Using AI to write is one thing, claiming you didn't when you did should be objectionable to everyone.

littlestymaar 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This.

I wouldn't mind a technical person transparently using AI for doing the writing which isn't necessary their strength, as long as the content itself comes from the author's expertise and the generated writing is thoroughly vetted to make sure there's no hallucinationated misunderstanding in the final text. At the end of the day this would just increase the amount of high quality technical content available, because the set of people with both a good writing skill and a deep technical expertise is much narrower than just the later.

But claiming you didn't use AI when you did breaks all trust between you a your readership and makes the end result pretty much worthless because why read a book if you don't trust the author not to waste your time?

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Rochus 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Who wants to be so petty.

I'm sure there are more interesting things to say about this book.

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maxbond 14 hours ago | parent [-]

So petty as to lie about using AI or so petty as to call it out? Calling it out doesn't seem petty to me.

I intend to learn Zig when it reaches 1.0 so I was interested in this book. Now that I see it was probably generated by someone who claimed otherwise, I suspect this book would have as much of a chance of hurting my understanding as helping it. So I'll skip it. Does that really sound petty?

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14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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Rochus 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

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maxbond 14 hours ago | parent [-]

I understand being okay with a book being generated (some of the text I published in this manual [1] is generated), I can imagine not caring that the author lied about their use of AI, but I really don't understand the suggestion I write a book about a subject I just told you I'm clueless about. I feel like there's some kind of epistemic nihilism here that I can't fathom. Or maybe you meant it as a barb and it's not that deep? You tell me I guess.

[1] https://maxbondabe.github.io/attempt/intro.html

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Rochus 13 hours ago | parent [-]

I would rather care whether there is a book at all and whether it is useful.

> I write a book about a subject I just told you I'm clueless about

Use AI. Even if you use AI, it's still a lot of work. Or write a book about why people shouldn't let AI write their books.

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maxbond 13 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm also concerned whether it is useful! That's why I'm not gunnuh read it after receiving a strong contrary indicator (which was less the use of AI than the dishonesty around it). That's also why I try to avoid sounding off on topics I'm not educated in (which is too say, why I'm not writing a book about Zig).

Remember - I am using AI and publishing the results. I just linked you to them!

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Rochus 13 hours ago | parent [-]

> I'm also concerned whether it is useful!

So you could do everyone a favour by giving a sufficiently detailed review, possibly with recommendations to the author how to improve the book. Definitely more useful than speculating about the author's integrity.

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maxbond 13 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm satisfied with what's been presented here already, and as someone who doesn't know Zig it would take me several weeks (since I would have to learn it first), so that seems like an unreasonable imposition on my time. But feel free to provide one yourself.

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Rochus 13 hours ago | parent [-]

Well, there must have been a good reason why you don't like the book. I didn't see good reasons in this whole discussion so far, just a lot of pedantry. No commenter points to technical errors, inaccuracies, poor code examples, or pedagogical problems. The entire objection rests on subjective style preferences and aesthetic nitpicking rather than legitimate quality concerns.

	▲	maxbond 12 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I don't see what else I can say to help you understand. I think we just have very different values and world views and find one another's perspective baffling. Perhaps your preferred AI assistant, if directed to this conversation, could put it in clearer terms than I am able to.
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