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I’m with the artists on this one. Our obsession with converting everything into input for an algorithm that spits out an ill-defined number (what the hell is “

I’m with the artists on this one. Our obsession with converting everything into input for an algorithm that spits out an ill-defined number (what the hell is “vividness”?) needs to stop. We already tried this with human communication and gave birth to the dystopian nightmare that is social media, why keep repeating our mistakes?

pmarreck 3y ago
As the article stated, there is nothing either legally or morally wrong with what the site did, and many authors found it useful. Let us know when you come up with an actual counterargument based on reason instead of an appeal to emotion fallacy.
Nullabillity 3y ago
Honestly, this is the really offensive part of the article. Who cares about whether or not it's legal, the idea that it's, in any way, shape, or form, useful is bafflingly laughable. Not everything can be meaningfully quantified. Not everything needs to be.
- capableweb 3y ago
  > Not everything can be meaningfully quantified. Not everything needs to be. Ok, so who decides what's OK to analyze or not? Is there some obvious moral line I fail to see, that everyone would immediately agree on? It seems the project was about analyzing books, not about producing new books. How is that hurting the authors?
  - LikelyABurner 3y ago
    What will hurt artists is, when in 10 years, all publishers are demanding that the vividness score (TM) be at least a 95% “because that’s what drives sales”. Which is what will happen if the authors don’t proactively stop it from happening. Look at how the music industry has evolved over time.
    - runj__ 3y ago
      Or it could help me find terser books I like, people will still have preferences and if the author tries to pander to only the largest market segment I'd argue that's on them.
      - jprete 3y ago
        I think it’s much more likely you would get the book equivalent of crap SEO sites spammed out to satisfy numerical measures of quality.
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      How is this different to the current process, other than feedback is slower (if forthcoming at all) and less specific?
      - palata 3y ago
        > How is this different to the current process, other than feedback is slower (if forthcoming at all) and less specific? Let me rephrase your question: "how is it different to the current process, other than <the fact that it is different>?" :-). I would say that the answer lies in the question.
        robertlagrant 3y ago
        Sounds as though your view of the AI is purely positive, in that case. That's fair enough. The answer for other people may well not lie in the question (e.g. for all the people who don't like this development), but it did for you!
        palata 3y ago
        Sorry I did not understand that :-). My point was that it is different: when humans read a book, they don't train a machine learning model. They can't read as many books as a machine, at the same speed, and they can't remember nearly as much as what a machine can. Humans and computers are fundamentally different, and it matters. You can't conclude that because it works for one, it will fork for the other.
  - Nullabillity 3y ago
    Again, I don't particularly care about whether this is allowed to exist, I'm just here to laugh at the mindset that lead to it being created. But sure, I can see this being used in harmful ways. > It seems the project was about analyzing books, not about producing new books. How is that hurting the authors? "Vivid books are really in this year, we're gonna have to ask that you aim for a Vividness(tm) of 85 or above." "US books have 15% more adjectives, clearly this is proof of our superior detail-oriented work ethic!" "What does the rise in Emotion(tm) have to say about the decline of society?"
    - capableweb 3y ago
      So if I understand you correctly, you're saying that we should not create "metrics" for anything because said metrics could be misused by clueless people?
- runj__ 3y ago
  Certainly something interesting is bound to come out of quantifying things? "Hm, this three act structure thing seems to work, I wonder why." "Children doesn't seem to understand texts which include these words, I wonder why." Patterns rarely show themselves before we investigate.
  - Nullabillity 3y ago
    > Certainly something interesting is bound to come out of quantifying things? In science they call this trap P-hacking. Even data "scientists" know to be wary of overfitting. We're really good at finding patterns, but few of them actually mean anything.
    - davorak 3y ago
      >> Certainly something interesting is bound to come out of quantifying things? > In science they call this trap P-hacking. Even data "scientists" know to be wary of overfitting. We're really good at finding patterns, but few of them actually mean anything. Quantifying things is not always p-hacking. When people do experiments on novel materials or structures they quantify the data, make readings and record them, and then look for patterns. For example measuring the electronic properties of a new novel nano structure or molecule. When I think of p-hacking[1] I think of using the same static data and doing various data analysis over and over again until something potentially interesting is found and ignoring the risks of false positives as you do so. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_dredging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_dredging
- dmurray 3y ago
  The analysis is cool. The problematic thing is what would have happened next, if this tool turned out to be any good. Publishers rejecting manuscripts because "this years trend shows customers are looking for vividness in the 70+ percentile, your book is only at 55". Everything becoming the same style. If you thought Hemingway, Joyce or Nabokov had it bad with rejections, there'd be zero chance for actual innovative writing to break through the walls of The Algorithm.
  - fullspectrumdev 3y ago
    Joyce should have had more rejections, but that’s just my personal opinion
- TheCoreh 3y ago
  > Not everything can be meaningfully quantified. Sure, but written words _can_ be meaningfully quantified. We have been doing that for thousands of years. Starting with numerology and other mystical/religious beliefs, poem metrics, stylometry, crypto analysis, stroke counting, to name a few. > Not everything needs to be. Why not?
- pikahumu 3y ago
  If you don't find it useful, don't use it. But why get outraged about something that others find useful? It's clearly a tool that other writers were positive and excited about. Why not let them have it? If you don't find those quantifications meaningful, so be it. You don't need to use it. Why force your opinion on others?
  - r053bud 3y ago
    Simple. Just allow an opt-out for Authors or Publishers. Then only interested parties will comprise of and make use of the service, like you want.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- andybak 3y ago
  > Honestly, this is the really offensive part of the article. I would argue that "Offensive" is either hyperbolic or you've used the wrong word. > the idea that it's, in any way, shape, or form, useful is bafflingly laughable. I don't know if it's useful because I never tried it. I might harbour my doubts but I'd like to find out. This is how I approach new things.
thendrill 3y ago
Well... We still can not agree if... Technology has to be protected from dumb people, or is it worth protecting dumb people from technology....
- jprete 3y ago
  What do you even mean by this comment? Have you considered the possibility that people are smart in ways that you are not considering, rather than just labeling it “dumb”?
  - s1mplicissimus 3y ago
    Have you considered ... in ways that you are not considering...? I am pretty confident they haven't. Sounds like you've set yourself up for a reverse "true scotsman" here ;)
    - jprete 3y ago
      Nice catch, thanks for pointing it out.
- LikelyABurner 3y ago
  If anything, it’s the smart people that need to be protected from technology, because Silicon Valley is obsessed with pulling them down into a Harrison Bergeron nightmare where they’re absorbed into the same modeled probability distribution as the rest of the population to better sell them ads (outliers are bad for profits.)
JoeAltmaier 3y ago
That's silly. Humans review books all the time, using very similar words. Where's the outrage over that? This is manufactured, stretched, overhyped objections. I believe it's all as the OP suggests, because the word AI is in there. Not because anything illegal or immoral is going on. In fact it's a terribly useful tool, and once the mob cools off it'll likely return.
- LikelyABurner 3y ago
  You are exactly modeling the chauvinistic Silicon Valley attitude that is causing the outrage in the general population to begin with. “Our algorithms are pretty much the same as human art criticism, so put down the pitchforks you unenlightened scum” is up there with telling them to eat (a Stable Diffusion generated picture of) cake.
  - Chris2048 3y ago
    People starved while it was suggested they eat cake. Not sure how that relates - are the rights around art crit not the same as AI crit?
    - jhbadger 3y ago
      Of course they never were suggested to eat cake in reality. 1) The actual French quote was to brioche, a type of bread and mistranslated as cake because brioche wasn't common in English-speaking countries 2) Was never an actual suggestion -- the French philosopher Rousseau was making a sarcastic remark suggesting that if the people didn't have bread, they should eat brioche (a fancier kind of bread) instead. But for some reason in pop culture this was falsely transformed into an actual suggestion by Marie Antoinette
      - rockemsockem 3y ago
        Glad to see someone else mention the falsehood of the original quote. It's actually really fitting to see that (mis-)quote used in the context of this outrage since from reading through the original vitriolic Twitter thread it's clear that many of the most outraged are incorrect about what the product does.
soco 3y ago
For this very particular project I agree the reaction seems exaggerated, even though it does walk the thin line of copyright infringement. But as it happens, it rides the wave of all other AI project which started small then headed we know where. Because once your book is in the database of company X you can bet safe money they will take it and continue their "analysis" as much further as they like because hey you did not complain - and I believe you must defend yourself in order to keep the copyright.
- Robotbeat 3y ago
  The response to this undermines my ability to take the “backlash” against AI as anything other than innumerate, mob idiocy. It’s hard to prevent myself from being negatively polarized against the backlash when people in the backlash defend outrage against obviously innocuous things like this.
golemotron 3y ago
> I’m with the artists on this one. Our obsession with converting everything into input for an algorithm that spits out an ill-defined number (what the hell is “vividness”?) needs to stop. Anyone who is with the artists should pass a law. Moral outrage is not law.
- Nasrudith 3y ago
  And promptly smack face first into the First Amendment. There is a reason they are going with moral outrage. Because they know they don't have the right.
vouaobrasil 3y ago
We repeat the mistakes because in the short term, someone finds it profitable, hence a prisoner's dilemma type situation. If an AI tool was killed, I consider it a victory. That's because even if there are some small useful applications of AI, AI on the whole will certainly put most creatives out of business. Instead, I propose the following: anyone who is interested in preventing AI from taking over their craft should join me in a coalition of ban AI from their own business. By placing a notice that your work is "100% AI FREE", you are doing something akin to the fair-trade/sustainably sourced sticker on chocolate or other food products: you are letting consumers know that your work was made by a human, so that they can support you. If enough people get in on this, and pledge to support only those creators who don't use AI, then we can make AI an unprofitable venture and hopefully kill it forever! I already put a 100% AI FREE badge on my YouTube channel, which means that I will never use AI for writing scripts, editing videos, producing images, etc. Moreover, I also pledge to support other creators who pledge never to use AI, by buying their products over others!
- kiwih 3y ago
  Without trying to sound flippant - what do you define AI as? Things like autofocus in your video cameras or automatic gain control or noise cancellation in your audio pipeline could also be considered AI. Do you remove those too? What about the AI recommendation algorithm built into YouTube - how do you reconcile being AI free while still using that platform?
  - vouaobrasil 3y ago
    Yes, you are right, and I advocate the following: a detailed look at each of these technologies. However, for practical purposes, a direct definition that encompasses every situation is not necessary, but can evolve. For now, I think we do not need a precise definition and we can start with the following: AI such as ChatGPT, LLMs, image generation tools like DALL-E and ohters, should be restricted. As for YouTube's algorithm, I agree it is also dangerous. For now, I have restricted the use of direct content generation algorithms, in other words, all content can reasonably said to be human generated in terms of writing, composition, etc. In other words: AI that makes any creative decision in making content should be banned. Other algorithms should be carefully debated.
planede 3y ago
I probably agree, but how does this have any relevance to copyright? If the tool is bad but otherwise legal then it should just fail on its lack of merit.
vidarh 3y ago
As someone who has published two novels: The outrage over this site was stupid, ignorant and a demonstration of a witch-hunt that will help nobody.
croes 3y ago
There is a difference between a statistical analysis of a text to categorize by certain words or word groups and training an AI model to generate texts on the data used for training. The later creates massive competition to human writers, the former is just an information for potential readers.
- subroutine 3y ago
  Both the former and latter are information for writers. Neither create massive competition for writers (not that there is any law against creating competition), just FUD and better tools for writers.
  - croes 3y ago
    Things like GPT already create competition for authors even using their names. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37042561 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37042561 Pure text statistics won't do the same.
    - subroutine 3y ago
      Wrt. your link, the same thing could have happen to this author if these spam books contained complete gibberish (and someone listed it on Amazon/goodreads using the authors name). This isn't legitimate competition (i.e. books written by LLMs that rival the quality and style of the actual author). This is a failure of the selling platform to QC the books they are selling.
      - croes 3y ago
        LLMs make the scams better just like they will make spam better. If it's gibberish you know you got scammed, LLM texts look convincing so you don't know for sure.
        subroutine 3y ago
        I agree LLMs can make better spam. But good spam isn't real competition. It's not like anyone is debating whether they should buy the latest book from their favorite author or the latest book from their favorite author's clone LLM (which is known to have written some solid books). Again, this is an issue that needs to be solved by vendors (it seems like all they need is a system where authors get a copyright to their name, and can curate the list of titles published under their name).
macNchz 3y ago
If you’re an author of books intended for children, your texts are likely already being quantified to produce a reading level difficulty score: https://metametricsinc.com/parents-and-students/lexile-for-parents-and-students/lexile-for-reading/ https://metametricsinc.com/parents-and-students/lexile-for-p...
dontupvoteme 3y ago
I'm disappointed he went for "vividness" and not novelty. Judging text based on how uncommon the n-gram is/how much it differs from an LLM could be interesting for sure. The better an LLM can complete your joke the worse it is, for instance. Important to have a good Letterman-MacDonald quotient.
torginus 3y ago
I kind of don't understand the issue - IANAL, so I'm not going to delve on the legality of things, but I think making automated book recommendations better is absolutely fits the bill for 'transformative use' - as in book recommendations are in no way a substitute product for books themselves. And personally, I think book recommendations are an absolutely underserved market, if I liked a book, having the ability to find more like it would be an absolute godsend for connecting authors with people who would be interested in their works, resulting in much more potential sales for them. I can't count how many times have I discovered an absolutely great book on Amazon with like 50 reviews accidentally, as well as other, objectively less recommendable books that have nevertheless made an impression on me. Discovering these books is sort of a hobby of mine, and is the exact kind of activity an LLM would be a great help with. Going further, if there was an LLM that could be asked for book recommendations for your particular tastes, it could also identify markets for books not yet written, and would give a hint to authors on what sort of books to write to find an audience.
- aredox 3y ago
  Stop with the "this is good, I want more" Skinner-box model of happiness. Try some serendipity instead of being led by a generic algorithm. I discovered absolutely great books by moving slowly along the shelves of a library or a bookshop. And you need to read bad books to understand the great ones.
  - giantrobot 3y ago
    Are you seriously telling someone else how they should enjoy something?
  - webnrrd2k 3y ago
    The whole point of this site is for people to express their opinions, and torginus took the time to write a thoughtful comment anout LLMs and how they might help both authors and readers. As for your point about serendipity, torginus never said that he didn't wander book stores and libraries looking for books he wouldn't have been previously exposed to. Based on the post, I'm sure they understood the basics of reading a variety of books, both good and bad -- there is no need to get judgemental.
AnimalMuppet 3y ago
"It's a mistake." OK, you could be right. "Needs to stop." OK, you could be right on that one too. I don't think you are, but that's not the point. Neither of those adds up to "it's currently illegal". (Whether it's actually illegal probably depends on the details of how he did what he did.) Further, neither of those things adds up to "the howling mob should attack him until he stops". (Even if the "attacks" are purely online.) I am against "attack him with outrage dialed all the way up to 11 without actually understanding what his tool is and does". I am also against giving in to the outrage - it just shows the mob that baseless outrage attacks work. You think it needs to stop? Fine. Persuade him that it needs to stop, and therefore that he should stop. Convince him - not with a mob screaming in outrage, but with reason.
sobellian 3y ago
I agree that it's probably not that useful, but to actually take offense? The outrage seems to misunderstand the law and the technology. If you think the numbers offer no meaning, then just ignore them. People produce bad tools every day and the world still turns.
jasonlotito 3y ago
> I’m with the artists on this one. Our obsession with converting everything into input for an algorithm that spits out an ill-defined number (what the hell is “vividness”?) needs to stop. Usefulness is immaterial here. Is he allowed to do this? Yes. What's wrong with presenting a page count and word count, for example?
sneak 3y ago
The guy who wrote code is also an artist, and he is allowed to publish his book reports.

pmarreck 3y ago

As the article stated, there is nothing either legally or morally wrong with what the site did, and many authors found it useful. Let us know when you come up with an actual counterargument based on reason instead of an appeal to emotion fallacy.

Nullabillity 3y ago

Honestly, this is the really offensive part of the article. Who cares about whether or not it's legal, the idea that it's, in any way, shape, or form, useful is bafflingly laughable. Not everything can be meaningfully quantified. Not everything needs to be.

capableweb 3y ago
> Not everything can be meaningfully quantified. Not everything needs to be. Ok, so who decides what's OK to analyze or not? Is there some obvious moral line I fail to see, that everyone would immediately agree on? It seems the project was about analyzing books, not about producing new books. How is that hurting the authors?
- LikelyABurner 3y ago
  What will hurt artists is, when in 10 years, all publishers are demanding that the vividness score (TM) be at least a 95% “because that’s what drives sales”. Which is what will happen if the authors don’t proactively stop it from happening. Look at how the music industry has evolved over time.
  - runj__ 3y ago
    Or it could help me find terser books I like, people will still have preferences and if the author tries to pander to only the largest market segment I'd argue that's on them.
    - jprete 3y ago
      I think it’s much more likely you would get the book equivalent of crap SEO sites spammed out to satisfy numerical measures of quality.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    How is this different to the current process, other than feedback is slower (if forthcoming at all) and less specific?
    - palata 3y ago
      > How is this different to the current process, other than feedback is slower (if forthcoming at all) and less specific? Let me rephrase your question: "how is it different to the current process, other than <the fact that it is different>?" :-). I would say that the answer lies in the question.
      - robertlagrant 3y ago
        Sounds as though your view of the AI is purely positive, in that case. That's fair enough. The answer for other people may well not lie in the question (e.g. for all the people who don't like this development), but it did for you!
        palata 3y ago
        Sorry I did not understand that :-). My point was that it is different: when humans read a book, they don't train a machine learning model. They can't read as many books as a machine, at the same speed, and they can't remember nearly as much as what a machine can. Humans and computers are fundamentally different, and it matters. You can't conclude that because it works for one, it will fork for the other.
- Nullabillity 3y ago
  Again, I don't particularly care about whether this is allowed to exist, I'm just here to laugh at the mindset that lead to it being created. But sure, I can see this being used in harmful ways. > It seems the project was about analyzing books, not about producing new books. How is that hurting the authors? "Vivid books are really in this year, we're gonna have to ask that you aim for a Vividness(tm) of 85 or above." "US books have 15% more adjectives, clearly this is proof of our superior detail-oriented work ethic!" "What does the rise in Emotion(tm) have to say about the decline of society?"
  - capableweb 3y ago
    So if I understand you correctly, you're saying that we should not create "metrics" for anything because said metrics could be misused by clueless people?
runj__ 3y ago
Certainly something interesting is bound to come out of quantifying things? "Hm, this three act structure thing seems to work, I wonder why." "Children doesn't seem to understand texts which include these words, I wonder why." Patterns rarely show themselves before we investigate.
- Nullabillity 3y ago
  > Certainly something interesting is bound to come out of quantifying things? In science they call this trap P-hacking. Even data "scientists" know to be wary of overfitting. We're really good at finding patterns, but few of them actually mean anything.
  - davorak 3y ago
    >> Certainly something interesting is bound to come out of quantifying things? > In science they call this trap P-hacking. Even data "scientists" know to be wary of overfitting. We're really good at finding patterns, but few of them actually mean anything. Quantifying things is not always p-hacking. When people do experiments on novel materials or structures they quantify the data, make readings and record them, and then look for patterns. For example measuring the electronic properties of a new novel nano structure or molecule. When I think of p-hacking[1] I think of using the same static data and doing various data analysis over and over again until something potentially interesting is found and ignoring the risks of false positives as you do so. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_dredging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_dredging
dmurray 3y ago
The analysis is cool. The problematic thing is what would have happened next, if this tool turned out to be any good. Publishers rejecting manuscripts because "this years trend shows customers are looking for vividness in the 70+ percentile, your book is only at 55". Everything becoming the same style. If you thought Hemingway, Joyce or Nabokov had it bad with rejections, there'd be zero chance for actual innovative writing to break through the walls of The Algorithm.
- fullspectrumdev 3y ago
  Joyce should have had more rejections, but that’s just my personal opinion
TheCoreh 3y ago
> Not everything can be meaningfully quantified. Sure, but written words _can_ be meaningfully quantified. We have been doing that for thousands of years. Starting with numerology and other mystical/religious beliefs, poem metrics, stylometry, crypto analysis, stroke counting, to name a few. > Not everything needs to be. Why not?
pikahumu 3y ago
If you don't find it useful, don't use it. But why get outraged about something that others find useful? It's clearly a tool that other writers were positive and excited about. Why not let them have it? If you don't find those quantifications meaningful, so be it. You don't need to use it. Why force your opinion on others?
- r053bud 3y ago
  Simple. Just allow an opt-out for Authors or Publishers. Then only interested parties will comprise of and make use of the service, like you want.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
andybak 3y ago
> Honestly, this is the really offensive part of the article. I would argue that "Offensive" is either hyperbolic or you've used the wrong word. > the idea that it's, in any way, shape, or form, useful is bafflingly laughable. I don't know if it's useful because I never tried it. I might harbour my doubts but I'd like to find out. This is how I approach new things.

thendrill 3y ago

Well... We still can not agree if... Technology has to be protected from dumb people, or is it worth protecting dumb people from technology....

jprete 3y ago
What do you even mean by this comment? Have you considered the possibility that people are smart in ways that you are not considering, rather than just labeling it “dumb”?
- s1mplicissimus 3y ago
  Have you considered ... in ways that you are not considering...? I am pretty confident they haven't. Sounds like you've set yourself up for a reverse "true scotsman" here ;)
  - jprete 3y ago
    Nice catch, thanks for pointing it out.
LikelyABurner 3y ago
If anything, it’s the smart people that need to be protected from technology, because Silicon Valley is obsessed with pulling them down into a Harrison Bergeron nightmare where they’re absorbed into the same modeled probability distribution as the rest of the population to better sell them ads (outliers are bad for profits.)

JoeAltmaier 3y ago

That's silly. Humans review books all the time, using very similar words. Where's the outrage over that? This is manufactured, stretched, overhyped objections. I believe it's all as the OP suggests, because the word AI is in there. Not because anything illegal or immoral is going on. In fact it's a terribly useful tool, and once the mob cools off it'll likely return.

LikelyABurner 3y ago
You are exactly modeling the chauvinistic Silicon Valley attitude that is causing the outrage in the general population to begin with. “Our algorithms are pretty much the same as human art criticism, so put down the pitchforks you unenlightened scum” is up there with telling them to eat (a Stable Diffusion generated picture of) cake.
- Chris2048 3y ago
  People starved while it was suggested they eat cake. Not sure how that relates - are the rights around art crit not the same as AI crit?
  - jhbadger 3y ago
    Of course they never were suggested to eat cake in reality. 1) The actual French quote was to brioche, a type of bread and mistranslated as cake because brioche wasn't common in English-speaking countries 2) Was never an actual suggestion -- the French philosopher Rousseau was making a sarcastic remark suggesting that if the people didn't have bread, they should eat brioche (a fancier kind of bread) instead. But for some reason in pop culture this was falsely transformed into an actual suggestion by Marie Antoinette
    - rockemsockem 3y ago
      Glad to see someone else mention the falsehood of the original quote. It's actually really fitting to see that (mis-)quote used in the context of this outrage since from reading through the original vitriolic Twitter thread it's clear that many of the most outraged are incorrect about what the product does.

soco 3y ago

For this very particular project I agree the reaction seems exaggerated, even though it does walk the thin line of copyright infringement. But as it happens, it rides the wave of all other AI project which started small then headed we know where. Because once your book is in the database of company X you can bet safe money they will take it and continue their "analysis" as much further as they like because hey you did not complain - and I believe you must defend yourself in order to keep the copyright.

Robotbeat 3y ago
The response to this undermines my ability to take the “backlash” against AI as anything other than innumerate, mob idiocy. It’s hard to prevent myself from being negatively polarized against the backlash when people in the backlash defend outrage against obviously innocuous things like this.

golemotron 3y ago

> I’m with the artists on this one. Our obsession with converting everything into input for an algorithm that spits out an ill-defined number (what the hell is “vividness”?) needs to stop. Anyone who is with the artists should pass a law. Moral outrage is not law.

Nasrudith 3y ago
And promptly smack face first into the First Amendment. There is a reason they are going with moral outrage. Because they know they don't have the right.

vouaobrasil 3y ago

We repeat the mistakes because in the short term, someone finds it profitable, hence a prisoner's dilemma type situation. If an AI tool was killed, I consider it a victory. That's because even if there are some small useful applications of AI, AI on the whole will certainly put most creatives out of business. Instead, I propose the following: anyone who is interested in preventing AI from taking over their craft should join me in a coalition of ban AI from their own business. By placing a notice that your work is "100% AI FREE", you are doing something akin to the fair-trade/sustainably sourced sticker on chocolate or other food products: you are letting consumers know that your work was made by a human, so that they can support you. If enough people get in on this, and pledge to support only those creators who don't use AI, then we can make AI an unprofitable venture and hopefully kill it forever! I already put a 100% AI FREE badge on my YouTube channel, which means that I will never use AI for writing scripts, editing videos, producing images, etc. Moreover, I also pledge to support other creators who pledge never to use AI, by buying their products over others!

kiwih 3y ago
Without trying to sound flippant - what do you define AI as? Things like autofocus in your video cameras or automatic gain control or noise cancellation in your audio pipeline could also be considered AI. Do you remove those too? What about the AI recommendation algorithm built into YouTube - how do you reconcile being AI free while still using that platform?
- vouaobrasil 3y ago
  Yes, you are right, and I advocate the following: a detailed look at each of these technologies. However, for practical purposes, a direct definition that encompasses every situation is not necessary, but can evolve. For now, I think we do not need a precise definition and we can start with the following: AI such as ChatGPT, LLMs, image generation tools like DALL-E and ohters, should be restricted. As for YouTube's algorithm, I agree it is also dangerous. For now, I have restricted the use of direct content generation algorithms, in other words, all content can reasonably said to be human generated in terms of writing, composition, etc. In other words: AI that makes any creative decision in making content should be banned. Other algorithms should be carefully debated.

planede 3y ago

I probably agree, but how does this have any relevance to copyright? If the tool is bad but otherwise legal then it should just fail on its lack of merit.

vidarh 3y ago

As someone who has published two novels: The outrage over this site was stupid, ignorant and a demonstration of a witch-hunt that will help nobody.

croes 3y ago

There is a difference between a statistical analysis of a text to categorize by certain words or word groups and training an AI model to generate texts on the data used for training. The later creates massive competition to human writers, the former is just an information for potential readers.

subroutine 3y ago
Both the former and latter are information for writers. Neither create massive competition for writers (not that there is any law against creating competition), just FUD and better tools for writers.
- croes 3y ago
  Things like GPT already create competition for authors even using their names. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37042561 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37042561 Pure text statistics won't do the same.
  - subroutine 3y ago
    Wrt. your link, the same thing could have happen to this author if these spam books contained complete gibberish (and someone listed it on Amazon/goodreads using the authors name). This isn't legitimate competition (i.e. books written by LLMs that rival the quality and style of the actual author). This is a failure of the selling platform to QC the books they are selling.
    - croes 3y ago
      LLMs make the scams better just like they will make spam better. If it's gibberish you know you got scammed, LLM texts look convincing so you don't know for sure.
      - subroutine 3y ago
        I agree LLMs can make better spam. But good spam isn't real competition. It's not like anyone is debating whether they should buy the latest book from their favorite author or the latest book from their favorite author's clone LLM (which is known to have written some solid books). Again, this is an issue that needs to be solved by vendors (it seems like all they need is a system where authors get a copyright to their name, and can curate the list of titles published under their name).

macNchz 3y ago

If you’re an author of books intended for children, your texts are likely already being quantified to produce a reading level difficulty score: https://metametricsinc.com/parents-and-students/lexile-for-parents-and-students/lexile-for-reading/ https://metametricsinc.com/parents-and-students/lexile-for-p...

dontupvoteme 3y ago

I'm disappointed he went for "vividness" and not novelty. Judging text based on how uncommon the n-gram is/how much it differs from an LLM could be interesting for sure. The better an LLM can complete your joke the worse it is, for instance. Important to have a good Letterman-MacDonald quotient.

torginus 3y ago

I kind of don't understand the issue - IANAL, so I'm not going to delve on the legality of things, but I think making automated book recommendations better is absolutely fits the bill for 'transformative use' - as in book recommendations are in no way a substitute product for books themselves. And personally, I think book recommendations are an absolutely underserved market, if I liked a book, having the ability to find more like it would be an absolute godsend for connecting authors with people who would be interested in their works, resulting in much more potential sales for them. I can't count how many times have I discovered an absolutely great book on Amazon with like 50 reviews accidentally, as well as other, objectively less recommendable books that have nevertheless made an impression on me. Discovering these books is sort of a hobby of mine, and is the exact kind of activity an LLM would be a great help with. Going further, if there was an LLM that could be asked for book recommendations for your particular tastes, it could also identify markets for books not yet written, and would give a hint to authors on what sort of books to write to find an audience.

aredox 3y ago
Stop with the "this is good, I want more" Skinner-box model of happiness. Try some serendipity instead of being led by a generic algorithm. I discovered absolutely great books by moving slowly along the shelves of a library or a bookshop. And you need to read bad books to understand the great ones.
- giantrobot 3y ago
  Are you seriously telling someone else how they should enjoy something?
- webnrrd2k 3y ago
  The whole point of this site is for people to express their opinions, and torginus took the time to write a thoughtful comment anout LLMs and how they might help both authors and readers. As for your point about serendipity, torginus never said that he didn't wander book stores and libraries looking for books he wouldn't have been previously exposed to. Based on the post, I'm sure they understood the basics of reading a variety of books, both good and bad -- there is no need to get judgemental.

AnimalMuppet 3y ago

"It's a mistake." OK, you could be right. "Needs to stop." OK, you could be right on that one too. I don't think you are, but that's not the point. Neither of those adds up to "it's currently illegal". (Whether it's actually illegal probably depends on the details of how he did what he did.) Further, neither of those things adds up to "the howling mob should attack him until he stops". (Even if the "attacks" are purely online.) I am against "attack him with outrage dialed all the way up to 11 without actually understanding what his tool is and does". I am also against giving in to the outrage - it just shows the mob that baseless outrage attacks work. You think it needs to stop? Fine. Persuade him that it needs to stop, and therefore that he should stop. Convince him - not with a mob screaming in outrage, but with reason.

sobellian 3y ago

I agree that it's probably not that useful, but to actually take offense? The outrage seems to misunderstand the law and the technology. If you think the numbers offer no meaning, then just ignore them. People produce bad tools every day and the world still turns.

jasonlotito 3y ago

> I’m with the artists on this one. Our obsession with converting everything into input for an algorithm that spits out an ill-defined number (what the hell is “vividness”?) needs to stop. Usefulness is immaterial here. Is he allowed to do this? Yes. What's wrong with presenting a page count and word count, for example?

sneak 3y ago

The guy who wrote code is also an artist, and he is allowed to publish his book reports.