Why Generative AI Won’t Disrupt Books. Wired.com. THE TECH WORLD has long been convinced that it understands the desires of readers better than they do themselves. For years, VCs have promised to upend books and the structures around their creation and consumption. Some came from within the publishing industry, but like their counterparts “disrupting” other sectors, including film and TV, many more did not. And for the most part, despite tech’s sometimes drastic (and often negative) effects on other industries, book- and reading-related startups failed to alter much at all. People are still buying books—in fact, they’re buying more than ever. Pandemic lockdowns brought a perhaps unsurprising boom in sales, and even though numbers slipped as restrictions lifted, print sales were still nearly 12 percent higher in 2022 than they were in 2019, and sales of audio books continue to increase dramatically year over year.
What could be more immersive than my reading experience. I decide (within a framework) what the people look like, what the world looks like, the level of visible violence, what happens to people once they leave the story. And I choose the stories that entertain me, the worlds I want to live in and when I want to leave. Thanks to JB's adventures in Fan Fiction I also get to contribute a little to these worlds. I can't imagine anything more immersive.
"AI could allow readers to endlessly generate their own books, or to eschew—to borrow one particular framing—“static stories” entirely and put themselves directly into a fictional world" - I remember when we had that technology in the early 80s, it was called Choose Your Own Adventure.
Kind of related: I just finished an article that is already pondering what a post-algorithmic future might be like. Grim, obviously. But the article is entertaining and thought provoking along the way: https://samkriss.substack.com/p/all-the-nerds-are-dead
I particularly liked the paragraph about the amount of data in the world, and how the last person who had read everything died in the 15th century.
The amount of data we're generating currently is stupendous, which is why (the article argues) the algorithms are failing...
I dunno either <tries to be charitable> maybe it's like a supercar startup, but without remote APU plugins, and volatile octane mixes causing amusing explosions and sheets of flame. No wonder they keep failing.
Yeah, that Bankman-Fried character stated for the record that all books were only worth a six-paragraph web post and that those who went further were losers and suckers. Hope he reconsiders when all that's available are dog-eared novels in the prison library.
The tech bros are the ones who didn't get out much when they were growing up. They look at a book as a thing, and analyse it in isolation, just as they do everything else.
There was a great (suprisingly) episode of "The Minefield" on the raido this morning while I was nursing a very good night before. The invited guest (sorry, forget who) made the excellent point that when reading a book you're engaged with a real human author (even if they might be on a different timeline). Generated words are just form: there's no "who" behind them. The only reason that we even consider the possibility plausible is because the 21st century has invited us to degrade our own forms of communication: to meet the machines half-way. To accept words at face value, without authors.
That feels exactly right. I often get reading feeling reading blogs written by multiple authors that I can tell which one is bye lined before I even check. Almost always right.
Jasper Fforde wrote about this in the Thursday Next series. Story 2.0. It sounds awful, and I have a kindle.
What could be more immersive than my reading experience. I decide (within a framework) what the people look like, what the world looks like, the level of visible violence, what happens to people once they leave the story. And I choose the stories that entertain me, the worlds I want to live in and when I want to leave. Thanks to JB's adventures in Fan Fiction I also get to contribute a little to these worlds. I can't imagine anything more immersive.
"AI could allow readers to endlessly generate their own books, or to eschew—to borrow one particular framing—“static stories” entirely and put themselves directly into a fictional world" - I remember when we had that technology in the early 80s, it was called Choose Your Own Adventure.
Those were the Bomb, when I was 10 or so. Trying to work out which plot decision to make to most effectively kill the protagonist.
Kind of related: I just finished an article that is already pondering what a post-algorithmic future might be like. Grim, obviously. But the article is entertaining and thought provoking along the way: https://samkriss.substack.com/p/all-the-nerds-are-dead
I particularly liked the paragraph about the amount of data in the world, and how the last person who had read everything died in the 15th century.
The amount of data we're generating currently is stupendous, which is why (the article argues) the algorithms are failing...
What the Frak is a 'book startup'? does this mean an e-book, a library, an encyclopaedia, ... WTAF?
I dunno either <tries to be charitable> maybe it's like a supercar startup, but without remote APU plugins, and volatile octane mixes causing amusing explosions and sheets of flame. No wonder they keep failing.
Yeah, that Bankman-Fried character stated for the record that all books were only worth a six-paragraph web post and that those who went further were losers and suckers. Hope he reconsiders when all that's available are dog-eared novels in the prison library.
Nah, Bankman-Fried is going to blow up crypto, utterly (perhaps from a prison cell: that's for the courts to decide).
The tech bros are the ones who didn't get out much when they were growing up. They look at a book as a thing, and analyse it in isolation, just as they do everything else.
There was a great (suprisingly) episode of "The Minefield" on the raido this morning while I was nursing a very good night before. The invited guest (sorry, forget who) made the excellent point that when reading a book you're engaged with a real human author (even if they might be on a different timeline). Generated words are just form: there's no "who" behind them. The only reason that we even consider the possibility plausible is because the 21st century has invited us to degrade our own forms of communication: to meet the machines half-way. To accept words at face value, without authors.
That feels exactly right. I often get reading feeling reading blogs written by multiple authors that I can tell which one is bye lined before I even check. Almost always right.