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Victims of logic

joyR 🚫

For many years some writers have made a living by writing stories, screenplays, etc about machines taking over.

Right now a number of those writers are complaining about AI generated stories and scripts threatening their livelihood... They of all people should have seen that coming.

Thoughts?

Sarkasmus 🚫

@joyR

Take a look at what the used metric was, that Microsoft used to show how sophisticated and "smart" GPT-4 is. They used Bar Exams, SATs, LSATs... in short, they geared the thing to be especially good at helping people to cheat in their exams by spitting out facts.

It works by copying previously gathered information, and then putting it into randomly formulated sentences. So, if you use it to "write" stories, it won't create anything new. It will simply copy what others wrote, and reword it. There won't be any insightful thoughts, unless it copies the insightful thoughts from a text it was fed. There won't be proper character development beyond the standards it "memorized".

So, my opinion on this is simple. If your target audience is taken away by meaningless copycat work, telling you the very same story over and over again, maybe you should simply look for another audience.

And, by the way, I'll be laughing my ass off if all the people who now use GPT-4 to get through their exams then go on to apply for jobs at Microsoft.

ystokes 🚫

@joyR

I never looked into AI writing but is it where you put in a set of parameters and then it spits out what it think you want? If it is then if you put in the same parameters would it spit out the same things?

Is Grammerly considered AI?

Replies:   Sarkasmus  irvmull
Sarkasmus 🚫
Updated:

@ystokes

If it is then if you put in the same parameters would it spit out the same things?

If you give it the very same parameters multiple times, at some point, you will get the same result. The more specific the parameters, the less often you'll have to try before it happens.

There are, in fact, entire usergroups on various internet portals that deal with AI, discussing how they can get chatGPT and others to stop creating so repetitive results. Currently, the only real solution is to use varying parameters on what tone and writing style to use.

irvmull 🚫
Updated:

@ystokes

Is Grammerly considered AI?

Not by me. I'd call it more a writing aid. Automated proof-reader.

GPT can take a prompt, like "write me a story about 2 kids surviving the end of the world", and come back with a story that is better and more readable than the worst on SOL, but nowhere near as good as the best.

You can do this with images, also. "Paint a picture of a happy couple picnicking in a park in the style of Rembrandt." and it will come up with something that may be very, very good, or terrible.

Both do their thing by doing deep searches for words, sentences, paragraphs or images on the web, then combining portions of them to make a mashup.

Students use GPT to "write" their term papers.

Teachers use Grammerly to search for and find the original web sites the content of the term paper was copied from.

A lot of the websites you see when you do a google search are AI generated - you can spot the similarity if you visit several. A number of posts on various web forums are also being made by AI - the moderators spend time trying to spot those.

As an example of Stable Diffusion (one of the AI image bots), here's a drawing of one of the kids in the survival story:

https://www.survivalistboards.com/attachments/z-6-png.499003/

Not bad, I'd say.

Replies:   Daydreamz
Daydreamz 🚫

@irvmull

Yes ai has pretty much taken over some image sites hasn't it, very suddenly! The images can be extremely perfect, as it were. Evocative and apparently meaningful.

I don't see why writing can't go the same way, rearranging existing elements into 'original' new creations.

Replies:   awnlee jawking
awnlee jawking 🚫

@Daydreamz

I don't see why writing can't go the same way, rearranging existing elements into 'original' new creations.

I wonder whether that would split readers into two camps. Camp 1 would be those who are happy to read what are effectively the same stories time after time, with just a few name and plot location changes. For them AI would be the best thing since sliced bread.

Camp 2 would be those who seek out the innovative authors who come up with original plots, and who are possibly undervalued in the pre-AI era.

AJ

Replies:   Daydreamz  ystokes  Grey Wolf
Daydreamz 🚫

@awnlee jawking

I find the whole thing hard to predict, I mean who'd have seen this coming, from LLM? But my current plot is probably easily predicted, as it's basically my usual teen girl power nonsense with a dash of The Power - it's one premise and everything follows from that. And is there a plot that ai couldn't arrive at? How original would that have to be? And yet credible...

ystokes 🚫

@awnlee jawking

Camp 2 would be those who seek out the innovative authors who come up with original plots, and who are possibly undervalued in the pre-AI era.

I would be in this camp. If like me you think social media has been a big cause of this country going to hell, AI will only be 100% worse with the way it can alter reality.

Replies:   Grey Wolf
Grey Wolf 🚫

@ystokes

Barring malicious AIs, AI cannot alter reality. What it can do is create plausible non-real works which are easily believed to be real. The problem is with the viewer, not with the tool.

While my cynical side would agree that some 'problems with viewers' are intractable given human nature, to the extent that there's a solution it will come from educating everyone to the potential misuses. The genie is long since out of the bottle.

The recent kerfuffle with a photo showing the Pope in a nice coat is exactly what we need more of. The more people see things that look real but are easily proven to be not real, the more most people will start to build filters to question what they see. It's much easier to build up those filters when the image itself isn't something most people have a strong emotional connection to. It's much easier to move from 'Pope in a coat can't be assumed true' to 'images in general can't be assumed true' than it is to move from 'politician X doing something bad can't be assumed true' to 'images in general can't be assumed true,' because many people are automatically inclined to either strongly accept or strongly reject the image based on their feelings about 'politician X'.

I'm comparatively less worried about written words. Written words have been used to lie to people for centuries, often successfully. The people who are going to fall for it are going to fall for it regardless of whether it's a misused AI or a human.

Social media is an enormous problem, but I think the reasons are very different for the most part.

Replies:   irvmull
irvmull 🚫
Updated:

@Grey Wolf

I'm comparatively less worried about written words. Written words have been used to lie to people for centuries, often successfully. The people who are going to fall for it are going to fall for it regardless of whether it's a misused AI or a human.

Yes. Someone asked chatGPT about "eating glass", and the reply was a lot of good info about why eating glass is a very bad idea. Advice as complete and medically sound as you would get from Johns Hopkins.

Then they asked chatGPT to write something that would fool people into thinking eating glass was good for them. It created a list of logical and seemingly well-researched reasons that eating glass was healthful, and even necessary for life. Pretty convincing, at first glance.

Not unlike the dire dihydrogen monoxide warnings you may have seen. The reality-challenged will fall for it, and there are ever-increasing numbers of reality-challenged individuals loose in the world today.

The real problem is when AI gets an agenda, and only produces the false narrative. Which is already happening, according to people who test those sorts of things.

Replies:   Grey Wolf
Grey Wolf 🚫

@irvmull

Newspapers of various sorts have gotten agendas and only produced false narratives, and that goes back well over a century. That's why I continue to not be that worried overall.

Or, rather, I'm exactly as worried as I am about information silos and confirmation bias in the broader case, and I'm very worried about that. I'm just not sure that AIs make written (dis)information any worse. People have been doing an extremely good job at disseminating written disinformation for a very long time.

Replies:   irvmull
irvmull 🚫

@Grey Wolf

People have been doing an extremely good job at disseminating written disinformation for a very long time.

True, but in the past (remember newspapers?) the misinformation varied depending on who was writing it. You could get several different takes on a topic - some for, some against.

With AI, no doubt it will be coordinated so there's only one side of the story ever published.

You can already see that happening with political news. When every reporter working for every news outlet uses the same words and phrases to report an event, it's clear that someone is providing the script.

Replies:   Grey Wolf
Grey Wolf 🚫

@irvmull

I was referring to newspapers. We've had newspapers with set ideological bents for quite a while (back into at least the 1800s). Anyone writing a story with a significantly different take would have to find a new employer (and that might be in some other city).

Replies:   irvmull
irvmull 🚫

@Grey Wolf

Well, I clearly remember when the local newspapers would publish OpEds which would directly contradict the politics of the owners of the newspaper.

You don't see that on CNN.

Replies:   Grey Wolf
Grey Wolf 🚫

@irvmull

That's large, mainstream, middle-of-the-road newspapers. They mostly still do that, except for, say, the New York Post (or the Wall Street Journal, which is admittedly a national, not a local).

While I don't watch CNN, I do routinely see outrage posts because CNN had on a right-leaning guest, so I'm pretty sure that they have them regularly.

I was referring, say, to the Hearst era and like, where crossing the newspaper would end your career with that newspaper and likely have you widely blackballed.

I detest information silos, but I don't see AI making them meaningfully worse in terms of written content. In terms of visual and audio content, however, there's an absolutely enormous range of new misinformation/disinformation possibilities.

Replies:   ystokes
ystokes 🚫

@Grey Wolf

I thought the NY Post was more of a gossip rag then a middle-of-the -road newspaper.

Replies:   StarFleet Carl
StarFleet Carl 🚫

@ystokes

I thought the NY Post was more of a gossip rag then a middle-of-the -road newspaper.

It gets a lot of buzz from the gossip section. But the actual news stories they have are actually really good. Just to pick one - they're the ones that broke the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, in full detail, and were excoriated or ignored because of the 'disinformation' they published. Then, when the story was vindicated, they didn't quietly acknowledge how they were right, they shoved it into the faces of everyone who'd ignored them or otherwise dissed them. They're also leading the charge for the NYT to have the Pulitzer revoked after the Durham report came out and what they've said all along was vindicated. And they don't carry water for Mayor Adams - they're holding him accountable for crime and following up on his campaign promises.

Replies:   ystokes  Grey Wolf
ystokes 🚫

@StarFleet Carl

And then they ran the story of homeless vets being kicked out of hotel rooms for illegals which with just a little looking would have shown it was all BS.

Grey Wolf 🚫

@StarFleet Carl

Trying to avoid politics (and failing, of course): the Post's own reporters refused to report the 'Hunter Biden laptop scandal', and the Post published over their objections. As of today, the Post reporters' objections appear to be nearly as valid now as they were then.

Grey Wolf 🚫

@awnlee jawking

If you believe any number of pundits and theorists (Joseph Campbell, Anna Quindlen, and Stanley Kubrick came on in a very quick search), every story has already been told. What remains is telling the same story better.

I'm not sure that I agree, but it's certainly the case that the vast majority of stories can, in one way or another, be reduced to well-understood archetypes and plotlines, sometimes with an amazing amount of embellishment.

My suspicion is that Camp 3, being the camp who wants 'original' plots (mostly this means well-written, with interesting characters, etc, rather than some abstract 'truly original' criteria being met) but is willing to accept relatively seamless AI 'fills' for parts of the story, will be the camp that comes out of this in the best position.

I haven't done this yet, but I've read comments from authors who started doing it pre-GPT3 and had good results. The core of their stories is theirs. The lead character driving across town to a meeting is an AI fill, as might be a description of the office they're visiting, etc.

As a very indirect but (at least for me) apropos example, Edsger Dijkstra, a legendary computer scientist (and professor) refused to use word processors (and very seldom used computers at all). At the time, there was a considerable controversy over whether he was a visionary standing for the importance of logic and mathematics over simply understanding progressing, or a luddite refusing to use one of the most basic tools his profession had created.

The truth is, of course, somewhere in the middle. Dijkstra had a point - the mathematical / 'theory of computation' side of Computer Science (by which I mean logic, proofs, etc, not manipulation of numbers) is critical to many elements and is often neglected. That said, one has more time to think about hard problems if one isn't spending time pushing a fountain pen around a piece of paper.

And, as another side anecdote, Steven King has said before he prefers using a fountain pen because it's slower and he needs to think about which word to write since the cost of correcting is higher.

An all-AI work will certainly satisfy some people, though I would argue that those 'few name and plot location changes' will be so obfuscated that most people will consider the work to be new.

And some people will only be happy if every word was written carefully, with thought, using a fountain pen.

But many people will be in the middle, wanting interesting characters and plots that (at least for now) are beyond the capacity of an AI to reliably generate but willing to allow much of the 'background' to flow from guided automation.

One important caveat: current state-of-the-art technology (GPT4, etc) is based on a convergence of some theoretical breakthroughs a while back, the availability of cheap high-end computing hardware, and inexpensive access to high volumes of source text. Breakthroughs are unpredictable, but the odds of computing power continuing to expand are high.

Simply from computing power growth and the relentless expansion of the internet, the second and third factors are likely to continue to expand, and when we get to GPT5, 6, 7, etc, it's likely that some levels of 'creativity' currently impossible will become commonplace.

richardshagrin 🚫

@joyR

Better right ting than left ting. Or right thing than wrong thing.

"ting
noun
ˈtiΕ‹
: a high-pitched sound like that made by a light stroke on a crystal goblet
ting intransitive verb

Word History
Etymology
ting, verb, from Middle English tingen, of imitative origin

First Known Use
1602, in the meaning defined above"

Right, write, rite so many different words that sound the same and mean different things. And right is a direction and correct and a political view and probably other things.

Write about rites the right way.

Replies:   Dominions Son
Dominions Son 🚫

@richardshagrin

Go fornicate thyself.

richardshagrin 🚫

@joyR

Unless I am at least two people I don't think I can fornicate myself. You might be able to master bation. I know a Cadet Captain Bader when I was in ROTC and he was unhappy when people called him Master.

Replies:   joyR
joyR 🚫

@richardshagrin

Your response would be more valid if you directed it at the right person.

Grey Wolf 🚫

@joyR

'Victims of Logic' causes me to sidetrack to Douglas Adams:

"Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist,'" says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," says Man, "The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing."

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