3 ms·
But who vouches for the author? If you're not already experienced in the domain, how would you know whether to pick up a book written by Jane Expert or by Dave
by crote 4mo ago
But who vouches for the author? If you're not already experienced in the domain, how would you know whether to pick up a book written by Jane Expert or by Dave Dunning-Kruger?
Traditional authorship is self-vouching: writing a coherent book on a complicated subject is hard. You can't exactly bullshit your way through 500 pages of car maintenance minutia. If a book actually manages to make its way all the way to a book store, there is a pretty good chance it is worth reading.
LLMs change this equation. Any idiot can prompt an LLM into writing reasonable-sounding slop, so any idiot can now write a book on any subject. Combine that with self-publishing and print-on-demand, and suddenly all bets are off.
If 99% of LLM-written (or LLM-"assisted") books on a subject are garbage you aren't going to buy a book and hope it is the 1% - it makes far more sense to save yourself the money and get the mediocre answer by prompting the LLM yourself. Want expert information? Just buy an LLM-free book written by an actual expert.