Ask HN: Would you pay to discuss a book with an official AI clone of its author? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Would you pay to discuss a book with an official AI clone of its author?

4 pointsbriangao17 comments

When you're deep in a dense book, do you ever wish you could just ask the author something?

If each author had an official AI version of themselves, one they licensed and approved, trained on their books, talks, and interviews, with revenue going back to them and you could pay $15 per book to talk it through in a voice or video call while you read, would you try it?

I'm considering building this and want your opinion. Just asking if this interests people, like would you pay for that or at least try it free or would you just paste the book into ChatGPT for free?

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Well done for doing some market research before rushing off to code. This is far more sensible than coding first and wondering later.

To answer your question, no. I read a lot and frankly I've never wanted to discuss anything with an author. My relationship is with the characters in the book, not the author.

For non-fiction books there is so much information online that if I want to dig deeper I'll just Google or Chat it.

I've written two text books myself - very (very) niche books that sold in the hundreds of copies. (So very small). I've never had a reader reach out to discuss anything.

Yes, I expect there are people out there who want to correspond with authors. But I suspect a large fraction of them aren't "curious" but more want to demonstrate competence or whatever. I doubt an AI would satisfy them.

Yes, I think there is a market (however thin) for this, but reaching that market will be close to impossible. I would suggest either building this knowing you'd be the only user, or abandoning the idea.

No. Wouldn't try it for free.

It's possible there would be a market for this in genres where there is a strong parasocial connection to the author that drives a desire to simulate interaction.

For something factual or scientific/mathematical, I would not want to interact with a nondeterministic pretend version of the author.

I actually like this. If it genuinely captures how the author thinks, rather than just doing RAG over their books, it could be really interesting. I’d definitely try it free. At $15, I’d want confidence the author had shaped what it can and can’t say, not just licensed their name. How involved would the author be?

Nope, because the AI does not have the mind of the Author, simply as that. AI can't think the way the author will think and answer, won't make jokes like the author does.

Let's take for example an interview in a public library, where people are around, questions start, and the author with his personality answers with tone and some times thinking, but some other times says funny things. AI won't do this, it's going to answer straight forward the questions. Despite that, where is the fun of waiting to see your favorite author if possible?

The only authors who would sign such a deal would be near the end of their lives, and wishing to provide for their heirs. I don't think that it would be a widely accepted practice.

No. It would likely hallucinate answers to questions the author meant to leave unanswered, or never considered. It can’t be considered canon, so I don’t know that it would be any better than me assuming the answer based on context.

In other cases, it might encourage books that are less complete, where the author leans on the AI to drive usage and engagement for increased profit, which would make the book itself worse.

Not necessarily. At least, it should be labeled and set up differently. I do not care about the author (usually), but the content. I already can discuss books with AI. Nothing special here. What could be interesting is offering AI powered training sessions as an add-on to the book. However, the question would be why the book in the first place.

What about questions that are in the negative space of the book?

Like I might want to ask the author of a book why he didn't cite a book that was cited by many of the books he cited, was relevant to what he was trying to say, particularly looking back 20 years later comparing his work to other works that followed it.

The answers to that aren't in the book!

No.

I’d pay 15$ for a second book that had more details and explanations though.

AI still makes up stuff, not fun with books

The answer is the same as for would you like to pay for a glass of alcohol free Radler (beer with gas water) - HELL NO! I EVEN WOULD NOT ORDER IT.

Books= use of brain= Intelligence= Growth

AI≠ Inteligence= no growth

Purpose of books will be doomed if you use AI in them

No, AI will just predict the response of the author.

No. Because I will know it’s fake.

Hard no, but for context, I discuss books with AI all the time. I wouldn't discuss Hemingway with an AI, completely pointless. His work is not about the content, it's about the beauty of the prose. By comparison, The Timeless Way of Building, I have ruminated on and used AI to explore. It wouldn't make me want to interact with a synthetic version of Christopher Alexander.

That's not to say the backstory of an author isn't something I would go for either. The Undoing Project was the perfect bookend to Kahneman's work.

I’d pay a premium not to be exposed to advertisements for this service.

I’d pay a premium for the works of authors who despise it, if it existed; I reckon this would be a signal of their quality.

Fuck no

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