4 ms·

Since the commit history is public, there's a much easier way to tell that AI had a hand in writing that list. https://github.com/a16z-infra/reading-list/commi

by jsheard 11mo ago

Since the commit history is public, there's a much easier way to tell that AI had a hand in writing that list. https://github.com/a16z-infra/reading-list/commit/93bc3abb04e241ccc1e6b79f4f698247177fb765 https://github.com/a16z-infra/reading-list/commit/93bc3abb04... > opus descriptions in cursor, raw

andy99 11mo ago
Stephenson doesn't just write sci-fi, he writes operating manuals for the future. His books predicted cryptocurrency, the metaverse, and distributed computing before most of us knew what TCP/IP stood for. Warning: his endings are notoriously abrupt, like a segfault in the middle of your favorite function. This really is a study in AI slop. At least they had the good sense to change it.
- nakamoto_damacy 11mo ago
  How did his books PREDICT crypto when we had eCash way before any of his books? SMH.
  - agentultra 11mo ago
    Most of his books are also dystopias, not operating manuals.
    - rainsford 11mo ago
      Can A16Z tell the difference? Insert that meme "At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus, from the classic sci-fi novel, Don't Create the Torment Nexus".
    - cmrdporcupine 11mo ago
      a16z and others like them never met a dystopian warning they didn't interpret as a titillating invitation to an uncomfortably exciting and inevitable future!
    - ndiddy 11mo ago
      a16z seems to view turning society into a dystopia as a goal, so that makes sense. Their portfolio includes: - DoubleSpeed, a bot farm as a service provider, allowing customers to orchestrate social media activity across thousands of fake accounts to create artificial consensus on the topic of their choice. Never pay a human again! - Cheddr, the TikTok of sports gambling, whose differentiating feature is allowing users under 21. Place live in-game bets with just a swipe! - Coverd, a new type of credit card where you can wipe off bills by betting on your favorite gambling games in their app. No VPN required!
      - jsheard 11mo ago
        > Cheddr > Coverd Even worse, they're bringing Web 2.0 startup names back...
      - jakelazaroff 11mo ago
        Wow, I just checked the doublespeed website and it is comically evil. The footer says — verbatim, and in huge letters — "never pay a human again." (I'm not selectively quoting; it's a full sentence, despite their weird capitalization.) If Neal Stephenson tried to write a villain this on-the-nose, his editor would tell him to tone it down.
  - efnx 11mo ago
    Yeah, which book are we talking about? Reamde features crypto heavily, but I remember having bitcoins at the time it came out.
    - simonw 11mo ago
      I imagine this is intended (though if it's AI-generated "intended" doesn't really apply) as a reference 1999's Cryptonomicon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon From that Wikipedia summary: > Their goal is to facilitate anonymous Internet banking using electronic money and (later) digital gold currency
      - efnx 11mo ago
        Ah, yeah, I missed that one.
      - nakamoto_damacy 11mo ago
        Digital Cash was invented by David Chaum in 1982, and developed by his company DigiCash in 1990. I read about it years before Cryptonomicon.
- abecedarius 11mo ago
  When they changed it is also when they misspelled his name. Opus got it right. I was surprised Stephenson took the misspelling as an AI tell.
- philipwhiuk 11mo ago
  To a version that managed to typo his name.
- netsharc 11mo ago
  Man... "Write a book recommendation for people who like The Big Bang Theory".
  - binary132 11mo ago
    I’m gonna start thinking “Bazinga!” every time someone says something borderline ai-sloppy
    - insin 11mo ago
      I Have No Ability To Unread Things And I Must Unread
- dcre 11mo ago
  It is appalling writing. Given that Opus is capable of a lot better than this, it seems likely they’re prompting it to be terrible.
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
mtlynch 11mo ago
That version is more sensible. Opus generated: > Warning: his endings are notoriously abrupt, like a segfault in the middle of your favorite function. In commit e4d022[0], the wording changed to: > Fair warning: most of these books famously don't have endings (they literally stop mid-sentence during a normal plot arc). It's unclear what led to that change, as the commit message is just "stephenson". It went through a few more minor edits to get to what's currently published. https://github.com/a16z-infra/reading-list/commit/e4d022d592e9bc2962b3b114a4b958bd450e1708#diff-b335630551682c19a781afebcf4d07bf978fb1f8ac04c6bf87428ed5106870f5R63-R71 https://github.com/a16z-infra/reading-list/commit/e4d022d592...
- ilikehurdles 11mo ago
  matt-bornstein's commits in that repo do often start off with ai-generated descriptions which he then edits down. there are notes on some commits that say things like "AI GENERATED NEED TO EDIT". the other contributors' changes don't have these tells. while it should come as no surprise to have software written by llms, if these books are in fact just picked by llms then what's the point of this list?
  - cowsandmilk 11mo ago
    I don’t see any evidence the LLM picked the list of books, it instead was used to update/add descriptions of the books and series.
    - thwarted 11mo ago
      That's almost more damning. The list was created by humans, who presumably read the books, but then couldn't be bothered to summarize the very books they read? Either the human is really lazy ("read" the book but can't be bothered to write a short summary) or really really lazy (didn't read the book but felt a summary was necessary). Either way, it makes this list less interesting, at the very least because it doesn't need to exist at all if someone can just ask an LLM "list and describe books that A16Z might think are valuable to read" and get the same quality output.
  - 11mo ago
simonw 11mo ago
https://github.com/a16z-infra/reading-list/commit/717b3d64d60302bc8cdfc10b48ea58eda73257eb https://github.com/a16z-infra/reading-list/commit/717b3d64d6... > [THIS IS AI GENERATED, NEED TO EDIT] The manga that asked [...] They do at least have "NEED TO EDIT" in there, but this prose was openly generated by AI as a starting point.
skybrian 11mo ago
I don't see any pull request fixing this yet.
- dangelosaurus 11mo ago
  I felt obligated to submit a fix: https://github.com/a16z-infra/reading-list/pull/9 https://github.com/a16z-infra/reading-list/pull/9 Used Claude to fact-check and fix errors that were likely introduced by Cursor. The circle is complete.

by jsheard 11mo ago

andy99 11mo ago

Stephenson doesn't just write sci-fi, he writes operating manuals for the future. His books predicted cryptocurrency, the metaverse, and distributed computing before most of us knew what TCP/IP stood for. Warning: his endings are notoriously abrupt, like a segfault in the middle of your favorite function. This really is a study in AI slop. At least they had the good sense to change it.

nakamoto_damacy 11mo ago
How did his books PREDICT crypto when we had eCash way before any of his books? SMH.
- agentultra 11mo ago
  Most of his books are also dystopias, not operating manuals.
  - rainsford 11mo ago
    Can A16Z tell the difference? Insert that meme "At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus, from the classic sci-fi novel, Don't Create the Torment Nexus".
  - cmrdporcupine 11mo ago
    a16z and others like them never met a dystopian warning they didn't interpret as a titillating invitation to an uncomfortably exciting and inevitable future!
  - ndiddy 11mo ago
    a16z seems to view turning society into a dystopia as a goal, so that makes sense. Their portfolio includes: - DoubleSpeed, a bot farm as a service provider, allowing customers to orchestrate social media activity across thousands of fake accounts to create artificial consensus on the topic of their choice. Never pay a human again! - Cheddr, the TikTok of sports gambling, whose differentiating feature is allowing users under 21. Place live in-game bets with just a swipe! - Coverd, a new type of credit card where you can wipe off bills by betting on your favorite gambling games in their app. No VPN required!
    - jsheard 11mo ago
      > Cheddr > Coverd Even worse, they're bringing Web 2.0 startup names back...
    - jakelazaroff 11mo ago
      Wow, I just checked the doublespeed website and it is comically evil. The footer says — verbatim, and in huge letters — "never pay a human again." (I'm not selectively quoting; it's a full sentence, despite their weird capitalization.) If Neal Stephenson tried to write a villain this on-the-nose, his editor would tell him to tone it down.
- efnx 11mo ago
  Yeah, which book are we talking about? Reamde features crypto heavily, but I remember having bitcoins at the time it came out.
  - simonw 11mo ago
    I imagine this is intended (though if it's AI-generated "intended" doesn't really apply) as a reference 1999's Cryptonomicon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon From that Wikipedia summary: > Their goal is to facilitate anonymous Internet banking using electronic money and (later) digital gold currency
    - efnx 11mo ago
      Ah, yeah, I missed that one.
    - nakamoto_damacy 11mo ago
      Digital Cash was invented by David Chaum in 1982, and developed by his company DigiCash in 1990. I read about it years before Cryptonomicon.
abecedarius 11mo ago
When they changed it is also when they misspelled his name. Opus got it right. I was surprised Stephenson took the misspelling as an AI tell.
philipwhiuk 11mo ago
To a version that managed to typo his name.
netsharc 11mo ago
Man... "Write a book recommendation for people who like The Big Bang Theory".
- binary132 11mo ago
  I’m gonna start thinking “Bazinga!” every time someone says something borderline ai-sloppy
  - insin 11mo ago
    I Have No Ability To Unread Things And I Must Unread
dcre 11mo ago
It is appalling writing. Given that Opus is capable of a lot better than this, it seems likely they’re prompting it to be terrible.

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

mtlynch 11mo ago

That version is more sensible. Opus generated: > Warning: his endings are notoriously abrupt, like a segfault in the middle of your favorite function. In commit e4d022[0], the wording changed to: > Fair warning: most of these books famously don't have endings (they literally stop mid-sentence during a normal plot arc). It's unclear what led to that change, as the commit message is just "stephenson". It went through a few more minor edits to get to what's currently published. https://github.com/a16z-infra/reading-list/commit/e4d022d592e9bc2962b3b114a4b958bd450e1708#diff-b335630551682c19a781afebcf4d07bf978fb1f8ac04c6bf87428ed5106870f5R63-R71 https://github.com/a16z-infra/reading-list/commit/e4d022d592...

ilikehurdles 11mo ago
matt-bornstein's commits in that repo do often start off with ai-generated descriptions which he then edits down. there are notes on some commits that say things like "AI GENERATED NEED TO EDIT". the other contributors' changes don't have these tells. while it should come as no surprise to have software written by llms, if these books are in fact just picked by llms then what's the point of this list?
- cowsandmilk 11mo ago
  I don’t see any evidence the LLM picked the list of books, it instead was used to update/add descriptions of the books and series.
  - thwarted 11mo ago
    That's almost more damning. The list was created by humans, who presumably read the books, but then couldn't be bothered to summarize the very books they read? Either the human is really lazy ("read" the book but can't be bothered to write a short summary) or really really lazy (didn't read the book but felt a summary was necessary). Either way, it makes this list less interesting, at the very least because it doesn't need to exist at all if someone can just ask an LLM "list and describe books that A16Z might think are valuable to read" and get the same quality output.
- 11mo ago

simonw 11mo ago

https://github.com/a16z-infra/reading-list/commit/717b3d64d60302bc8cdfc10b48ea58eda73257eb https://github.com/a16z-infra/reading-list/commit/717b3d64d6... > [THIS IS AI GENERATED, NEED TO EDIT] The manga that asked [...] They do at least have "NEED TO EDIT" in there, but this prose was openly generated by AI as a starting point.

skybrian 11mo ago

I don't see any pull request fixing this yet.

dangelosaurus 11mo ago
I felt obligated to submit a fix: https://github.com/a16z-infra/reading-list/pull/9 https://github.com/a16z-infra/reading-list/pull/9 Used Claude to fact-check and fix errors that were likely introduced by Cursor. The circle is complete.