When you say “prey,” what kinds of products or services do you have in mind? I’ve seen some pretty dubious offerings, but I believe most creators genuinely want to help fellow ADHDers. Whether those solutions continue to work after the initial novelty wears off is another question.
This level of "AI" is more like "artificial well-formed stupidity" and its volume of output is boundless. We're totally fucked if it doesn't become actually intelligent.
I'm already having to deal with clowns pasting useless chat bot drivel into GH comments and JIRA tickets at work instead using their brains and time to do actual work.
My colleague keeps joking about it being a good time to become a farmer, I'm starting to believe him.
But I've reached a point of disillusionment with the current "hype cycle." I'm not even advocating for "grass-fed organic hand-written" code or whatever, but for some reason the hyper fixation on automating writing and programming with the mixed results is just kind of gross to me.
It's really turned me off of "programmer culture" and makes me question the future of all this, especially as a vocation.
Maybe it says something about me, it just all strikes me as "cheap." Dunno.
It's cool "we have scaled" to streamline the publishing direct to readers, but maybe profitable sellers like Amazon should like pay humans to review and filter out generated crap?
Blogs, YouTube, TikTok, Reddit.
HN. USENET. Printing press. Papyrus. :)
Third parties are rightly derided as parasitic, but they also have a useful role.
Imprints, publishers, media corporations, record labels, etc ... the blessing of the brand used to mean something.
I'm split on whether we've lost more than we've gained, though. Some days I'm ready to delete the Internet.
Problem was, someone had used some LLM to write the report, which in turn had hallucinated research...but used real authors as the foundation. Some observant journalist contacted the researchers, to inquire on their work - and the researchers were baffled, as they had never written those papers that had been cited in the report. Real world consequences of AI misuse.
But back to the topic of OP: I've seen some pretty sketchy science books, which tend to get spammed on various math FB groups. They look legit enough, but you soon discover that they've indeed been AI generated. Not anywhere near as dangerous as the books in the article, but still - imagine how many out there are reading AI generated slop, under the assumption that it is legit.
The article makes good click bait, but the substance seems lacking. The two actual linked books have decent reviews. Perhaps there were written by someone with ADHD who leveraged LLMs to help write a book that others also found helpful? Honestly I’m more worried about fake reviews, AI or human.
The content of the anonymous ADHD book that offended the person the article centers on? Well they apparently read seemingly horrible AI generated nonsense like people with ADHD are “four times more likely to die significantly earlier”. Well unfortunately that’s actually generally true. Maybe it’s AI written sentence but there’s plenty of research showing folks with untreated ADHD die earlier and are much more likely to die in accidents. I don’t care to quote research here but it’s readily found.
The other complaint about ADHD outbursts resulting in lasting scars? Well unfortunately that can also be true. Folks with ADHD are more prone to saying things they don’t mean or even if true said in a hurtful way.
One ADHD book I read years back pre-LLMs, was written by a counselor whose ADHD client snapped back something like “I’m glad your mother died” to their spouse without meaning too. The counselor said it took years for the couple to heal from that and never fully recovered. So yes, ADHD can result in injuries that leave lasting scars. Sometimes ADHD can really suck.
Overall the article seems to be “personal read unpleasant things about their ADHD diagnosis” and blames it on LLM tools with scant evidence. It’s about as annoying an article as posts on HN claiming another comment sounds AI written. Maybe it is, maybe not, but crap writing existed before LLMs. The article has less overall thought IMHO than an actual LLM might show.
fritzo•9mo ago
FinnLobsien•9mo ago
But I think there's a tipping point when the cost of anything hits (basically) zero, as content creation has with the advent of LLMs. Previously, someone had to at least sit down to write the garbage ebooks.
mistrial9•9mo ago
FinnLobsien•9mo ago
Even human writing for Kindle eBooks was mostly not Aunt Sally's passion project, but someone who hired an overseas writer for a short ebook on whatever topic is popular in SEO.
Yes, LLMs supercharge that and set the cost of creation to zero, so it's a different ball game. But even before that, self-published ebooks were largely garbage by marketers.
ChrisMarshallNY•9mo ago
The model is basically “arbitrage.” Produce a huge amount of crud, making only fractions of a penny, but there’s so much of it, the pennies add up.
This is the kind of thing that can be addressed by well-enforced legislation, but, for some reason, that legislation (or enforcement) never seems to happen.
I’m sure that has nothing at all to do with politicians, using the same techniques, to push their own agenda.
FinnLobsien•9mo ago
Also, how would you address LLM writing with legislation?
ChrisMarshallNY•9mo ago
guerrilla•9mo ago
FinnLobsien•9mo ago
leoc•9mo ago