7 ms·

Ask HN: Is ChatGPT making tech publishing obsolete?

21 points by karmasimida 3y ago

By tech publishing I mean the books from Manning and Oreilly. I was shopping those books of late, but somehow I found it is harder to convince myself they are useful comparing to ChatGPT

mindwok 3y ago
Tech books will still be useful in the future in a few ways: - When you're first learning a topic, ChatGPT isn't as useful because you don't really know what questions to ask. It's useful to get a broad overview guided by an expert so you can learn the concepts, and more importantly the vocabulary, which you can then use to dive deeper into parts you're interested in with ChatGPT. - For really new stuff, ChatGPT obviously won't have any training data. So the books will be the only real resource until the models are updated.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- hot_gril 3y ago
  For new things, ChatGPT is a big improvement over internet searches because of how it can generate examples and respond to followup questions. I've been able to ramp up insanely quickly on new tools with it. Even before CGPT existed, I've always felt like online searches/examples can get me 75% of the way there (i.e. good enough) in way less time than reading a book. As nice as the O'Reilly media is, I've got too many tools to learn on the job and not enough time to read dozens of books.
  - adfm 3y ago
    O'Reilly transformed into a learning platform a while back. They still publish books, which are great for going deep, but their selling point is that you get unlimited access to a good chunk of the tech publishers' books, videos, live events, etc., and it's all searchable. ChatGPT will give you specific answers if you know what to ask, but personally, I'd rather learn from the experts building it. It might seem spendy, but chances are your company already has an account and you just need to ask around for access or if you're indy, they usually have yearly promos. I think it's about what you'd typically spend monthly on books.
    - hot_gril 3y ago
      Yeah, that makes a lot more sense than the books for the situation I tend to be in.
haltist 3y ago
AI doesn't make writing obsolete, it makes it even more important because human inputs are necessary for all existing systems.
- anileated 3y ago
  What is the business model that would ensure the authors (whose work is necessary to train the LLM) get paid (considering everyone will just pay MS for using the LLM, and MS would not pay authors)?
  - zarzavat 3y ago
    Who says the authors will always be human? LLMs have the potential to write their own books. There will be a time when humans and LLMs work in tandem, and eventually the LLMs will get good enough to write the book itself and the human just edits and provides the raw source material. This does not seem particularly far away.
    - alephnerd 3y ago
      Why are you being downvoted? This is now SOP for plenty of PMs and TechDoc teams at a couple large companies, and on the roadmap for others. The act of transcribing is low value and should be automated, but the act of creating and moderating abstract ideas is still something in the human domain. Reuters has been doing this since the early 2000s btw at their R&D lab in Bangalore.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - keiferski 3y ago
      A big part of book sales comes from the personality of the author and their pitches to the audience. An LLM has no charisma and the time of buying a book from an AI being "cool" has already come and gone.
    - 3y ago
stormbeard 3y ago
How do you know if these LLMs are stating facts instead of hallucinating? Also, where would these things learn about new topics?
- tjpnz 3y ago
  >How do you know if these LLMs are stating facts instead of hallucinating? At runtime. When trying to do something I know is even slightly unusual I don't even bother with ChatGPT and friends.
  - loneboat 3y ago
    Even at runtime I don't trust the results worth much. A large part of the act of programming is identifying and handling corner-cases. You never manage to handle EVERY corner case, and the missed ones result in frustrating debugging sessions. But a competent programmer can cover enough cases up front that the time spent debugging is manageable. But when I see people say things like "Look! I used GPT to write a functioning webapp!" - I worry that people get a false sense of "It works!" from pasting GPTs code into their compiler and seeing roughly the results they expect. That's great, but GPT in its current form spends exactly zero time "thinking" about corner cases - It's just a black box that repeatedly spits out "most likely next token". So maybe that app works 90% of the time. Or 95%. Or 99%. But you don't have much of a way to tell the difference without rigorous testing that includes thorough and well-articulated test cases. But in order to do that, you need to understand the problem you're solving in a very detailed way, and how your code reacts to it. And in order to do that, you need to... know how to write the program. I think this latest wave of LLMs and generative AI is really awesome tech, and I play with it every day, because it's just so cool. But seeing people trust programs written with them worries me. Some day someone is gonna copy/pasta some LLM generated code into mission critical software, trusting it implicitly, and cause a tragedy.
    - fragmede 3y ago
      So tell the LLM you want it to handle corner cases and it will add code to handle them. It can also generate unit tests for those corner cases. LLMs have fundamentally changed programming. There's still skill required to do it well, but we're a long ways from Borland TurboC on DOS.
jasfi 3y ago
Published works are more authoritative. With ChatGPT you're getting something broader, more creative, and possibly wrong.
- NBJack 3y ago
  A book is also helpful when you don't know what you don't know. LLMs will help on specific problems sure. But there can be entire swaths of options and entire areas you may not have considered. Java for example has some nice native support for multithreading. However, threads have never been the only option for asynchronous work, and many of the options are situational. Knowing those options can help tremendously in implementation.
p_plno 3y ago
[flagged]
DantesKite 3y ago
I think eventually these books will end up becoming training data for LLM's but at the moment, a human plus a machine is far more powerful than either one in isolation. You still have time to derive some utility from them. Additionally, you can use ChatGPT to help you learn the material faster. It doesn't have to be mutually exclusive.
tw061023 3y ago
Writing a book on a topic is an art unto itself. Even most technical books have a coherent narrative, carefully crafted to bring the reader from point A to point B. If you want a quick reference on a well-known topic, then sure, use an LLM. Or a search engine. Chances are it will even answer you correctly (but also chances are it won't, and if it is a new topic for yourself - strap in, you're in for a ride). But if you want to really understand something, then you will have to do your research, and a lot of this research has already been summarized into tangible artifacts optimized for your consumption which LLMs would never be able to replicate. Even if you can convince one to regurgitate a book verbatim, the narrative thread would be lost unless you weave it yourself with your prompts - but would you, the learner, be able to do re-enact the narrative better or even on the same level than the original author who posessed the knowledge on the topic?
- Shugarl 3y ago
  > but would you, the learner, be able to do re-enact the narrative better or even on the same level than the original author who posessed the knowledge on the topic? Maybe. The author needs to write in a way that makes the book digestible to most people. Prompts allow me to get a version that's tailor-made for me.
- mFixman 3y ago
  Agreed completely. LLMs are making the quick jot to Stack Overflow obsolete, which solves your immediate problems using the least amount of brainpower. They are also making reference-style documentation and long-form books more important than ever, since you still need to learn things and correct your own knowledge biases.
  - ChatGTP 3y ago
    LLMs are making the quick jot to Stack Overflow obsolete Not for me they're not.
    - lacrimacida 3y ago
      For most people they are though
reacharavindh 3y ago
I had the same thought a while ago. My personal conclusion was - there is a place for well-written books that bring the reader along a step by step process to understand a topic and impart knowledge such that they can make their own opinions from then on. Example - Designing Data Intensive Applications, Effectice C++ etc from my personal collection. There are other books to the tune of “Docker Cookbook” “Java Pocket reference” etc, that will lose their relevance when LLMs could do that job of digesting existing info into easily usable form.
- karmasimida 3y ago
  I am with you on this one. But I think many tech books carrying some of flavor of being a manual, especially those centered around some particular library/framework, thinking of 'XX in Action' series. Ones that talk about more abstract ideas, like on the art of developing/testing software, will continue to thrive. However, I think the bread and butter for the tech publishing industry are those manual books, which follow a relative mature format of writing, and are produced in bulk each year. If they are going away, this might speak trouble for the whole industry. But that is just my hypothesis for now, I hope the industry find a way to sustain itself.
tamarlikesdata 3y ago
I think it's changing them. You still need a person to think of the topics we want to talk about, that are interesting to talk about. But AI can help gather the info around these topics. If we 100% rely on AI for topics and content our content will be flat and not interesting.
OfficeChad 3y ago
Ban AI.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
instagraham 3y ago
Less ChatGPT, more YouTube. Barring the population trying to study languages formally through a course, a lot of people use YouTube courses and video-content. OFC, if video makes tech publishing obsolete, then it would've made it obsolete a decade ago. A more realistic expectation is to divide learners into readers, video consumers, course-takers, etc. ChatGPT could integrate into any of those workflows, albeit with varying results. If using an AI becomes as second nature as watching a video, it might have some effect.
lacrimacida 3y ago
They’re different modes of learning and IMO the published format’s not likely to completely dissapear but it will get impacted heavily for sure, same way video chipped away a big part from its profitability.
gardenhedge 3y ago
I reckon these books or any other learning material will be sold with access to a trained AI on the subject. So basically the expert/author will help fine tune the model.
rpigab 3y ago
You can't Ctrl-F paper books, but they survived computers and the internet, because sometimes, it's nice to discover a new subject by reading sequentially over chapters carefully wrote by someone who knows what they're doing. Sure CGPT can generate a table of contents if you want to learn a programming language for instance, tell you what to do first, what to try, delve deep in concepts, etc., but I think it's still hit or miss, as opposed to great tech authors and great publishers, where you can be sure you're getting your money's worth. Also, IMO people tend to have a bias to go slower with paper material, because they committed to reading a book, they are less likely to skip sections, which means the end result is that you get more out of a book than the Html/pdf same content, might be different if you need to try things out on a computer while reading though.

21 points by karmasimida 3y ago

By tech publishing I mean the books from Manning and Oreilly. I was shopping those books of late, but somehow I found it is harder to convince myself they are useful comparing to ChatGPT

mindwok 3y ago

Tech books will still be useful in the future in a few ways: - When you're first learning a topic, ChatGPT isn't as useful because you don't really know what questions to ask. It's useful to get a broad overview guided by an expert so you can learn the concepts, and more importantly the vocabulary, which you can then use to dive deeper into parts you're interested in with ChatGPT. - For really new stuff, ChatGPT obviously won't have any training data. So the books will be the only real resource until the models are updated.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
hot_gril 3y ago
For new things, ChatGPT is a big improvement over internet searches because of how it can generate examples and respond to followup questions. I've been able to ramp up insanely quickly on new tools with it. Even before CGPT existed, I've always felt like online searches/examples can get me 75% of the way there (i.e. good enough) in way less time than reading a book. As nice as the O'Reilly media is, I've got too many tools to learn on the job and not enough time to read dozens of books.
- adfm 3y ago
  O'Reilly transformed into a learning platform a while back. They still publish books, which are great for going deep, but their selling point is that you get unlimited access to a good chunk of the tech publishers' books, videos, live events, etc., and it's all searchable. ChatGPT will give you specific answers if you know what to ask, but personally, I'd rather learn from the experts building it. It might seem spendy, but chances are your company already has an account and you just need to ask around for access or if you're indy, they usually have yearly promos. I think it's about what you'd typically spend monthly on books.
  - hot_gril 3y ago
    Yeah, that makes a lot more sense than the books for the situation I tend to be in.

haltist 3y ago

AI doesn't make writing obsolete, it makes it even more important because human inputs are necessary for all existing systems.

anileated 3y ago
What is the business model that would ensure the authors (whose work is necessary to train the LLM) get paid (considering everyone will just pay MS for using the LLM, and MS would not pay authors)?
- zarzavat 3y ago
  Who says the authors will always be human? LLMs have the potential to write their own books. There will be a time when humans and LLMs work in tandem, and eventually the LLMs will get good enough to write the book itself and the human just edits and provides the raw source material. This does not seem particularly far away.
  - alephnerd 3y ago
    Why are you being downvoted? This is now SOP for plenty of PMs and TechDoc teams at a couple large companies, and on the roadmap for others. The act of transcribing is low value and should be automated, but the act of creating and moderating abstract ideas is still something in the human domain. Reuters has been doing this since the early 2000s btw at their R&D lab in Bangalore.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - keiferski 3y ago
    A big part of book sales comes from the personality of the author and their pitches to the audience. An LLM has no charisma and the time of buying a book from an AI being "cool" has already come and gone.
  - 3y ago

stormbeard 3y ago

How do you know if these LLMs are stating facts instead of hallucinating? Also, where would these things learn about new topics?

tjpnz 3y ago
>How do you know if these LLMs are stating facts instead of hallucinating? At runtime. When trying to do something I know is even slightly unusual I don't even bother with ChatGPT and friends.
- loneboat 3y ago
  Even at runtime I don't trust the results worth much. A large part of the act of programming is identifying and handling corner-cases. You never manage to handle EVERY corner case, and the missed ones result in frustrating debugging sessions. But a competent programmer can cover enough cases up front that the time spent debugging is manageable. But when I see people say things like "Look! I used GPT to write a functioning webapp!" - I worry that people get a false sense of "It works!" from pasting GPTs code into their compiler and seeing roughly the results they expect. That's great, but GPT in its current form spends exactly zero time "thinking" about corner cases - It's just a black box that repeatedly spits out "most likely next token". So maybe that app works 90% of the time. Or 95%. Or 99%. But you don't have much of a way to tell the difference without rigorous testing that includes thorough and well-articulated test cases. But in order to do that, you need to understand the problem you're solving in a very detailed way, and how your code reacts to it. And in order to do that, you need to... know how to write the program. I think this latest wave of LLMs and generative AI is really awesome tech, and I play with it every day, because it's just so cool. But seeing people trust programs written with them worries me. Some day someone is gonna copy/pasta some LLM generated code into mission critical software, trusting it implicitly, and cause a tragedy.
  - fragmede 3y ago
    So tell the LLM you want it to handle corner cases and it will add code to handle them. It can also generate unit tests for those corner cases. LLMs have fundamentally changed programming. There's still skill required to do it well, but we're a long ways from Borland TurboC on DOS.

jasfi 3y ago

Published works are more authoritative. With ChatGPT you're getting something broader, more creative, and possibly wrong.

NBJack 3y ago
A book is also helpful when you don't know what you don't know. LLMs will help on specific problems sure. But there can be entire swaths of options and entire areas you may not have considered. Java for example has some nice native support for multithreading. However, threads have never been the only option for asynchronous work, and many of the options are situational. Knowing those options can help tremendously in implementation.

p_plno 3y ago

[flagged]

DantesKite 3y ago

I think eventually these books will end up becoming training data for LLM's but at the moment, a human plus a machine is far more powerful than either one in isolation. You still have time to derive some utility from them. Additionally, you can use ChatGPT to help you learn the material faster. It doesn't have to be mutually exclusive.

tw061023 3y ago

Writing a book on a topic is an art unto itself. Even most technical books have a coherent narrative, carefully crafted to bring the reader from point A to point B. If you want a quick reference on a well-known topic, then sure, use an LLM. Or a search engine. Chances are it will even answer you correctly (but also chances are it won't, and if it is a new topic for yourself - strap in, you're in for a ride). But if you want to really understand something, then you will have to do your research, and a lot of this research has already been summarized into tangible artifacts optimized for your consumption which LLMs would never be able to replicate. Even if you can convince one to regurgitate a book verbatim, the narrative thread would be lost unless you weave it yourself with your prompts - but would you, the learner, be able to do re-enact the narrative better or even on the same level than the original author who posessed the knowledge on the topic?

Shugarl 3y ago
> but would you, the learner, be able to do re-enact the narrative better or even on the same level than the original author who posessed the knowledge on the topic? Maybe. The author needs to write in a way that makes the book digestible to most people. Prompts allow me to get a version that's tailor-made for me.
mFixman 3y ago
Agreed completely. LLMs are making the quick jot to Stack Overflow obsolete, which solves your immediate problems using the least amount of brainpower. They are also making reference-style documentation and long-form books more important than ever, since you still need to learn things and correct your own knowledge biases.
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  LLMs are making the quick jot to Stack Overflow obsolete Not for me they're not.
  - lacrimacida 3y ago
    For most people they are though

reacharavindh 3y ago

I had the same thought a while ago. My personal conclusion was - there is a place for well-written books that bring the reader along a step by step process to understand a topic and impart knowledge such that they can make their own opinions from then on. Example - Designing Data Intensive Applications, Effectice C++ etc from my personal collection. There are other books to the tune of “Docker Cookbook” “Java Pocket reference” etc, that will lose their relevance when LLMs could do that job of digesting existing info into easily usable form.

karmasimida 3y ago
I am with you on this one. But I think many tech books carrying some of flavor of being a manual, especially those centered around some particular library/framework, thinking of 'XX in Action' series. Ones that talk about more abstract ideas, like on the art of developing/testing software, will continue to thrive. However, I think the bread and butter for the tech publishing industry are those manual books, which follow a relative mature format of writing, and are produced in bulk each year. If they are going away, this might speak trouble for the whole industry. But that is just my hypothesis for now, I hope the industry find a way to sustain itself.

tamarlikesdata 3y ago

I think it's changing them. You still need a person to think of the topics we want to talk about, that are interesting to talk about. But AI can help gather the info around these topics. If we 100% rely on AI for topics and content our content will be flat and not interesting.

OfficeChad 3y ago

Ban AI.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

instagraham 3y ago

Less ChatGPT, more YouTube. Barring the population trying to study languages formally through a course, a lot of people use YouTube courses and video-content. OFC, if video makes tech publishing obsolete, then it would've made it obsolete a decade ago. A more realistic expectation is to divide learners into readers, video consumers, course-takers, etc. ChatGPT could integrate into any of those workflows, albeit with varying results. If using an AI becomes as second nature as watching a video, it might have some effect.

lacrimacida 3y ago

They’re different modes of learning and IMO the published format’s not likely to completely dissapear but it will get impacted heavily for sure, same way video chipped away a big part from its profitability.

gardenhedge 3y ago

I reckon these books or any other learning material will be sold with access to a trained AI on the subject. So basically the expert/author will help fine tune the model.

rpigab 3y ago

You can't Ctrl-F paper books, but they survived computers and the internet, because sometimes, it's nice to discover a new subject by reading sequentially over chapters carefully wrote by someone who knows what they're doing. Sure CGPT can generate a table of contents if you want to learn a programming language for instance, tell you what to do first, what to try, delve deep in concepts, etc., but I think it's still hit or miss, as opposed to great tech authors and great publishers, where you can be sure you're getting your money's worth. Also, IMO people tend to have a bias to go slower with paper material, because they committed to reading a book, they are less likely to skip sections, which means the end result is that you get more out of a book than the Html/pdf same content, might be different if you need to try things out on a computer while reading though.