[apsurd]

Axios got traction because it heavily condensed news into more scannable content for the twitter, insta, Tok crowd.

So AI is this on massive steroids. It is unsettling but it seems a recurring need to point out that across the board many of "it's because of AI" things were already happening. "Post truth" is one I'm most interested in.

AI condenses it all on a surreal and unsettling timeline. But humans are still humans.

And to me, that means that I will continue to seek out and pay for good writing like The Atlantic. btw I've enjoyed listening to articles via their auto-generated NOA AI voice thing.

Additionally, not all writing serves the same purpose. The article makes these sweeping claims about "all of writing". Gets clicks I guess, but to the point, most of why and what people read is toward some immediate and functional need. Like work, like some way to make money, indirectly. Some hack. Some fast-forwarding of "the point". No wonder AI is taking over that job.

And then there's creative expression and connection. And yes I know AI is taking over all the creative industries too. What I'm saying is we've always been separating "the masses" from those that "appreciate real art".

Same story.

[ngriffiths]

> Additionally, not all writing serves the same purpose.

I think this is a really important point and to add on, there is a lot of writing that is really good, but only in a way that a niche audience can appreciate. Today's AI can basically compete with the low quality stuff that makes up most of social media, it can't really compete with higher quality stuff targeted to a general audience, and it's still nowhere close to some more niche classics.

An interesting thought experiment is whether it's possible that AI tools could write a novel that's better than War and Peace. A quick google shows a lot of (poorly written) articles about how "AI is just a machine, so it can never be creative," which strikes me as a weak argument way too focused on a physical detail instead of the result. War and Peace and/or other great novels are certainly in the training set of some or all models, and there is some real consensus about which ones are great, not just random subjective opinions.

I kind of think... there is still something fundamental that would get in the way, but that it is still totally achievable to overcome that some day? I don't think it's impossible for an AI to be creative in a humanlike way, they don't seem optimized for it because they are completely optimized for the sort of analytical mode of reading and writing, not the creative/immersive one.

[anon-3988]

> An interesting thought experiment is whether it's possible that AI tools could write a novel that's better than War and Peace. A quick google shows a lot of (poorly written) articles about how "AI is just a machine, so it can never be creative," which strikes me as a weak argument way too focused on a physical detail instead of the result. War and Peace and/or other great novels are certainly in the training set of some or all models, and there is some real consensus about which ones are great, not just random subjective opinions.

I am sure it could but then what is the point? Consider this, lets assume that someone did manage to use LLM to produce a very well written novel. Would you rather have the novel that the LLM generated (the output), or the prompts and process that lead to that novel?

The moment I know how its made, the exact prompts and process, I can then have an infinite number of said great novels in 1000 different variations. To me this makes the output way, way less valuable compared to the input. If great novels are cheap to produce, they are no longer novel and becomes the norm, expectation rises and we will be looking for something new.

[lich_king]

> Today's AI can basically compete with the low quality stuff that makes up most of social media, it can't really compete with higher quality stuff

But compete in what sense? It already wins on volume alone, because LLM writing is much cheaper than human writing. If you search for an explanation of a concept in science, engineering, philosophy, or art, the first result is an AI summary, probably followed by five AI-generated pages that crowded out the source material.

If you get your news on HN, a significant proportion of stories that make it to the top are LLM-generated. If you open a newspaper... a lot of them are using LLMs too. LLM-generated books are ubiquitous on Amazon. So what kind of competition / victory are we talking about? The satisfaction of writing better for an audience of none?

[plastic-enjoyer]

> "Post truth" is one I'm most interested in.

I have this theory that the post-truth era began with the invention of the printing press and gained iteratively more traction with each revolution in information technology.

[robot-wrangler]

Doesn't matter when post-truth started because it's now over, and it's more accurate to characterize this era as "post-rationality". Most people do seem to understand this, but we are in different stages of grief about it.

[Finbel]

So slightly before 1440 was peak Truth for humanity?

[atommclain]

Maybe I’m viewing truth too narrowly, but I feel like the printing press brought us as close as we could come to a “truth era”. Authorship of text, and the friction and cost involved with publishing seems to bend towards transmitting truth. I guess how are you evaluating or measuring truth?

[yannyu]

I think you're right, but I also think it's worthwhile to look at Edward Bernays in the early 1900s and his specific influence on how companies and governments to this day shape deliberately shape public opinion in their favor. There's an argument that his work and the work of his contemporaries was a critical point in the flooding of the collective consciousness with what we would consider propaganda, misinformation, or covert advertising.

[meetingthrower]

Same. New yorker is the other mag I subscribed to.

Until 3 weeks ago I had a high cortisol inducing morning read: nyt, wsj, axios, politico. I went on a weeklong camping trip with no phone and haven't logged into those yet. It's fine.

[KittenInABox]

I agree with this in general but with caveats. For example I think reading national-sized news every day sucks. But if you're of a specific demographic it might be useful to keep pretty up to date on nuanced issues, like if you're a gun owner you will probably want to keep up to date on gun licensing in your area. Or if you're a trans person it's pretty important nowadays to be very aware of laws being passed to dictate your legally going to whatever bathroom or something.

[jihadjihad]

People think I'm nuts when I tell them I ditched subscriptions for those sites and only check them maybe once a week, if that.

But what you said is 100% true, it's fine. When things in your life provide net negative value it's in your best interest to ditch them.