There is a somewhat related issue in another thread on HN today. "what is the point of becoming a pro chess player in a world of computers?" https://news.ycomb

There is a somewhat related issue in another thread on HN today. "what is the point of becoming a pro chess player in a world of computers?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38425172 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38425172 Doing something challenging has merit in and of itself. I am sympathetic with Cave's concern with the commoditization of works and it is easy to see how someone would have a poor opinion of machine assisted works when inundated with the mediocrity of half arsed efforts created by tools that are still in their infancy. I feel the issue at heart here is that is is easy to create something now that superficially resembles a quality work, but on anything beyond a glance are significantly flawed. People are doing this, for the most part I think they are aware of the flaws and are just exploring the possibilities, but a few get carried away or lack the ability themselves to distinguish between the superficial and the deep. If a machine could write a book that is better than Lord of the Rings, I would want to read it, and I think it would be dogmatic to dismiss it simply because it was generated by machine. To create such a work though, might require a sufficiently advanced AI that you might be able to meaningfully describe what it did to write it as effort. If it were to go further to a superhuman AI which could knock out books like this with ease on a daily basis, would that diminish those works? Isn't that akin to saying that books from talented authors are less worthy than those from untalented?