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Comment by ArtTimeInvestor | Hacker News Reader

At some point, books written by AI will be better than books that humans can write.

Do the signatories really want to deprive humanity of the best books of the future?

better by what metric? They certainly won't be better as "books written by humans" than actual books written by actual humans.

I think the gluttonous consumption of industrially-produced mindless media has done fried yr brain, chief.

true, it will never be human and soon enough humans will stop being human too lol.

I have a creeping suspicion that the people who believe this don't actually read or write much, in the same way that people who believe in "AI friends" probably don't have any friends.

I would imagine that they do not believe that outcome is likely.

It seems like a worthy question to ask what their opinions would be if that were to become reality.

Books, even fictional ones, are written as an expression of a lived experience. An AI can only be fed the experiences of people who have lived, it will never be able to generate something truly novel on its own.

AI can be "fed" anything. Either via recorded media or you can attach a camera to a computer, a microphone and other sensors. Waymo's cars are making 250.000 rides per week, experiencing a lot of stuff. Or even just use text. ChatGPT constantly experiences interactions with its users.

What is it that you are looking for in a book that is an "expression of a lived experience"? Do you get entertained? A good feeling? What if AI can write books that entertain you better and give you an even better feeling?

Or are you looking to learn something, broaden your horizon? What if AI can teach you more, make your horizon wider than any human can?

Nah. Tom Clancy was an insurance salesman. He was never in the military. He just read up on the military and then wrote.

But... No.

That's not even... It just isn't... No.

We can already burn a billion tokens if we want. Why is there no great AI novelist if all you have to do is pay enough to execute it?

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