Comment by alex_suzuki | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alex_suzuki | Hacker News Reader

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> Whenever I’ve seen AI researchers talk about the possibility of AI writing fiction they always sound very confused about why people read novels.

I wish it was just AI researchers. I recently recommended a non-fiction book to a friend, and they said they don’t have time to read anymore. They read an LLM summary instead (popular book, probably in the training data), and said they agreed with the core concepts. I was honestly stunned. The whole interaction felt completely foreign to me.

In TFA the comment about GPT-X finishing George R. R. Martin’s series without involving the author felt extremely dystopian to me. I felt enraged for hours afterwards. Have these people never read a book themselves for the pure joy of it? Were they only interested in the outcome or the “takeaways”?

Luckily I don’t think these people are particularly representative of people who buy fiction.

It is probably why sales of things like self-help books are collapsing.

I’ve read some pretty compelling arguments that GRRM developed his work in writers rooms and much of his content is ghostwritten. I think I recall reading one of his employees emphasizing what a great deal maker he was and how much aptitude he had for securing licensing agreements. There wasn’t much talk about literary genius.

So given that the literary work was outsourced, anyway, is it really that big of a deal that it’s getting outsourced to a machine? If that still bothers you, then how much machine assistance is too much? We’re already using Word processors, spell checkers, and other tools that have taken away much of the human effort. These language models don’t really have a strong sense of personal agency or what ought to be written, but they can fill out the details from a high-level schematic, which is probably, at best, what the author was doing with other team members.

[Book] was written by humans, perhaps many that didn't get credit.

As such, why do you care if book is written by machine?

??????????

Are the two scenarios not completely different?

"[An LLM] can fill out the details from a high-level schematic, which is probably, at best, what the author was doing with other team members."

If this is what you think writing is then why ever read a book at all? Just read the summary.

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