Artificial Intelligence and Publishing

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by Graham44

. . . Amazon users could be swamped with an avalanche of utter drivel, who would want to wade through a market saturated with AI drivel?

I went back and forth a bit with gemini.google.com and chatGPT.com.

Some gemini output is still drivel. I see google-produced sentences there that are superficially punchy but lack much meaning. However, ChatGTP is smart enough to limit them, especially if you slap on an "as edited by" clause.

I see a future where AI-produced books are superior as self-published stand-alone objects. Maybe they already are. However, readers want to feel that they are in communication with a human author when reading a book. At least I do. One Big Five advantage is that you can trust there being a human author, even if editorially improved.

[DiapDealer]

My interest in authors and publishers is their ability to provide books that I want to read (and enjoy reading). Beyond that, their world and their worries are their own. If a toaster-oven wrote a book that I found interesting enough to continue reading, I would whole-heartedly support that toaster-oven with my money. But until toaster-ovens learn to write that well, I have zero worries that intrepid humans and industrious publishers will continue to find ways to supply me with easily found, easily purchased, material that will be more than good enough to hold my attention until my dying day.

[Quoth]

The corporation selling the toaster-oven is taking books and shuffling them and then claiming the toaster oven wrote them. If the toaster oven produces books that you like, it will be because a large corporation has basically stolen and repackaged the works of humans.

Most writers don't make a living wage. The process of an LLM producing a "work" is nothing like a person reading many books and then writing one. It's a lie to claim it's other than mechanical plagiarism of a very complex nature.

Successful marketing or customer satisfaction doesn't make it right. It's the most advanced form of Intellectual Property piracy ever seen.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Quoth

The corporation selling the toaster-oven is taking books and shuffling them and then claiming the toaster oven wrote them. If the toaster oven produces books that you like, it will be because a large corporation has basically stolen and repackaged the works of humans.

I. Don't. Care.

Originally Posted by Quoth

Most writers don't make a living wage.

Thus has it ever been. Thus will it always be. The End.

Originally Posted by Quoth

Successful marketing or customer satisfaction doesn't make it right. It's the most advanced form of Intellectual Property piracy ever seen.

I've not tried to say its "right" or "wrong." I was actually just responding to Steve's premise of:

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

However, readers want to feel that they are in communication with a human author when reading a book. At least I do. One Big Five advantage is that you can trust there being a human author, even if editorially improved.

I'm not in "communication" with anyone (but myself) when I read. Least of all the author of the book I'm reading.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by Apache

Book and Music publishers said the same thing when downloading music and books started to become more popular. They are still around and would have had less problems if they had embraced the technology rather than fight it.

Out of curiosity, what would "embracing AI" look like for publishers?

[Graham44]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Thanks for the FUD example.

In your opinion

[cfrizz]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

My interest in authors and publishers is their ability to provide books that I want to read (and enjoy reading). Beyond that, their world and their worries are their own. If a toaster-oven wrote a book that I found interesting enough to continue reading, I would whole-heartedly support that toaster-oven with my money. But until toaster-ovens learn to write that well, I have zero worries that intrepid humans and industrious publishers will continue to find ways to supply me with easily found, easily purchased, material that will be more than good enough to hold my attention until my dying day.

This 100%!!!!

[cfrizz]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Most writers don't make a living wage.

This has been true since the beginning of time! There are very few super star artists of all variety's vs the tons of starving artists. And AI is not going to change that simple fact.

It's not going to discourage those that truly want to write and they will find a way to get their books out.

And as for the comment of Amazon has tons of drivel, by who's definition? One person's drivel is another person's favorite kind of book to read! Enough with the blanket statements.

[Graham44]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

My interest in authors and publishers is their ability to provide books that I want to read (and enjoy reading). Beyond that, their world and their worries are their own. If a toaster-oven wrote a book that I found interesting enough to continue reading, I would whole-heartedly support that toaster-oven with my money. But until toaster-ovens learn to write that well, I have zero worries that intrepid humans and industrious publishers will continue to find ways to supply me with easily found, easily purchased, material that will be more than good enough to hold my attention until my dying day.

So as long as you can get what you want it doesn't matter what the people in the industry are facing? As long as your enjoyment isn't impacted?

The fact that AI could throttle the ability for new authors to be discovered doesn't matter as long as the authors you already like can carry on publishing? The fact that the publishers and authors you enjoy may have to expend extra time, money and resources on finding ways to combat the problems potentially caused by AI doesn't matter to you, as long as your not affected?

If that's genuinely how you feel well fair enough I guess - but if AI did begin to effect your enjoyment of reading in the future would you then care and start to worry about AI ruining the industry?

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Graham44

So as long as you can get what you want it doesn't matter what the people in the industry are facing? As long as your enjoyment isn't impacted?

Yes. Much like I don't care what Big Vegetable is facing when I buy my radishes.

Originally Posted by Graham44

The fact that AI could throttle the ability for new authors to be discovered doesn't matter as long as the authors you already like can carry on publishing?

"Could throttle the ability for new authors to be discovered..." You'll pardon me if I don't take these dire warnings of publishers (whose raison d'être has been to throttle the ability of new authors to be discovered for centuries) at face value.

But it's not even that. "Authors I like" is not really a thing I relate to. I don't get hung up on having favorite authors. All authors tend to eventually bore me if they write enough books; and I read them too quickly. So no, I don't really care if authors I'm currently reading don't have long term success. New ones write good books all the time. I'll read those.

Originally Posted by Graham44

If that's genuinely how you feel well fair enough I guess - but if AI did begin to effect your enjoyment of reading in the future would you then care and start to worry about AI ruining the industry?

If, if, if. I prefer to not jump to the conclusion that the sky is falling when there's no real evidence that it is. Humans are still writing and you and I are still reading their work. Is that not enough?

[Graham44]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

And as for the comment of Amazon has tons of drivel, by who's definition? One person's drivel is another person's favorite kind of book to read! Enough with the blanket statements.

I was perhaps being a bit harsh with that statement I maybe would have been better off saying Amazon has a lot of low quality content to wade through in order to find the gems, let me use an example -

I do like a good space opera novel, with that you have certain (not unreasonable I think) expectations, it's set in space at least partly and of a certain length, I wouldn't think you are looking for a 150 - 250 page novel if you're looking at space opera's, generally they are of a longer length but when I used Amazon a good 25-40% ish (at a guess) results that came up were sub 300 pages and quite often way below that, and then it was also flooded with stuff like date night on so and so station, date night on a different station etc etc

The horror genre was another one I found particularly bad on Amazon, I do like a good ghost horror story, I wouldn't expect them to be particularly long maybe somewhere between upper 200's to maybe 400's, but when I used to try and find them on Amazon the amount of cut and paste haunted house books I had to wade through to find the gems was daunting, the amount of slight variations I saw of 'The X family have found their dream home until some of them realise not all is right, but one of them is blissfully unaware' was never-ending

Now obviously one persons drivel maybe anothers delight, it comes down to personal likes/ dislikes but from my experience there was a lot of low quality content on Amazon - not to say there wasn't good quality stuff as well, there was, but I was finding rooting it out from the rest was getting more and more difficult!

[Graham44]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Yes. Much like I don't care what Big Vegetable is facing when I buy my radishes.


It's not even that. "Authors I like" is not really a thing I relate to. I don't get hung up on having favorite authors. All authors tend to eventually bore me if they write enough books. So no, I don't really care if authors I'm currently reading don't have long term success. New authors ones write good books all the time. I'll read those.


If, if, if. I prefer to not jump to the conclusion that the sky is falling when there's no real evidence that it is. Humans are still writing and you and I are still reading their work. Is that not enough?

I guess we just have different ways of looking at the world, I do care about where stuff comes from, how it's produced and the conditions of the industry, sometimes there's nothing I can do about it, sometimes there is. And if a new variable is introduced that could potentially have negative impacts I think it should be discussed and followed/ monitored. Reading has bought me an immeasurable amount of pleasure in my life, it's my biggest passion and I have a lot of gratitude for all the authors that have bought me that pleasure. I don't like to think that authors livelihood's could be negatively impacted because of AI.

[DiapDealer]

I've never understood the "infinite slushpile to wade through" mindset. Even before the explosion of self-publishing, no reader was guaranteed of being able to randomly pull a gem out of the pile and start reading. The only thing the old system guaranteed is that whatever you randomly selected would probably be competently written. I don't know about anybody else, but "competently written" is not nearly enough to get me excited about a book. Sorting through drivel isn't hard for me. It's trying to sort through piles of competently written (but utterly uninspiring) books that wears me down.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Graham44

I don't like to think that authors livelihood's could be negatively impacted because of AI.

Then don't think it. You have no evidence they will be.

[Graham44]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Then don't think it. You have no evidence they will be.

Thanks but I think I will stick to deciding for myself what I think is good or bad when forming opinions for any given subject as opposed to forming my opinions on what someone else believes I should think.