You'd know that if you'd done any research at all.

Compare this to Jeff Guo (NPR) or Henry van Dyck (Veritasium) or my contact at the WSJ. They all investigated this story, interviewed key people (more people were interviewed for the Veritasium video than appeared), and fact-checked everything with subject matter experts. The NPR story took about 3 months of work and the Veritasium video took 5 months. I was interviewed in total for over 6 hours across all of them.

These are real journalists who worked on these stories and they produced novel work and new findings. I have huge respect for them, especially after being involved with it and seeing what work it took to add something new to the story. At the same time they managed to tell that story to a lay audience which is another skill in itself.

exactly. If I am writing a free book with solid information, well, I am not writing it, because I am not writing free books -- I don't have time. But if AI can arrange my data, thoughts, perspective, and articulate it effectively, then I will let AI write the free book. If the book contains new, or previously unarticulated data and insight, then why not? But I see the very thought is hotly contested here.

Are you the only reasonable person on HN today? Others are framing this author as some official journalist who must be held to rigorous standards and has violated every rule of the trade, with wanton contempt. The author has failed to produce new data. The author is bad. This seems deranged and extraordinarily unfair. The front page explicitly states the book is for general readers and is non-technical. I do not see anything claiming official original research or boasting academic credentials. No ads. Free. No download registration. Just there. The result of work, tokens, time -- didn't 'just happen'.

The Gladwell-style of conceptual-synthesis is the foundation for half the popular-science books in the world, and the bedrock for the majority of general-reader material out there. And this book happens to have a truly fascinating and extremely relevant and rich theme at its core, sufficiently rich that any motivated idiot could churn out half-decent content with. Yet it gets flagged, insulted and framed as abuse of AI, a tool specifically designed as a force multiplier and tool. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, and how dare anyone generate something of value with it.

I sincerely find this all highly suspicious. The only explanation is hypersensitive AI allergy in a highly unstable immune system, or the topic itself is making some nervous and, ironically, insecure...

I could totally understand disagreement, and complaining. But a comment that simply states acceptance of the book as possibly of value, being flagged? Who not hiding something trounces on a friendly comment to flag it? It's gray already, but that's not dead enough? Kill it til it's dead!? I say this because on a completely different post, I mentioned Jia Tan and several of the very concepts highlighted in this book, and I was flagged for it. I have said some stupid shit around here and not been flagged. But this subject really seems to bring out seriously inspired opponents. One would think, gee wiz, security, potentially many lives or billions of dollars or FOSS at stake -- there's no such thing as too much security, by all means, obsess on it, stay focused and talk about it, there are real world dangers here. But no.

Something seems fishy.

Anyway, glad someone had the courage to question the outrage. And I will promptly warn my author friends of the coming witch-hunt and to be very quiet about the tools they're using.