a reader happy. That's joyful to me.

That book took probably 12-16 hours of work from me. Writing it by hand would have taken me weeks, if I had the skill to do it, which I don't. But I do have the skill to shape a draft into something nice to read.

So, why? It's fun to create. It's fun to publish. I think I'm providing value. I'm learning about writing and editing and I'm learning about how to best use AI.

Re: Someone Used AI to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me

#64

Post by mcphage »

janalsncm wrote: post #62
mcphage wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The existence of someone buying AI slop and being okay with it isn't the same as losing to a robot. Unless you mean losing that specific sale, but they're not outselling human authors yet, and it's not clear they will until their quality improves immensely.

I do mean losing that specific sale. I’m also referring to the economists who saw an increase in sales. This means there are marginal readers who previously didn’t buy any book but now buy AI slop books, or buy slop books in addition to human ones.

> This means there are marginal readers who previously didn’t buy any book but now buy AI slop books, or buy slop books in addition to human ones.

The former would be interesting, but seems unlikely. The later seems much more likely, since they’re already in the habit of buying books.

Re: Someone Used AI to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me

#65

Post by fatata123 »

Hansenq wrote: post #22

Given that everything in the book is public information, it's hard to argue that any of this is strictly _illegal_, given the First Amendment. But it's definitely distasteful to write a book about a living individual without their consent (even though this does happen all the time; technically Wikipedia does this too). Though that does raise an interesting point: what's the difference between writing a book about som…

[dead]

Re: Someone Used AI to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me

#66

Post by palmotea »

janalsncm wrote: post #62
mcphage wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The existence of someone buying AI slop and being okay with it isn't the same as losing to a robot. Unless you mean losing that specific sale, but they're not outselling human authors yet, and it's not clear they will until their quality improves immensely.

I do mean losing that specific sale. I’m also referring to the economists who saw an increase in sales. This means there are marginal readers who previously didn’t buy any book but now buy AI slop books, or buy slop books in addition to human ones.

> I do mean losing that specific sale. I’m also referring to the economists who saw an increase in sales.

The sales of most of the books talked about in the article are minuscule, and the best selling one sucked so bad Amazon pulled it.

> This means there are marginal readers who previously didn’t buy any book but now buy AI slop books, or buy slop books in addition to human ones.

I don't think that's happening. It's tricking customers in to buying books no fully-informed person would buy. That amounts to either redirecting sales away from better quality books, or having people waste their money on something doesn't really exist, only "technically" exists (a slop book even the author didn't read is only technically a book, but not really a book).

Re: Someone Used AI to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me

#67

Post by hardbass »

shimman wrote: post #52
vidarh wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and we've seen the public around the world overwhelming reject LLMs Have we? Where do you see people rejecting them?

Sure, the immediate response is have you been paying attention at all to the data center buildouts and the responses by US civilians? If you can't even acknowledge how Americans are already turning to active resistance of these buildouts + the attempts to assassinate leaders of these technology companies, you are quite behind the plot my friend. Refusing data centers is a truly bipartisan issue where you even have sa…

How do data centers poison and kill people?

Re: Someone Used AI to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me

#68

Post by hardbass »

shimman wrote: post #53
dylan604 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now, most people are more than happy slurping in the slop. The push back is only in niche corners of the interwebs. Even the obvious issues with slop like "count the fingers" level of issues are being used for entertainment and embraced rather than rejection. So there's no real pressure to fix things with the slop generators. So many people are oblivious to the content they are consuming is slop or not bothered…

Who in slurping the slop here? Do you talk to people? I've been doing deep canvassing for the last 2 years. One common element seen across country are American's complete utter hatred of these companies. Majority of artists hate it. Celebrities routinely comment how much they hate it. It's become a punchline to describe anything that sucks. I'm sorry but force feeding something that is deeply unpopular ain't working.…

If they hate these companies why is usage of llms increasing so much?

Artists are the wrong people to ask. Ask non-artists and non friends of artists how they feel about being able to generate images on command.

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