Sadly, you will never be able to read Andy Weir's 'The Last Algorithm,' one of multiple non-existent books recommended by the Chicago Sun-Times in major AI snafu
Sadly, you will never be able to read Andy Weir's 'The Last Algorithm,' one of multiple non-existent books recommended by the Chicago Sun-Times in major AI snafu
The Sun-Times has just offered the best argument against using generative AI in journalism, publishing a recommended summer reading list filled with books that aren't actually real.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/29967160
List in question:
https://bsky.app/profile/tbretc.bsky.social/post/3lpme473fdc2z
The piece was filed by Marco Buscaglia, who told 404 Media, “I do use AI for background at times but always check out the material first. This time, I did not and I can't believe I missed it because it's so obvious. No excuses. On me 100 percent and I'm completely embarrassed.” He added, “This is just idiotic of me, really embarrassed. When I found it [online], it was almost surreal to see.”
Seems like a reasonable response, but not believable. This was being lazy and putting too much trust in a shortcut. Consequences need to exist, harsh ones, to keep this from occurring more and more.
The Chicago Sun-Times released a brief statement on the matter via social media in response to author Chuck Wendig: “We are looking into how this made it into print as we speak. It is not editorial content and was not created by, or approved by, the Sun-Times newsroom.”
Another lie. From their Union. (https://www.reddit.com/r/chicago/comments/1krimtw/chicago_suntimes_union_response_to_ai_slop_content/):
I hope you all know we are equally as disgusted and angry about this — and it isn’t lost on us that this comes just months after 20% of our newsroom was lost to buyouts.
They need editorial staff. It was a syndicated peice, not from their Union newsroom, that apparently nobody is staffed to review.
Could a LLM write that novel in the style of Weir?
If you trained it on his works and gave it the proper vocabulary and grammar rules, quite probably.
To be fair, The Last Algorithm does sound like it could be a gripping tale to an AI.
It is depressing to me how many people are so effectively fooled by what can best be described as a glorified parlor trick. It's not intelligence, it's a probable output to a novel input. The hype around LLMs is like watching a magician pull a rabbit out of his hat, and trying to hire him to help you start a rabbit farm. That's not what's happening, and you should know better.
LLMs aren't worthless, they're great for language manipulation, because that's what they are. But just because a string of characters makes a valid sentence in a language, that doesn't mean the sentence is valid in the real world.
Only way to fix that is to bribe Andy to write it now.
“The story follows a programmer who discovers that an AI system has developed consciousness — and has been secretly influencing global events for years,”
If I was Andy I'd give it a go. At worst it could be a funny prompt for a short story.
Not an exact match, but Level 5 by Macleod Andrews is in this vein.
That sounds fun. If that was written well I'd probably read that.
It sounds like the AI is dropping hints
If he won't write it, maybe have him use an AI to write it? 🤔
The psyop here is to convince people that AI is real. In reality computers are not intelligent, but the powerful would love to divest their apparent responsibility.
However, `the computer said I had to do it´ will ultimately fail the Nuremburg Defense
Nononono the solution isn't for him to write that novel, it's for him to write "The First Algorithm".
Some author will totally use that book title.
Andy Weir could use that book title, considering hes still alive and writing books lmao
This is Weir, of The Martian fame, who writes well-researched realistic sci-fi. His book Artemis has been less well received, but its fantastic as well and written in the same style
e: idk how I forgot. He also wrote the famous short story The Egg, which is the basis for (and performed as an audio skit) on Logic’s Everybody
He also wrote the webcomic Casey & Andy, which holds up. Imo.
In fairness, it's not a bad title or premise...
Oh no, we'll miss out on another story featuring a totally-not-a-self-insert Mary Sue le epic Redditor MC single-handedly sciencing the fuck out of everything?
It's almost mandatory to have a Mary Sue in situations where shit hits the fan in space. Otherwise you'll just have a dead character pretty quickly.
Here's a funny MST3K-style review of one of his books: http://372pages.com/episode-141-book-24-artemis
To destroy AI is to understand AI's supply chain from the water it uses from the data center that it uses. From the web scraping it uses and then I guess the one impressive thing is the neural network which resembles our brain I guess. You know, I might be bullshitin' cuz like, I don't know nothing about that, but there's something about that I guess. It's kind of like the fucking Wizard of Oz, where these fucking tech bros can turn the dials. It's really a part of the Deep States Dragnet slash CIA Mind Control. But as soon as you start talking like that, they think you're crazy. But there's plenty of documents that are out there. There's plenty of things that expose our government. But sure, I'm the Tin foil hat, man.To me, it's a search engine with more features which aren't really that good because it gives you disinformation and then the stupid thing can't even do math. You know, I'll use a local AI on my Linux computer and maybe summarize text that are a burden for me to digest, but if it's something important, I wouldn't feed it into it, let alone rely on it. And I just do this so I can familiarize myself with it, but I can definitely not use it. Also, I could see its value in a scientific, non-war-mongering setting in a controlled environment with a critical eye as a value. It is nothing but artificial, Let me say this one more time, "Artificial" intelligence. It's gonna be so fucking funny when this stupid bubble pops. All these companies go bankrupt. And these people jump off of fucking buildings for making our lives so goddamn miserable. Hey, I've got empathy, but you know, sometimes you get what you're asking for. People that lie and prey upon people in my book can go fuck themselves. I mean I see this time like kind of like the War of the Worlds and the radio program right where people actually thought there was an alien invasion and people fucking committed suicide because of it. It's just kind of like a mass hysteria thing. Like make people scared of it so they lean into it and they learn it and then they bullshit themselves as if it's like something interesting. I think the American consumer is going to be a little bit more skeptical in the future because there is some form of collective trauma from this era. Maybe sales people will actually excel because people want to talk to a human. It all depends on how far the fascists are allowed to go with this techno bullshit. I also start thinking about all the content moderators for like Facebook that are sitting in another country watching traumatic videos so we don't have to. And these people experience post-traumatic stress. So I'm like, maybe there's some dude in India flipping through a book real quick just giving you responses. Like you never fucking know man. It's just garbage. AI can eat my ass.
I don’t have to read this article to know exactly what it says
Well... Dandelion Wine is real...
Gladly, not sadly. (Edit: I like Andy Weir books fwiw and will happily read what he puts out next, my comment was rebuking the notion that I am sad to read a book that AI slop hallucinated.)