Can AI REPLACE Human Authors

[@InThisStyleGMinor]

This is a really good take as everyone is losing their minds

[@nathwhit3980]

Yeah, but... Loosing your mind is more fun!!!

[@r-giireactions2235]

Does it matter, as long as I'm still writing the stories I love, AI has not replaced me.

[@stgr6669]

I think, a company like Amazon will create an AI that writes individual books for single customers. The customer may give his preferences or the AI will find out by anylyzing what this sprecific reader bought or reviewed, maybe even which pages he skimmed and which he read multiple times. Then the customer orders, for example, "a thriller in the style of Agatha Christie, with a taste of Quentin Tarantino, taking place in Barcelona in 1970 and featuring a main character with a wooden leg", and the AI will write such a book. It may be perfect for this reader, and if not, the machine will learn from his negative review. It's a dystopian idea though, in my opinion. It will miss the soul, which comes from an author who wants to tell a story, not just sell one.

[@leon-cn5kb]

this sounds like an awesome book idea tbh like some brave new world type of story

[@russellcameronthomas2116]

Even more likely: Amazon or other big company uses AI to write a novel where an individual consumer/reader (w/ all their characteristics) is the protagonist/main character. That would be the "all about ME" book.

[@russellcameronthomas2116]

good points overall. But at 5:47 you say "pause this video and *text* somebody". Notice "...text...". I just want to remind everyone that instant messaging, a.k.a. "text" is a low bandwidth + limited interaction way of communicating and relating. It is not much better than the imaginary relationships that he describes earlier. Instead, how about meet your friends and family *in person* and spend quality time with them in meaningful activities. Same for new people you meet IRL ("in real life").

[@AdditiveOutlier]

Your first argument only covers the case where human-written books remain superior to those written by ML algorithms forever, which - in the long run - is not certain. Sure, AI isn't likely to surpass Sanderson in a year or two, but in a decade? In twenty years? The second point you bring up is extremely interesting even outside of this context, but ultimately doesn't account for much. While I agree that complete elimination of books written by actual people is pretty much impossible for the reasons you brought up, it could only allow select few human authors to survive. The reason is simple - when publishers realize that out of two equally good books people prefer the one written by a human, say, 90% of the time, they will dress their AIs up to appear like people. They will give them pen names, portraits, false interviews, they will plant people as fake authors, anything they can do to trick the customers into buying their books, as long as it's not illegal (or as long as nothing illegal can be proven). This will result in a situation where getting to know whether the author is an actual person takes actual effort. And how much effort would you be willing to put into a detailed investigation just to know whether someone exists? What if it was actually really difficult to say with certainty, not unless the author is a well-know public persona? Take into consideration all the misinformation in the world right now. Then, imagine it being worse. And then, realize that there will be more and more ways to falsify information in the digital sphere in the future, when it will be an even bigger part of everyone's lives than it has ever been before. Your Sandersons, Martins, Rowlings, they will remain safe, just as you say. But what about the small authors? Those with maybe a a few thousands of readers across the world? How could they prove that they are more real than an AI behind some other book? Especially if there is a real person pretending to have written that AI book, planted by the publisher, or even lying on their own? And what if AI books were actually superior to the human ones? How much would the authors be willing to invest their time into this game? And the readers? When you also take into consideration the fact that people are more likely to form para-social relationships with a select few, successful people. The situation you're describing isn't one where people decimate the AI. It's one where the top one thousand writers are humans, and every other author is an unknown, which - in the long term - means that everyone less popular than the very best would get squeezed out of the business by the AI. Humans would remain the top 1%, but 95% of everyone else would be AI. And would you even care that much in the first place, really? What if I told you that this small essay was mostly generated by a crude algorithm I trained on my GPU, and I only altered the wording to be less stiff and artificial? Have you considered such a possibility thus far? Would you have considered that if I hadn't mentioned it? And would it affect the merit behind these words? And if it was just entertainment; just a fun, simple story to escape boredom? Wouldn't it be even more okay if it was generated in a matter of seconds by an algorithm, instead of crafted meticulously by a human? For the last point you bring up, I don't think that books will be eliminated this easily. They survived for this long for a reason. And once you think about it, every version of entertainment media we've experienced as humanity is essentially different 'upgrades' of the same thing. What is a a film if not the same thing as an ancient Greek play? It's people acting as characters they are not, on a stage. The core of those things is the same - fake people in fake circumstances (in case of fiction, at least) for the sake of entertainment. The only difference between a film and a play is the camera, and that's for practical reasons - to eliminate errors, and to increase the scope and the number of viewers. And even when AI overtakes this aspect of art, it will still be essentially the same thing - fake people in fake circumstances. How much of a difference would it make if the pixels on your screen have never been a person? And regardless of that, it would still be the same thing at the core. Same with books. Just like you can't eliminate the nature of humans as beings operating visually, you can't quite eliminate text. And if you can't eliminate text, you can't eliminate books. The nature of what exactly a book is can change, just like a play evolved into a movie, and then, branched out into animation. A book has changed from its paper version to a digital one, but it's still a book. The same with music. It's essentially identical to what it has been for a million years - just a bunch of sounds aligned in a pleasant composition. The only way I can see books being eliminated entirely is if there was a substitute for text as a technology. But since humans are so visual, I don't think it's possible to come up with something more efficient in conveying precise information than writing. At least, until we start augmenting ourselves with machines. Then that's a different story. But until then, I think books will continue to exist, and the threat of ML algorithms overtaking the industry is a much more real and close threat. Wow, that turned out long. I don't expect anyone to read it because I wouldn't, but it was still a fun little exercise, so I'm gonna leave it here. It'll help you just a tiny bit as a creator, regardless.

[@RachelsDollies]

Still a better read than Twilight fanfiction.

[@AdditiveOutlier]

​@@RachelsDolliesDoesn't say much since it's a low bar lmao.

[@nathwhit3980]

As long as humans exist there will continue to be demand for fun and exciting stories. And if AI does produce content that is more interesting and appealing than what actual humans can create, then what does that say about us?

[@nathwhit3980]

50 shades of gray started out as twilight fan fiction, so...

[@nathwhit3980]

AI is really just Algorithmic Information. Not actual Artificial intelligence. Humans will still be necessary... for now. But what happens in 100 years? Look at cars 100 years ago and cars now. Tele-communication 100 years ago and Tele-communication now. Computers have not been around for 100 years, but they will continue to dramatically improve... and who knows where that will lead us? Writing itself has undergone dramatic changes itself over the years... What am I saying? No one can accurately predict the future. Hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Good luck out there.

[@aaronhunyady]

I think that if human authors will be able to continue selling books, it will be because of readers' desire for human connection, which includes the desire to see the world through another human's eyes. I believe that, before too long, AI will be able to write better-constructed books than humans can. The genres that will be dominated by AI books are the wish-fulfillment, formulaic genres like romance, action thrillers, in which the reader cares more about the experience than about who the author is. Any genre that has significant content on interpreting the human experience may never be dominated by AI. In other words, that mild form of parasociality that readers feel for their favorite human authors might be the only thing that saves the profession. Until robots become sentient, then we're screwed.

[@v.w.singer9638]

I disagree to some extent regarding how many books there are. Most people have specific tastes in authors as well as genre. This drastically reduces the number of books available. What I do see as possible is the growth of a "penny dreadful" genre of AI produced books. For instance there used to be the Gold Eagle imprint of "men's action" novels. They featured the adventures of a hero or teams of heroes, churned out based on a template and formula, similar to a TV series. Once developed, the human author(s) would only need to pick a villain du jour and the villainous threat, and the AI (hopefully) would do the rest.