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Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

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Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#71

Post by Apocryphon »

cm2012 wrote: post #59
vova_hn2 wrote: post #13

> How-to YouTube videos. Why scrub through a 24-minute video to find the 40 seconds you need, when an AI can watch it for you and hand you the steps? Why make a 24-minute Youtube video instead of an article with proper navigation? This is slightly off-topic, but this is a pet-peeve of mine. I believe that for most practical purposes hypertext beats video: - you can Ctrl-F through text (well, now you sort of can searc…

A certain portion of people just prefer learning from video instead of text.

And audio. This also explains the popularity of podcasts, the descendants of a century or so of radio shows.

Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#72

Post by ben_w »

aerhardt wrote: post #35
delichon wrote: post #32

Fiction books to follow soon? Will kids still sit down and read an assigned book when they can just prompt "generate a movie of Shelley's Frankenstein, faithful to the source, except as required by my_movie_preferences.md". Reading the text may become as rare as learning ancient Greek to read the Odyssey.

You say soon but what you just described is still sci-fi as far as I can tell.

It may not yet be fully automated, and you may have to choose between "cheap and bad or the price of a house and kinda acceptable", but it's definitely possible.

Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#73

Post by brlewis »

Apocryphon wrote: post #71
cm2012 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A certain portion of people just prefer learning from video instead of text.

And audio. This also explains the popularity of podcasts, the descendants of a century or so of radio shows.

I thought the explanation for podcasts was people who drive to and from work, and don't care for current radio shows.

Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#74

Post by odysseus »

neutronicus wrote: post #29
vova_hn2 wrote: post #13

> How-to YouTube videos. Why scrub through a 24-minute video to find the 40 seconds you need, when an AI can watch it for you and hand you the steps? Why make a 24-minute Youtube video instead of an article with proper navigation? This is slightly off-topic, but this is a pet-peeve of mine. I believe that for most practical purposes hypertext beats video: - you can Ctrl-F through text (well, now you sort of can searc…

The right 15 seconds of video can be extremely helpful with household tasks. I'm thinking specifically of super-tactile ones like getting such-and-such panel off the car or appliance so that you can get at the bit you're looking to replace. Those can really be worth a thousand words. Of course I'd prefer a blog post with many looping, silent 5-15 second gifs and no extraneous like-and-subscribe and life-story-deliver…

Yep, for home improvement and work on cars, I’ll take the video every time. Everything else, if only a video is available, I’ll ask Grok to summarize it so I don’t have to sit through it.

But last weekend I had to remove a trim panel under the hood of my car to extract a dead rodent, and I was wondering how to get those round clips off without breaking them. This video helped: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=K_rsVDj5s1o&ra=m

The AI summary of the same video explains the exact steps but doesn’t show them actually being done.

Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#75

Post by ben_w »

ryandrake wrote: post #44
aerhardt wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say soon but what you just described is still sci-fi as far as I can tell.

I wonder, if the technology will actually get to the point where it can AI/Remix up a bunch of TV shows or movies that are as high quality / nonslop as the original, and if that would satisfy me. Let's say I'm living in the past and think Star Trek TNG and the X-Files was peak TV. If I could just hit enter and generate an in-all-ways-believably-authentic episode, maybe I just wouldn't watch anything else. Would it ma…

On a similar vein, I was just thinking of the TNG episode Hollow Pursuits earlier today.

Somehow, this is one of the episodes I never actually watched, but it is interesting to me how often the Trek scripts cover essentially identical ideas to current discussions about AI: Moriarty insisting to Barclay that he was conscious even when his program wasn't running, Pulaski saying Data was just remixing and not actually intelligent, various examples of deep fakes, cyber addiction, AI going weird sometimes while following orders and sometimes just as an emergent bug.

Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#76

Post by krapht »

brlewis wrote: post #73
Apocryphon wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And audio. This also explains the popularity of podcasts, the descendants of a century or so of radio shows.

I thought the explanation for podcasts was people who drive to and from work, and don't care for current radio shows.

More than just your commute. Any downtime where you are doing a mindless chore is prime podcast time.

Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#77

Post by the_lonely_phon »

submeta wrote: post #43

I suspect AI is replacing my need for productivity content much faster than it’s replacing my need for books. I read fewer blog posts, fewer newsletters, fewer “10 lessons from…” articles, and fewer productivity videos than I did three years ago. But I still buy books. The first casualties seem to be the intermediaries, not necessarily the original sources.

This is me too. Just finished the latest Dungeon Crawler Carl book, bought on day 1. Have completely replaced Google, stackoverflow, medium, digital ocean documentation, etc. Only HN remains and honestly it’s less to keep my finger on the pulse and more habit than anything these days. Went from a large part of my consumption to zero visits since I got Claude code.

Makes me wonder what’s going to happen to AI’s results if all these content streams dry up.

Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#78

Post by Jtarii »

vova_hn2 wrote: post #13

> How-to YouTube videos. Why scrub through a 24-minute video to find the 40 seconds you need, when an AI can watch it for you and hand you the steps? Why make a 24-minute Youtube video instead of an article with proper navigation? This is slightly off-topic, but this is a pet-peeve of mine. I believe that for most practical purposes hypertext beats video: - you can Ctrl-F through text (well, now you sort of can searc…

>Why? I don't get it

Because articles make no money?

Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#80

Post by xKingfisher »

curuinor wrote: post #69
ransom1538 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dale Carnegie -> Jim Rohn -> Tony Robbins -> [all hacks now]

the man leveraged the fact that his name was the same as Andrew Carnegie (having no relation) to launch a publishing empire. it was hacks from the beginning

Even worse he changed his name from Carnagey, presumably to deliberately cause confusion.
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