Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by john_strinlai | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

john_strinlai

stories below. they were generated with chatgpt 4.0.

pair 1: https://osf.io/d8f6m/files/yjahv

pair 2: https://osf.io/d8f6m/files/sjph3

pair 3: https://osf.io/d8f6m/files/4pfw3

View on HN

At first I was impressed by the “generated” stories and wondered about the prompt used to get such human sounding writing, except then I read further and saw they put the human written stories first and the AI stories after, which are all full of the familiar stylistic constructs (and banality) of AI written works.

I cannot judge fairly given that the stories are labeled, but the story about the koi is dreadful. It is about a supposedly mysterious subject—the machine at least insists it's mysterious—but it is so dull, so pedestrian, so cut-and-dry. "My mommy dying makes me sad but the peaceful koi pond helps me find peace". Blech.

Perhaps it only seems so banal because the competition is so engigmatic.

And what does it mean for something to smell of "sterile detachment"?

Yes! Reading all samples really drives home the study's conclusion that “people generally prefer predictability, because difficult material requires more brain power.” I could blow through the AI generated versions as I do Brandon Sanderson or JK Rowling because my brain was saying "yada yada yada, yeah I get it, how many sentences do you need to say the same thing."

Honestly much more curious to know about the human written stories were here! Feels at least pretty important to the study. With the AI, the specifics feel less important, because the relative input is going to be so small, so the researchers can probably just do it themselves. But how do you choose which works to stand in as pieces of human writing in general? How did they make sure the subjects weren't aware of the authors they chose?

They are not very representative. I absolutely hate the subjects and plots and writing all over and would have voted randomly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com