You are correct in your assumption.
> You'd probably also agree that while the topic of those books might be objectionable to you there's knowledge to be gained by reading them.
Objectionable would seem to me an overly loaded term.
It’s yours so I’ll leave you to define it, but pretending my bias is harmful while you are free from bias makes me think you have a longer list of “objectionable thought crimes” than me.
For instance, calling out LLMs for what they are is appropriate to me, but seemingly objectionable to you and the orange site community at large. (see: downvotes… I know I know, I’ve been around here long enough to know that’s also an “objectionable” point to make according to the community guidelines!)
> So why is "AI read a bad book" a reason to write it off?
It’s rhetoric and semantics are dictated by its training set.
Since you seem hyper focused on making me out to be some vague prudist or fascist (leaving which specifically up to the reader’s whim) literary critic trying to control what others expose themselves to in an effort to nullify my criticism I will explain my reasoning using a book I love as a negative example.
When I ask a search engine when an album was released I would be frustrated if it answered by taking the next token stochastically based on Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake.
> You also assert that it's fooling people. Have you tried the image generation AIs? Do you really believe these images are 'fooling' the people generating them?
I’m confused, or you are. One of the biggest criticism against all of this AI slop is its capacity to “fool” people. See: politics, deepfakes (ad copy and nudes alike), etc.
Though that is “fooling” the “people intended to be exposed to the slop” rather than the “people generating the slop” as you focused on.
My “fooling” line refers to the people in my life, largely with a lack of knowledge in technical domains (which is totally okay, this industry be damned!) who quickly bought up subscriptions to these services in the hopes of them doing their research for them (see: lawyer who filed motion containing “hallucinated precedent) or write their copy for them (see: plethora of published academic articles containing prompt detritus).
My point being that those people flooded these services, and the number of highly technically knowledgable people who could see the rioting on the wall is much smaller than the demographic without that knowledge, propping up their users numbers which encouraged more funding, but they also are the ones least likely to use the service again as it was merely a passing fascination.
Note: I wanted to say “writing on the wall” but autocorrect made it “rioting on the wall” and i thought that was profound in a funny absurdist way so I kept it. Does that mean I’ve successfully “stopped worrying “ and “learned to love the bomb”?
> I'll ask if you've considered your reasons that you're so hostile towards this field
A field that stole the whole of human creativity to sell it back to us for the empowering of the unethical sociopaths who control it.
Why yes, I have considered my reasons; have you?