LLMs and the dwindling number of people who appreciate and value language
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I still haven't had time to look for the article, but your point triggered a question I can't answer. I'm told that the algorithms don't have the kind of memory that we use for writing, They predict the next word, but they don't plan the whole piece and they don't recall what's already been written when they get further into the piece. This means that a fully LLM-written novel will not and cannot have the kind of coherent throughline that a (competently) human-written novel would. (It also calls into question whether it's actually a novel, since a novel has narrative constraints that differentiate it from a book-shaped pile of pages. I have not done a lot of reading in narratology and I haven't read a fully LLM-written novel, so I can't say much more than that.)
Anyway, when I think through how I'd go about writing, say, an email when I've been told to keep it under 200 words, it's a multi-step process. I plan what I'm going to say, I say it, I check the word-count constraint, I check to see if I said what I'd intended, and I edit accordingly. I'm not sure current models do that kind of thing very well. It may be that it's a sufficiently recursive process that such a process would multiply time and energy demands to an extent that would make writing succinctly difficult.
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I’ve asked it for one paragraph answers before. I don’t use it for writing, I use it for learning. It’s fantastic as a subject matter expert for learning new things.
But it would certainly understand and follow such instructions like ‘keep it under 350 words’ or ‘no more than 2 pages’.
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I'm reading this thread carefully when I have time to concentrate.
I will say that oral communication among humans, later recorded by symbols, is at the root of all of human society and culture.
The fact that the educational system is being destroyed- by design- should make any rational person pause, IMO.
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@Bernard I agree with everything you wrote, Bernard.
They have indeed swiped a good chunk of human effort. I think the Anthropic settlement which, although it was a billion-and-a-half dollars, feels like they're throwing us a bone. When it came through, I thought that perhaps all the AI companies were going to at least have to throw us a bone, but I see no sign of it.
The way the settlement was written, books were thrown out because of restrictions on the pub date and because our publishers sometimes neglected to register our copyrights. We've always been told that registration is just a formality and it's not necessary to defend our work in court, but the settlement was written in such a way that it matters. Our contracts are written in such a way that the publisher is responsible for registering the copyright, but has no liability if they didn't. Because of details like this, the database of stolen work includes 24 of my titles, but only eight of them qualified for the settlement.
It isn't known yet how much the lawyers will take, but the judge sent their request back and told them they couldn't have the huge percentage they wanted. Whatever makes it through that gauntlet will be split (50/50, in most cases) betwen the writer and the publisher. (Yes, the same publisher who cost me many thousands by neglecting to register some of my copyrights.)
I think my settlement check will be in the low five figures, but it really should be approaching six.
@Bernard I agree with everything you wrote, Bernard.
They have indeed swiped a good chunk of human effort. I think the Anthropic settlement which, although it was a billion-and-a-half dollars, feels like they're throwing us a bone. When it came through, I thought that perhaps all the AI companies were going to at least have to throw us a bone, but I see no sign of it.
Did the other big AI models train on pirated copies too?
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