> Ever since, I’d worried that the misrepresentation might somehow have a real-life impact

Doubt is good for the brain & mind.

But either the author is AI or she--Rachel Kadish, born in '69--needed something AI related to write about.

There is no trust between writers & readers. People either distrust and scrutinize or they like or dislike how the reading went. Some don't even judge but just shrug it off whatever impact the reading might have had.

The problem is that the AI conversation is reinforcing cultural polarity, especially among experts and people who are at least well enough off, so any methods to ignore the actual problems, which have been ignored in the past by most people almost by convention, are welcome and this article seems, at least to me, to be the result of one of these applied methods.

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FinnLobsien a day ago | parent | next [-]

> There is no trust between writers & readers. People either distrust and scrutinize or they like or dislike how the reading went. Some don't even judge but just shrug it off whatever impact the reading might have had.

I interpret this more as an underlying social contract: Both writing a book and reading it used to be laborious. Now they're not.

Reaching out to an author about specific details used to mean you've deeply engaged with the work. Writing a book used to mean you spent lots of time understanding and writing about the topic.

Neither is now true, so it makes it harder to distinguish what's worth paying attention to.

I've definitely seen this happen with myself. When I shop for books, I do extra research into the author and publisher for anything published after 2022.

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baldursdev a day ago | parent [-]

Agreed I also think, what unique perspective am I getting if it's just AI? If I want to know what AI thinks I could ask it myself, I want more diverse opinions.

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footydude a day ago | parent | next [-]

> what unique perspective am I getting if it's just AI?

It is entirely possible for existing AI tools to introduce you to a perspective on something that is neither new or unique to the world, but which IS new to you.

Whether what represents is a wholly unique perspective or not is kinda irrelevant, so long as it's unique to you.

For example - most popular science or history books aren't offering up wholly unique perspective that nobody in that field of study has ever thought about before / ever committed to paper. Most of them are providing an engaging overview of widely studied topics in a way that is accessible and engaging to the average enthusiast.

Sure, the more in-depth your knowledge of a subject is the harder it is for those books to give you a unique perspective...but that is true of human authors too (as anybody who has read multiple books on the same subject will surely attest).

Also - without getting all Rumsfeldian...there are things you don't know that you don't know...and whilst with the right approach you could get AI to enlighten you, there can be value in someone/something having already curated that content together for you.

Just to be clear here - i'm not arguing in favour of AI books or suggesting they are as good/equivalent to human-authored books. I don't believe they are, i'm mostly questioning the logic that because Ai isn't producing some unique perspective it's therefore of no value).

	▲	FinnLobsien a day ago \| parent [-]
		> It is entirely possible for existing AI tools to introduce you to a perspective on something that is neither new or unique to the world, but which IS new to you. Whether what represents is a wholly unique perspective or not is kinda irrelevant, so long as it's unique to you. True, but then the but then the question becomes why you bought a book instead of just asking AI yourself and getting a personalized version. Buying an AI-generated book just puts an intermediary between you and the AI.

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JumpCrisscross a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Bingo. I read plenty of AI writing. My AI writes it for me. The way I like it. Usually along with obvious action items already drafted.

There may be a market for sharing useful prompt ideas. There isn’t one—broadly—for sharing the outputs.

	▲	FinnLobsien a day ago \| parent [-]
		> There isn’t one—broadly—for sharing the outputs. And there probably won't be. If I want something made by AI, I can get something tailored to my exact tastes and without the delta that typically exists between a product on the market and the specifications I'd hand to someone to make something for me.

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asplake a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That suggests that writer reputation and the reader’s past experience are of no importance. But before you even get to read something, you have to decide to do so. On what basis? And how might a bad experience colour future decisions?

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dofm a day ago | parent | prev [-]

> born in '69

I can't see the article and I've stopped reading archive.is/.today etc., so can you explain what you mean there — are you just snarking at her age?

If you are coming for Gen X like that, I can tell you that you are going to have a rough time of it.