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I can't help thinking there's a huge opportunity for discussing this side of AI in a more principled way. When something (i.e. AI) is this viscerally annoying,

I can't help thinking there's a huge opportunity for discussing this side of AI in a more principled way. When something (i.e. AI) is this viscerally annoying, it's tempting to slip into this style of discussion, I get it. But it's......hard to read even when you agree and smile along the way. "The brief bio read: A little girl with blue eyes and blonde hair leads her friends on a healthy eating mission, culminating in the creation of a neighborhood farmer’s market. Okay. Sort of Triumph of the Will: Bedtime Story for Kids and Adults." (for context, Triumph of the Will is the name of a famous Nazi Germany-produced propaganda documentary) To flesh it out a bit more with examples, to make it clear it's not cherry-picking: - "What generative models are being used? What kinds of prompts are generating these texts? I don’t know. I’m not a virgin. As I said, I have a child." (virgin really is a complete non-sequitor here, unless the idea is only virgins use ChatGPT?) - "But I did want to read about my nice Nazi Youth friend and her farmer’s market journey" - "More importantly, what is a bedtime story for kids and adults? I am an adult. A bedtime story for an adult is just a real book. I read real books. Or at least, I used to? Basically, did Kindle think I was stupid now?"

deleted 2y ago
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lelandfe 2y ago
Have you read many articles from sleep deprived mothers about AI? I appreciated her delirious candor, personally.
- refulgentis 2y ago
  Apologies, I didn't mean we should silence sleep-deprived mothers. At best, inartful, on my part that it came across that way. I don't think I've ever consciously used pregnancy status/post-partum status, or sleep deprivation, as a prism for analyzing - to my knowledge, I've never used it unconciously either, but I'm faced with the distinct possibility I have, given thats how it came across here. It just sort of ripped me out of smiling and enjoying the article the reading to hear blonde hair and blue eyes = Nazi propaganda: I have the same (though, little hair left :P ), and little kids in the family who are. After the virgin reference I scrolled around to check if there was a layer joke where the article was written/edited by AI, thus demonstrating another layer of inappropriate references beyond the "bedtime story for kids and adults" Then you start thinking "gee...AI art and 'bedtime story for kids and adults' SEO ads...Then my mind starts whirring on "maybe this is good because GenAI makes the monopoly incumbents look horribly bad, mindlessly selling programmatic content to me with programmatic ads on hardware I paid for" - and then I realized that's probably not what the author intended a reader to start thinking, so there's probably another way to poke at this
  - lelandfe 2y ago
    You didn’t come off as wanting this silenced - I just mean that I liked having a different voice on HN. We see a lot of arch, academic analysis here. Loopy, sometimes crass mom encounters AI books was a fun share from OP. I bet you can imagine what her reaction might be if she read this thread :)
torginus 2y ago
Honestly these AI books seem to be full of the saccharine sweet uber-PC toxic positivity that AI companies think what a 'safe' and 'aligned' AI should sound like. This is the main reason why I gave up on using ChatGPT for creative brainstorming.
TheOtherHobbes 2y ago
The problem isn't the AI. The problem is the content distribution systems that corporations have created. AI just happens to make it easier to game+automate some of their systems for instant wins. Ultimately it's the entitled "I need money fuck you" attitude that enshittifies everything neoliberalism touches, with a toxic blend of desperation (some people really do need the money) and boundless narcissistic opportunism. Tech has become enmeshed in that, and is a major enabler and amplifier of it. It doesn't have to be, but it's where we are now.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago
  As always, the problem is people.
thaumasiotes 2y ago
> virgin really is a complete non-sequit[u]r here, unless the idea is only virgins use ChatGPT? The idea is pretty explicit, if you just read the immediately following paragraph: >> I mean I literally could not find the book again. All versions of A Girl’s Quest for Healthy Eating appeared to have vanished, as though it never existed in the first place. (Is Amazon deleting these spammy books as fast as they can be generated? Again, I don’t know. Stop asking me questions for dorks.)
- refulgentis 2y ago
  I wanted to give a little charity, thank you for making clear that I shouldn't.
dannyobrien 2y ago
It actually occurred to me that this style of writing feels mass-generated at this point: it's the default mannerist tone if you were going to knock out a fairly surface assessment of a new online phenomenon. Not that there's anything wrong with that! Max Read was one of the people who defined that tone in the 2010s[1], so I'm pretty sure that's what people come to his substack to read. But I must admit, my meta-snark was whispering all through this piece: "Maybe it would have saved time to just type 'Here are some titles of things I have been advertised on Kindle, please knock out 800 words on them in the American Internet Journalist House Style". [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20140429233811/http://www.cision.com/us/2014/03/max-read-takes-reins-at-gawker/ https://web.archive.org/web/20140429233811/http://www.cision...

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lelandfe 2y ago

Have you read many articles from sleep deprived mothers about AI? I appreciated her delirious candor, personally.

refulgentis 2y ago
Apologies, I didn't mean we should silence sleep-deprived mothers. At best, inartful, on my part that it came across that way. I don't think I've ever consciously used pregnancy status/post-partum status, or sleep deprivation, as a prism for analyzing - to my knowledge, I've never used it unconciously either, but I'm faced with the distinct possibility I have, given thats how it came across here. It just sort of ripped me out of smiling and enjoying the article the reading to hear blonde hair and blue eyes = Nazi propaganda: I have the same (though, little hair left :P ), and little kids in the family who are. After the virgin reference I scrolled around to check if there was a layer joke where the article was written/edited by AI, thus demonstrating another layer of inappropriate references beyond the "bedtime story for kids and adults" Then you start thinking "gee...AI art and 'bedtime story for kids and adults' SEO ads...Then my mind starts whirring on "maybe this is good because GenAI makes the monopoly incumbents look horribly bad, mindlessly selling programmatic content to me with programmatic ads on hardware I paid for" - and then I realized that's probably not what the author intended a reader to start thinking, so there's probably another way to poke at this
- lelandfe 2y ago
  You didn’t come off as wanting this silenced - I just mean that I liked having a different voice on HN. We see a lot of arch, academic analysis here. Loopy, sometimes crass mom encounters AI books was a fun share from OP. I bet you can imagine what her reaction might be if she read this thread :)

torginus 2y ago

Honestly these AI books seem to be full of the saccharine sweet uber-PC toxic positivity that AI companies think what a 'safe' and 'aligned' AI should sound like. This is the main reason why I gave up on using ChatGPT for creative brainstorming.

TheOtherHobbes 2y ago

The problem isn't the AI. The problem is the content distribution systems that corporations have created. AI just happens to make it easier to game+automate some of their systems for instant wins. Ultimately it's the entitled "I need money fuck you" attitude that enshittifies everything neoliberalism touches, with a toxic blend of desperation (some people really do need the money) and boundless narcissistic opportunism. Tech has become enmeshed in that, and is a major enabler and amplifier of it. It doesn't have to be, but it's where we are now.

A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago
As always, the problem is people.

thaumasiotes 2y ago

> virgin really is a complete non-sequit[u]r here, unless the idea is only virgins use ChatGPT? The idea is pretty explicit, if you just read the immediately following paragraph: >> I mean I literally could not find the book again. All versions of A Girl’s Quest for Healthy Eating appeared to have vanished, as though it never existed in the first place. (Is Amazon deleting these spammy books as fast as they can be generated? Again, I don’t know. Stop asking me questions for dorks.)

refulgentis 2y ago
I wanted to give a little charity, thank you for making clear that I shouldn't.

dannyobrien 2y ago

It actually occurred to me that this style of writing feels mass-generated at this point: it's the default mannerist tone if you were going to knock out a fairly surface assessment of a new online phenomenon. Not that there's anything wrong with that! Max Read was one of the people who defined that tone in the 2010s[1], so I'm pretty sure that's what people come to his substack to read. But I must admit, my meta-snark was whispering all through this piece: "Maybe it would have saved time to just type 'Here are some titles of things I have been advertised on Kindle, please knock out 800 words on them in the American Internet Journalist House Style". [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20140429233811/http://www.cision.com/us/2014/03/max-read-takes-reins-at-gawker/ https://web.archive.org/web/20140429233811/http://www.cision...