3 ms·

> "This is my kid’s drawing. He’s 7 years old. Write a creative storybook that brings his drawing to life.” Is there something lost, when it's not the adult te

by neilv 1y ago

> "This is my kid’s drawing. He’s 7 years old. Write a creative storybook that brings his drawing to life.” Is there something lost, when it's not the adult telling the child a bedtime improv story? (IME, kids love this.) Is something else gained by the generated storybook?

arrosenberg 1y ago
> Is something else gained by the generated storybook? The opportunity for low-effort, low-talent grifters to make a buck on Amazon?
pamelafox 1y ago
I think it'd be amazing if I had the energy to make up improv bedtime stories every night. (We have a "King Dragon" improv series happening lately, which involves a lot of farts) BUT, I don't always have that energy, and I already spend hours a day reading stories to my kids, so I am okay with them spending some fraction of time hearing stories from robots/screens/etc. (Lately, it's "Hey Google, tell a story" if mommy is too busy to read) I hope we never stop paying amazing children's book illustrators though! I have so many books where I marvel at each page and the ingenuity of the illustrative style.
- pamelafox 1y ago
  Lol, I just tried to get it to draw the story about King Dragon farting, but it could not come up with a picture of a dragon farting - it turned it into fire coming from its mouth instead! It's too far outside its training data. Link: https://g.co/gemini/share/188609ce3e1f https://g.co/gemini/share/188609ce3e1f
  - baxtr 1y ago
    Funny story, nicely illustrated. But what’s wrong with image 10/10?
    - pamelafox 1y ago
      Lol, yes, the dragon's torso turned into a man. That man does show up earlier in the story - I think perhaps the model so closely associates dragon stories with stories of men, it just desperately wanted to add one in? The text itself never actually mentions the man/dragon/torso. If Gemini added a reflection step to its book drawing routine, I think the model could easily notice the errors, and generate images to correct them - the errors do not seem unsurmountable. Given that, I'm assuming Amazon is or will soon be filled with decently illustrated somewhat amusing stories.
  - vunderba 1y ago
    How much of the story was generated by Gemini? The dragon overcomes the problem by using a fart to blow away the fog. Wouldn't that just be replacing one cloud with an equally visibility limiting cloud... only worse smelling? Feels like this could have been an opportunity by the LLM to take the story in a less pedestrian direction with a loose parable around a noxious equivalent to Maslow's hammer.
    - pamelafox 1y ago
      Gemini wrote that whole story with a short prompt about a "King Dragon that farts". I assure you that our actual improv'd story is far superior in plot points. And yes, I was confused too as to how farting would clear away fog.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- tenacious_tuna 1y ago
  > I think it'd be amazing if I had the energy to make up improv bedtime stories every night [...] (Lately, it's "Hey Google, tell a story" if mommy is too busy to read) This feels like the crux of my issues with AI. We're passing the human side of life to machines to do for us; music, art, storytelling with our kids. So often I hear that these are the things that people want to spend their time on, but AI has come to "free" us from "not having energy" to do those things, so we can instead continue to spend our energy toiling away, safe in the knowledge that our children will still get a bedtime story (albeit from a machine and not from a loving parent). I get it, I know parents have no energy on top of everything else they're doing, this just feels so much like when I walk into a restaurant to a family with their kids, but the kids are all on tablets with headphones.
  - pamelafox 1y ago
    I would argue that we're passing on 5% of life to the machines, not 100%. By the time bedtime has rolled around, my kids have been home for 5 hours - we have already spent hours reading, playing, parkour'ing, role-playing, painting, inventing, slime'ing, etc. We do manage to often tell a story ourselves (last night, we made the kids tell it!), but I am not going to judge a parent (or myself) for deciding to delegate a fraction of creative energy to a machine. I was 100% against screens when first having a kid, but now I'm content with kids getting a spectrum of entertainment styles, and for parents to get a break every so often.
boothby 1y ago
When I've seen parents amuse kids with AI slop, the kids ask for more slop. When I've seen parents amuse kids with improv, the kids participate. Kids love both, and like nutrition... kids love sugar.
ants_everywhere 1y ago
> Is something else gained by the generated storybook? Yeah, kids love creating stuff
HKH2 1y ago
> Is there something lost, when it's not the adult telling the child a bedtime improv story? (IME, kids love this.) Kids use their imagination because they're encouraged to do so. It's somewhat of a challenge to find the cusp between what is plain and what is incomprehensible (think of the ZPD but for creativity).
serial_dev 1y ago
I just used ChatGPT (or Gemini, no idea) the other night to generate me a story. I live abroad, so I don't have unlimited access to books in my native language and all the websites were crappy sites with dozens of ads on it, made it unusable. I was fed up with searching, so I went to ChatGPT, told it to generate me a story in my native tongue about a boy named $MySonsName and his partner $FavoriteAnimalOfTheDay, who is doing $WhateverMySonDidThatDay. It was a good story, used phrases commonly used in children's books in my language, and all. I think the aspect of being with my son, hugging him while reading something before going to sleep is much more important than who came up with the story. And as parents, after a day of full time work and constantly helping at the household, sleep deprivation, my stories would be two sentences before I run out of ideas.
- geoduck14 1y ago
  I'm curious about how the LLMs handle non English languages. Is it good? Does it work well with hard/advanced content? If you don't mind me asking, what languages do you speak? Which do you use when interacting with LLMs?
  - serial_dev 1y ago
    It works surprisingly well, I’d say it gives better results than Google Translate. I can say that German, Spanish, and even Hungarian results are all consistently good. I often say “answer in English, German, and Hungarian” when I want to make sure I practice all these languages and I can discuss some topics in any language. I usually write in English, and add if it should answer in other languages.
    - cacarr 1y ago
      At least in the major Indo-European languages, I think Gemini 2.5 Pro is _much_ better at translation than Google Translate.

by neilv 1y ago

arrosenberg 1y ago

> Is something else gained by the generated storybook? The opportunity for low-effort, low-talent grifters to make a buck on Amazon?

pamelafox 1y ago

I think it'd be amazing if I had the energy to make up improv bedtime stories every night. (We have a "King Dragon" improv series happening lately, which involves a lot of farts) BUT, I don't always have that energy, and I already spend hours a day reading stories to my kids, so I am okay with them spending some fraction of time hearing stories from robots/screens/etc. (Lately, it's "Hey Google, tell a story" if mommy is too busy to read) I hope we never stop paying amazing children's book illustrators though! I have so many books where I marvel at each page and the ingenuity of the illustrative style.

pamelafox 1y ago
Lol, I just tried to get it to draw the story about King Dragon farting, but it could not come up with a picture of a dragon farting - it turned it into fire coming from its mouth instead! It's too far outside its training data. Link: https://g.co/gemini/share/188609ce3e1f https://g.co/gemini/share/188609ce3e1f
- baxtr 1y ago
  Funny story, nicely illustrated. But what’s wrong with image 10/10?
  - pamelafox 1y ago
    Lol, yes, the dragon's torso turned into a man. That man does show up earlier in the story - I think perhaps the model so closely associates dragon stories with stories of men, it just desperately wanted to add one in? The text itself never actually mentions the man/dragon/torso. If Gemini added a reflection step to its book drawing routine, I think the model could easily notice the errors, and generate images to correct them - the errors do not seem unsurmountable. Given that, I'm assuming Amazon is or will soon be filled with decently illustrated somewhat amusing stories.
- vunderba 1y ago
  How much of the story was generated by Gemini? The dragon overcomes the problem by using a fart to blow away the fog. Wouldn't that just be replacing one cloud with an equally visibility limiting cloud... only worse smelling? Feels like this could have been an opportunity by the LLM to take the story in a less pedestrian direction with a loose parable around a noxious equivalent to Maslow's hammer.
  - pamelafox 1y ago
    Gemini wrote that whole story with a short prompt about a "King Dragon that farts". I assure you that our actual improv'd story is far superior in plot points. And yes, I was confused too as to how farting would clear away fog.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
tenacious_tuna 1y ago
> I think it'd be amazing if I had the energy to make up improv bedtime stories every night [...] (Lately, it's "Hey Google, tell a story" if mommy is too busy to read) This feels like the crux of my issues with AI. We're passing the human side of life to machines to do for us; music, art, storytelling with our kids. So often I hear that these are the things that people want to spend their time on, but AI has come to "free" us from "not having energy" to do those things, so we can instead continue to spend our energy toiling away, safe in the knowledge that our children will still get a bedtime story (albeit from a machine and not from a loving parent). I get it, I know parents have no energy on top of everything else they're doing, this just feels so much like when I walk into a restaurant to a family with their kids, but the kids are all on tablets with headphones.
- pamelafox 1y ago
  I would argue that we're passing on 5% of life to the machines, not 100%. By the time bedtime has rolled around, my kids have been home for 5 hours - we have already spent hours reading, playing, parkour'ing, role-playing, painting, inventing, slime'ing, etc. We do manage to often tell a story ourselves (last night, we made the kids tell it!), but I am not going to judge a parent (or myself) for deciding to delegate a fraction of creative energy to a machine. I was 100% against screens when first having a kid, but now I'm content with kids getting a spectrum of entertainment styles, and for parents to get a break every so often.

boothby 1y ago

When I've seen parents amuse kids with AI slop, the kids ask for more slop. When I've seen parents amuse kids with improv, the kids participate. Kids love both, and like nutrition... kids love sugar.

ants_everywhere 1y ago

> Is something else gained by the generated storybook? Yeah, kids love creating stuff

HKH2 1y ago

> Is there something lost, when it's not the adult telling the child a bedtime improv story? (IME, kids love this.) Kids use their imagination because they're encouraged to do so. It's somewhat of a challenge to find the cusp between what is plain and what is incomprehensible (think of the ZPD but for creativity).

serial_dev 1y ago

I just used ChatGPT (or Gemini, no idea) the other night to generate me a story. I live abroad, so I don't have unlimited access to books in my native language and all the websites were crappy sites with dozens of ads on it, made it unusable. I was fed up with searching, so I went to ChatGPT, told it to generate me a story in my native tongue about a boy named $MySonsName and his partner $FavoriteAnimalOfTheDay, who is doing $WhateverMySonDidThatDay. It was a good story, used phrases commonly used in children's books in my language, and all. I think the aspect of being with my son, hugging him while reading something before going to sleep is much more important than who came up with the story. And as parents, after a day of full time work and constantly helping at the household, sleep deprivation, my stories would be two sentences before I run out of ideas.

geoduck14 1y ago
I'm curious about how the LLMs handle non English languages. Is it good? Does it work well with hard/advanced content? If you don't mind me asking, what languages do you speak? Which do you use when interacting with LLMs?
- serial_dev 1y ago
  It works surprisingly well, I’d say it gives better results than Google Translate. I can say that German, Spanish, and even Hungarian results are all consistently good. I often say “answer in English, German, and Hungarian” when I want to make sure I practice all these languages and I can discuss some topics in any language. I usually write in English, and add if it should answer in other languages.
  - cacarr 1y ago
    At least in the major Indo-European languages, I think Gemini 2.5 Pro is _much_ better at translation than Google Translate.