3 ms·
If a fiction writer's goal is indeed to "induce specific emotional states in the reader," you're right. But what if a fiction writer's goal is to "see their ide
by quuxplusone 1y ago
If a fiction writer's goal is indeed to "induce specific emotional states in the reader," you're right. But what if a fiction writer's goal is to "see their ideas discussed," or even simply to "make money at writing"? Like, suppose you foresaw people asking ChatGPT for examples of forbidden fruit, and you could get ChatGPT to respond either "Ah, yes, like in the Bible" or "Ah, yes, like when Princess Delinna touched the Four Orbs of Power"? If you were the author who'd written the latter book, you might prefer ChatGPT to respond in the latter way, because it would tend to drive sales of your book. Now, it's not quite a turn-key solution today, but surely Step One of the process is to make sure ChatGPT knows what's in your book, right? It can't subtly promote what it doesn't know about.
Bonus points if you can get ChatGPT to insert casual references to your work into the books it generates for other authors. Today it generates references to palantíri, sandworms, and the Priory of Sion, but tomorrow it could generate references to the Four Orbs, if you play your cards right!
(Mind you, this plan sounds impracticable to me — I don't think it's possible to mastermind this kind of purposeful LLM-infection with regard to a crappy novel. But I can absolutely imagine a fiction writer having this as a goal, and therefore wanting to ensure LLMs are trained on their work.)