8 ms·

I think this is similar to AI generated images: it puts a new creative tool in the hands of people who might have had good ideas, but didn't have a mastery of t

I think this is similar to AI generated images: it puts a new creative tool in the hands of people who might have had good ideas, but didn't have a mastery of the medium. In that respect, it's cool: if you had a great idea for a sci-fi story but no talent for writing, and if an LLM let you realize your vision, that's neat. It has some negative externalities for the craftsmen, but overall, more creativity is hardly a bad thing. The real problem is that the most lucrative uses of the tech aren't that. It's generating 10,000 fake books on Amazon on subjects you don't care about. It's cranking out SEO spam, generating monetizable clickbait, etc.

gtowey 1y ago
And they haven't even gotten around to adding advertising into them yet! Imagine when chat assistants subtly steer you towards certain products. Would you even know it was manipulating you?
- perching_aix 1y ago
  They kind of did though. Thing tries to make me generate diagrams every step of the way (as a kind of feature demo), even though they're rarely ever a good idea, and even when they are, the pictures and diagrams generated are useless.
thwarted 1y ago
> I think this is similar to AI generated images: it puts a new creative tool in the hands of people who might have had good ideas, but didn't have a mastery of the medium. Reading this sentence reminded me of the classic HN position of "ideas are worthless, what matters is the execution", usually mentioned in the context of an "ideas person" looking for their "technical cofounder" and the ideas person thinking they deserve at least 50%, often more, of the ownership of what would be built because without them there'd be no idea. > if you had a great idea for a sci-fi story but no talent for writing, and if an LLM let you realize your vision, that's neat. If your "vision" is only the "idea for a sci-fi story", is that really a vision? Good books leave the reader changed/influenced in some fashion, through the way the idea is presented and developed over the course of the story, not just from a blurb on the book jacket. > overall, more creativity is hardly a bad thing. Is coming up with an idea for a for a sci-fi story the meat of creative act such that that flooding the market with ideas counts as an increase in creativity overall?
- vunderba 1y ago
  Agreed. Have a read through the 10 dragon stories - the majority of them are rich in spices, but bereft otherwise. LLMs seem to revel in throwing layer after layer of decorative paint in the hope that people will fail to notice that they're not actually painting anything. As a writer, the best advice that I can give is to build your house upon the rock and not upon the sand.
  - thwarted 1y ago
    > LLMs seem to revel in throwing layer after layer of decorative paint in the hope that people will fail to notice that they're not actually painting anything. Length or duration is considered, erroneously IMO, to be a measure of completeness or thoroughness. Pithiness is valuable, and is a skill that can be honed. I guess padding out your writing using an LLM is equivalent to adjusting the font size and margins on a "three page essay" to meet the minimum requirements.
- hyperadvanced 1y ago
  I also think that just having “an idea” isn’t exactly the same as increasing net creativity. Oftentimes with art, the impact of something truly creative results in changing the parameters of the medium or genre itself, not merely sticking to the script and producing a new work in the style of X. If you take, for example, J Dilla and his impact on hip-hop, the fact that there’s an entire subgenre or two focused on some of his hallmark innovations (micro-rhythm/wonky beats, neo-soul, lofi sampling/creative use of samples) speaks to that kind of “real” creativity. I frankly think that kind of genre-bending is possible with the use of LLMs, but if you just say, “here’s my story idea, make it so”, without any eye towards the actual technique or craft, you won’t be getting the next Blood Meridian out of it.
  - voidhorse 1y ago
    I completely agree. If nothing else, the discourse around LLM use in the creative space has just shown me that many people in technology simply have little to no comprehension of the arts and humanities and have no clue what it is that artists actually do, or even how to intelligently engage with artistic works. The 20th cen transformation of art into time-filling idle entertainment by way of mass media has been a great success. The internet helped reset some of that, but not by much. I guess that shouldn't necessarily be surprising, but I am always kind of astonished at the fact that our society has produced a large number of specialists who are profoundly good at what they do but who clearly lack exposure to other spheres of life.
andrewflnr 1y ago
> more creativity is hardly a bad thing. Why, exactly, is creativity good? What is the benefit, and to whom? Does that benefit survive the interposition of genAI? I'm doubtful, either for the reader or the craftsmen.
entropyneur 1y ago
Wondering if anyone had success with this yet. I have several ideas for poetry and prose that I don't have the skill to pull off. I periodically plug them into new models and so far all the results have been completely unsatisfactory.

gtowey 1y ago

And they haven't even gotten around to adding advertising into them yet! Imagine when chat assistants subtly steer you towards certain products. Would you even know it was manipulating you?

perching_aix 1y ago
They kind of did though. Thing tries to make me generate diagrams every step of the way (as a kind of feature demo), even though they're rarely ever a good idea, and even when they are, the pictures and diagrams generated are useless.

thwarted 1y ago

> I think this is similar to AI generated images: it puts a new creative tool in the hands of people who might have had good ideas, but didn't have a mastery of the medium. Reading this sentence reminded me of the classic HN position of "ideas are worthless, what matters is the execution", usually mentioned in the context of an "ideas person" looking for their "technical cofounder" and the ideas person thinking they deserve at least 50%, often more, of the ownership of what would be built because without them there'd be no idea. > if you had a great idea for a sci-fi story but no talent for writing, and if an LLM let you realize your vision, that's neat. If your "vision" is only the "idea for a sci-fi story", is that really a vision? Good books leave the reader changed/influenced in some fashion, through the way the idea is presented and developed over the course of the story, not just from a blurb on the book jacket. > overall, more creativity is hardly a bad thing. Is coming up with an idea for a for a sci-fi story the meat of creative act such that that flooding the market with ideas counts as an increase in creativity overall?

vunderba 1y ago
Agreed. Have a read through the 10 dragon stories - the majority of them are rich in spices, but bereft otherwise. LLMs seem to revel in throwing layer after layer of decorative paint in the hope that people will fail to notice that they're not actually painting anything. As a writer, the best advice that I can give is to build your house upon the rock and not upon the sand.
- thwarted 1y ago
  > LLMs seem to revel in throwing layer after layer of decorative paint in the hope that people will fail to notice that they're not actually painting anything. Length or duration is considered, erroneously IMO, to be a measure of completeness or thoroughness. Pithiness is valuable, and is a skill that can be honed. I guess padding out your writing using an LLM is equivalent to adjusting the font size and margins on a "three page essay" to meet the minimum requirements.
hyperadvanced 1y ago
I also think that just having “an idea” isn’t exactly the same as increasing net creativity. Oftentimes with art, the impact of something truly creative results in changing the parameters of the medium or genre itself, not merely sticking to the script and producing a new work in the style of X. If you take, for example, J Dilla and his impact on hip-hop, the fact that there’s an entire subgenre or two focused on some of his hallmark innovations (micro-rhythm/wonky beats, neo-soul, lofi sampling/creative use of samples) speaks to that kind of “real” creativity. I frankly think that kind of genre-bending is possible with the use of LLMs, but if you just say, “here’s my story idea, make it so”, without any eye towards the actual technique or craft, you won’t be getting the next Blood Meridian out of it.
- voidhorse 1y ago
  I completely agree. If nothing else, the discourse around LLM use in the creative space has just shown me that many people in technology simply have little to no comprehension of the arts and humanities and have no clue what it is that artists actually do, or even how to intelligently engage with artistic works. The 20th cen transformation of art into time-filling idle entertainment by way of mass media has been a great success. The internet helped reset some of that, but not by much. I guess that shouldn't necessarily be surprising, but I am always kind of astonished at the fact that our society has produced a large number of specialists who are profoundly good at what they do but who clearly lack exposure to other spheres of life.

andrewflnr 1y ago

> more creativity is hardly a bad thing. Why, exactly, is creativity good? What is the benefit, and to whom? Does that benefit survive the interposition of genAI? I'm doubtful, either for the reader or the craftsmen.

entropyneur 1y ago

Wondering if anyone had success with this yet. I have several ideas for poetry and prose that I don't have the skill to pull off. I periodically plug them into new models and so far all the results have been completely unsatisfactory.