5 ms·

It'll be interesting to see where this goes. Amazon has had ML-generated garbage books for years now, and I assume they haven't taken them down because they mak

by japhyr 3y ago

It'll be interesting to see where this goes. Amazon has had ML-generated garbage books for years now, and I assume they haven't taken them down because they make money even when they sell garbage. Maybe there's so much garbage coming in now that they finally have to do something about it? I feel for people trying to learn about technical topics, who aren't aware enough of this issue to avoid buying ML-generated books with high ratings from fake reviews. The intro programming market is full of these scam books.

harles 3y ago
> … I assume they haven't taken them down because they make money even when they sell garbage. I’d be surprised if this is the case. The money they make is probably a rounding error compared even just to other Kindle sales. Much more likely is that they haven’t seen it as a big enough problem - and I’m willing to bet it’s increased multiple orders of magnitude recently.
throe37848 3y ago
I knew guy who made "generated" text books in 2010. He would absorb several articles, and loosely stitch them into chapters with some computer scripts and from memory. In a week he would produce 400 pages on new subject. It was mostly coherent and factual (it kept references). Usually it was the only book on market about given subject (like rare disease). Current auto generated garbage is very different.
- plagiarist 3y ago
  I wouldn't even consider that generated. That's like where useful content and copyright infringement overlap on a Venn diagram.
  - Karellen 3y ago
    > That's like where useful content and copyright infringement overlap on a Venn diagram. That sounds like a description of LLM-generated content to me ;-)
    - delecti 3y ago
      LLMs only ever accidentally generate useful content. They fundamentally can't know whether the things they're outputting are true, they just tend to be, because the training data also tends to be.
- franze 3y ago
  explains the CouchDB Book from OReily from that time.
  - quickthrower2 3y ago
    Do people still use CouchDB? Blast from the past!
- velcrovan 3y ago
  For several years now, Amazon KDP will block books whose content is already available on the web. I have printed a few books whose content was either CC-BY or public domain due to its age, and in each case my book was automatically blocked in the early stages. I had to submit an appeal that was reviewed by a person in order to proceed.
miohtama 3y ago
Garbage books are used for money laundering. You buy books using stolen credit cards and such. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/27/fake-books-sold-amazon-money-laundering https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/27/fake-books-sol...
- hinkley 3y ago
  I wonder if that means the Feds made a phone call to Jeff on his private line and said we need to have a little chat. We can track money laundering when there are X fake books. We can't when there are 10X fake books.
m463 3y ago
I was thinking about buying an air fryer. My search came up with cookbooks specific to that air fryer, and I was intrigued. I found a good 5-star book, but then I found that ALL the 5-star reviews were submitted the same day. I complained, but Amazon defended the book as legitimate, and since I hadn't purchased it, they would not take any action. (to be honest, I assume frontline customer service reps don't have much experience or power) So I purchased it, complained, got a refund and then they were able to accept my complaint (after passing the complaint higher in the food chain). Seriously, how hard was it amazon? I guess they're starting to notice. Take a look at air fryer cookbooks - there are books specific to most makes and models. But everything is ML copypasta all the way up and down - the title, the recipes and the reviews all seem to be generated garbage.
- hinkley 3y ago
  Ugh. I hate the, "You're not a customer yet so our CRM system won't let me talk to you." And what happens when my problem is that your system won't let me place an order?
  - indymike 3y ago
    CRM should never mean Sales Prevention as a Service.
    - hinkley 3y ago
      The great thing about filtering is that you don't have to hear the screams. These accidents play out in slow motion until someone corners you at a family reunion and asks why their friends can't create accounts and when you ask them how long they say "months".
    - nanidin 3y ago
      You'd think... but in a growing b2b company, the CRM is where sales get prevented under a certain threshold. heh.
  - blululu 3y ago
    False Negatives and False Positives are always connected. On the other side of the equation, there are plenty of bad actors who will casually flag their competitors to score a quick win. Crime doesn't like to go uphill - raising the stakes for feedback lowers the prevalence of bad actors.
mortureb 3y ago
In my opinion, all we learn over time is that we need gatekeepers (publishing houses in this case). The general public is a mess.
- VancouverMan 3y ago
  Such systems just result in content that is terribly bland, or worse, intentionally limited to push specific political narratives. I'd rather have a much more diverse and interesting set of content to choose from, even if some of it might not be to my liking, and even if I'd have to put some effort into previewing or filtering before I find something I want to consume.
  - ozfive 3y ago
    Some people value their time, energy, and money more. I can appreciate that you do not as we all have choices but I imagine that most people would disagree.
    - VancouverMan 3y ago
      > Some people value their time, energy, and money more. More highly "curated" media providers have almost always been the least-efficient, most-costly, and least-satisfying for me. Buying physical books at a bookstore has typically been a costly waste of time, with the selection being poor, and it requiring time, money, vehicle wear, etc., to actually get to the store. Public libraries are often worse in terms of selection, and thanks to the ones where I am being funded via taxation, I'm stuck paying for them even if I don't use them. Online and ebook sellers are somewhat better, although they can still be costly, and the delivery of physical books can take some time. I've had much better success finding fiction and non-fiction content by doing some searches and seeing which random websites, forums, and other less-"curated" online resources I happen to run across. It has been the same for video media, too. OTA TV is relatively cheap, but the selection is so limited as to make it useless. Cable and satellite TV have upfront costs, and then ongoing costs, plus a relatively limited selection of content available at any given time. Paid online streaming providers have a cost, obviously, and I've found the selection to be quite poor. Movie theatres are extremely costly for what you get, have a tremendously limited selection, and also involve significant travel and time costs. Tape and disc rentals no longer exist today where I am, aside from public libraries. They had per-rental costs, late fees, travel costs, and very limited selection. As stated before, I pay for the library even if I don't use it. YouTube, on the other hand, gives me a much better experience than the more "curated" providers. With just a minute or two of searching, I can find hours and hours worth of content to watch each evening, I can view this content with almost no delay, the cost is minimal, and the content is far more entertaining and informative than the more "curated" options. Avoiding "curated" media providers has saved me a lot of time, energy, and money, in addition to providing me with much more enjoyable and useful content.
tetrep 3y ago
> Maybe there's so much garbage coming in now that they finally have to do something about it? It seems like this is preventative action rather than reactionary, as they say that there hasn't been an increase in publishing volume, "While we have not seen a spike in our publishing numbers..."
ehsankia 3y ago
I thought it was more so filled with low quality mechanical turk garbage books.
runamok 3y ago
Behind the Bastards did a 2 part episode on how these "books" are preying on children and busy parents: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-ai-is-coming-for-117712422/ https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236...

by japhyr 3y ago

harles 3y ago

> … I assume they haven't taken them down because they make money even when they sell garbage. I’d be surprised if this is the case. The money they make is probably a rounding error compared even just to other Kindle sales. Much more likely is that they haven’t seen it as a big enough problem - and I’m willing to bet it’s increased multiple orders of magnitude recently.

throe37848 3y ago

I knew guy who made "generated" text books in 2010. He would absorb several articles, and loosely stitch them into chapters with some computer scripts and from memory. In a week he would produce 400 pages on new subject. It was mostly coherent and factual (it kept references). Usually it was the only book on market about given subject (like rare disease). Current auto generated garbage is very different.

plagiarist 3y ago
I wouldn't even consider that generated. That's like where useful content and copyright infringement overlap on a Venn diagram.
- Karellen 3y ago
  > That's like where useful content and copyright infringement overlap on a Venn diagram. That sounds like a description of LLM-generated content to me ;-)
  - delecti 3y ago
    LLMs only ever accidentally generate useful content. They fundamentally can't know whether the things they're outputting are true, they just tend to be, because the training data also tends to be.
franze 3y ago
explains the CouchDB Book from OReily from that time.
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  Do people still use CouchDB? Blast from the past!
velcrovan 3y ago
For several years now, Amazon KDP will block books whose content is already available on the web. I have printed a few books whose content was either CC-BY or public domain due to its age, and in each case my book was automatically blocked in the early stages. I had to submit an appeal that was reviewed by a person in order to proceed.

miohtama 3y ago

Garbage books are used for money laundering. You buy books using stolen credit cards and such. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/27/fake-books-sold-amazon-money-laundering https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/27/fake-books-sol...

hinkley 3y ago
I wonder if that means the Feds made a phone call to Jeff on his private line and said we need to have a little chat. We can track money laundering when there are X fake books. We can't when there are 10X fake books.

m463 3y ago

I was thinking about buying an air fryer. My search came up with cookbooks specific to that air fryer, and I was intrigued. I found a good 5-star book, but then I found that ALL the 5-star reviews were submitted the same day. I complained, but Amazon defended the book as legitimate, and since I hadn't purchased it, they would not take any action. (to be honest, I assume frontline customer service reps don't have much experience or power) So I purchased it, complained, got a refund and then they were able to accept my complaint (after passing the complaint higher in the food chain). Seriously, how hard was it amazon? I guess they're starting to notice. Take a look at air fryer cookbooks - there are books specific to most makes and models. But everything is ML copypasta all the way up and down - the title, the recipes and the reviews all seem to be generated garbage.

hinkley 3y ago
Ugh. I hate the, "You're not a customer yet so our CRM system won't let me talk to you." And what happens when my problem is that your system won't let me place an order?
- indymike 3y ago
  CRM should never mean Sales Prevention as a Service.
  - hinkley 3y ago
    The great thing about filtering is that you don't have to hear the screams. These accidents play out in slow motion until someone corners you at a family reunion and asks why their friends can't create accounts and when you ask them how long they say "months".
  - nanidin 3y ago
    You'd think... but in a growing b2b company, the CRM is where sales get prevented under a certain threshold. heh.
- blululu 3y ago
  False Negatives and False Positives are always connected. On the other side of the equation, there are plenty of bad actors who will casually flag their competitors to score a quick win. Crime doesn't like to go uphill - raising the stakes for feedback lowers the prevalence of bad actors.

mortureb 3y ago

In my opinion, all we learn over time is that we need gatekeepers (publishing houses in this case). The general public is a mess.

VancouverMan 3y ago
Such systems just result in content that is terribly bland, or worse, intentionally limited to push specific political narratives. I'd rather have a much more diverse and interesting set of content to choose from, even if some of it might not be to my liking, and even if I'd have to put some effort into previewing or filtering before I find something I want to consume.
- ozfive 3y ago
  Some people value their time, energy, and money more. I can appreciate that you do not as we all have choices but I imagine that most people would disagree.
  - VancouverMan 3y ago
    > Some people value their time, energy, and money more. More highly "curated" media providers have almost always been the least-efficient, most-costly, and least-satisfying for me. Buying physical books at a bookstore has typically been a costly waste of time, with the selection being poor, and it requiring time, money, vehicle wear, etc., to actually get to the store. Public libraries are often worse in terms of selection, and thanks to the ones where I am being funded via taxation, I'm stuck paying for them even if I don't use them. Online and ebook sellers are somewhat better, although they can still be costly, and the delivery of physical books can take some time. I've had much better success finding fiction and non-fiction content by doing some searches and seeing which random websites, forums, and other less-"curated" online resources I happen to run across. It has been the same for video media, too. OTA TV is relatively cheap, but the selection is so limited as to make it useless. Cable and satellite TV have upfront costs, and then ongoing costs, plus a relatively limited selection of content available at any given time. Paid online streaming providers have a cost, obviously, and I've found the selection to be quite poor. Movie theatres are extremely costly for what you get, have a tremendously limited selection, and also involve significant travel and time costs. Tape and disc rentals no longer exist today where I am, aside from public libraries. They had per-rental costs, late fees, travel costs, and very limited selection. As stated before, I pay for the library even if I don't use it. YouTube, on the other hand, gives me a much better experience than the more "curated" providers. With just a minute or two of searching, I can find hours and hours worth of content to watch each evening, I can view this content with almost no delay, the cost is minimal, and the content is far more entertaining and informative than the more "curated" options. Avoiding "curated" media providers has saved me a lot of time, energy, and money, in addition to providing me with much more enjoyable and useful content.

tetrep 3y ago

> Maybe there's so much garbage coming in now that they finally have to do something about it? It seems like this is preventative action rather than reactionary, as they say that there hasn't been an increase in publishing volume, "While we have not seen a spike in our publishing numbers..."

ehsankia 3y ago

I thought it was more so filled with low quality mechanical turk garbage books.

runamok 3y ago

Behind the Bastards did a 2 part episode on how these "books" are preying on children and busy parents: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-ai-is-coming-for-117712422/ https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236...