For AI written content I have a very low tolerance. I bounce right away when I notice I'm reading generated content, especially if it tries to be an essay or anything else than direct answer to my question at hand.

When it comes to books, I avoid anything written by an author debuting after 2022 unless there is a strong recommendation by someone close.

As for genres, it has made me read less purely technical books. My assumption is that I can learn enough of the subject as I go by chatting with a model.

• mtrifonov

  last Monday at 6:33 AM

  Generated content in of itself doesn't really bother me at all. I prefer to judge based on editorial effort. It's pretty easy to tell when someone accepted the first one or two-shot attempt versus carefully crafting a particular narrative and vibe. Even if they didn't technically contribute a single word to the final output.

  Judging content based on how it was produced feels like judging a sculptor based on the material they chose rather than the craftsmanship that went into projecting what was in their mind onto the material.

• skyberrys

  last Sunday at 4:42 AM

  That's funny, I actively seek out books written post 2022, because I enjoy the injection of AI related humor and commentary that some authors include.

  Similar to how movies now include texting dialogue sometimes, it's now part of art to imitate life. I imagine modern film has couples who met through AI now and so on.

• virtual-context

  last Monday at 3:48 PM

  Curious if you feel that mainstream publishing has been infiltrated by AI content? I’d imagine the old school publishing houses are going out of their way to filter out AI chum. Especially in fiction.

• dwa3592

  last Saturday at 8:06 PM

  >>When it comes to books, I avoid anything written by an author debuting after 2022

  I like that and that's what i have been doing.

  Do you go by the feels that the content you are reading is AI generated?

• bdangubic

  last Saturday at 8:08 PM

  > When it comes to books, I avoid anything written by an author debuting after 2022

  This is how civilizations end… Like we are done writing books now? Art too? We gonna stop here? Not sure I understand how this makes any sense…

  • dormento

    last Monday at 12:53 PM

    IMHO, not the fault of those reading, but of those "writing".

  • andrei_says_

    last Monday at 5:20 AM

    People continue making amazing art and surely keep writing.

    Slop is however flooding the space. I think at this point curation and trusting existing sources is crucial.

  • dwa3592

    last Saturday at 8:14 PM

    >>This is how civilizations end.

    I concur. It doesn't make any sense.

  • catcowcostume

    last Sunday at 1:18 AM

    One guys stops reading post 2022 books and civilization will end?

    Everyone has their own standards. There are people not reading post 1900 books for a while and we still have new books. Let people live by their own rules ffs

    • dwa3592

      last Sunday at 6:00 AM

      No! The civilization won't end because one guy stopped reading books but it might be very very bad for the civilization if people stopped producing original work because AI disincentivized it.

      • idontwantthis

        yesterday at 4:41 PM

        Go to a bookstore or a library. Don't buy unknown crap from Amazon publishing.

I have come to rely entirely on human curation for the media I consume, because AI keeps putting me in the same cohort as millions of other users, and makes it really hard to discover anything new. AI recommendations feel less personal than if they just let me configure what I want to see.

I do not read AI-generated content, period. I do not follow people who think it's okay to publish it. AI-generated pictures make me question if a website is worth using or an article is worth reading. AI is an anti-feature on any product I buy.

But reading? Largely the same. I queue up articles on Instapaper and read them on my otherwise offline iPad Mini with my morning coffee. I often carry a paperback book when I leave the house.

I believe our focus is on knowledge itself, rather than on where it originates.

It's made me very skeptical of new sources and sites I don't have any prior experience with. If I don't know the author has been writing for a while now, then I'll probably take their work with a grain of salt until I identify how reliable they are. If I then find they've been using AI in any form, that's probably the last time I'll ever read their work at all.

It's not just about text either. I'm deeply skeptical of new artists, musicians, video creators, etc for much the same reason. Generally I'll try and weigh up evidence for their legitimacy vs evidence of AI (how often they post vs how much 'effort' that work would require, whether they have a community or notable social presence, whether there's evidence of them being human and appearing on camera at some point, etc) and mostly support creators that use communities I'm already a part of (which ban AI generated content and monitor people's works for it).

Fundamentally, if it comes from AI, I'm not interested. I would not rely on AI summaries, and certainly nothing identified as AI produced. AI is not creative in the human sense. I would never knowingly waste time reading something produced by a room full of monkeys banging on a keyboard. The same is true of AI produced code. LLMs are a malignancy that needs to be excised from society.

• dwa3592

  last Saturday at 8:03 PM

  haha, i get that feeling sometimes. do you look for acknowledged use of AI? how do you tell it's coming from AI?

It's getting to the point where simply saying something is AI-free starts to feel like an added value. It's becoming absurd

As soon as I realize that it was AI generated, I stop reading. If I am on social media, I also unfollow the account that posted it. There is also a great blog post on this. [1] There is also one other point. To me, everything that comes from an AI needs verification. It goes to a grey area in my mind. It is neither true nor false which makes it very hard for me to learn from AI as well.

[1] https://raymyers.org/post/dont-make-me-talk-to-your-chatbot/

Yes, and the main change is i now weight specificity much more heavily.

The things that still feel trustworthy are very specific details, opinions that could get someone in trouble, and writing that has a clear point of view. Generic correctness is cheap now, so it doesn't carry the same weight it used to.

I skip if I realise or come to know it's an AI-generated text or image. Especially images.

So, I typically follow blogs from people I already knew (online) pre 2022. In that regard, I'm sure about the quality of such places.

I don't have social media accounts (HN counts as one?) so whatever happens in IG, YT, Twitter or facebook: i simply don't give a fuck

I don't really follow more of the internet tbh: dont use reddit, or read the news... I don't even have an adblocker (which reveals that I get bothered very little by ads on the sites I frequently use)

I read a bunch of ebooks, though (but again they all are pre 2022... there's so much to read out there).

Less is more!

I feel I have a much more adversarial relationship with articles, comments and blogs online. I've been seeing old colleagues or acquaintances that I used to admire start to publish clearly AI generated blogs and I've noticed that my respect for them has taken a nosedive.

The online world feels much less useful now and I've been trying to read more physical books and to generally spend less time online (unfortunately one can't escape slop, as I've already seen clearly generated illustrations and photographs in billboards and subway adverts).

It depends, case by case.

Reading a book, I do for fun. to get the stress away. Reading a novel is a whole new experience. To feel the story, imagine the characters, imagine how they feel, how they think. To really hate the bad guy....

AI can't replace that!

• dwa3592

  last Saturday at 6:54 PM

  Nice! do you worry that you might start reading a book and it turns out to be AI generated?

  • sminchev

    last Saturday at 6:55 PM

    There are enough history novels out there ;)

  • sdevonoes

    last Saturday at 8:06 PM

    There is enough good material pre 2022

Stopped reading books. I just ask for summaries of what I am interested in and then deep dive. Then I make notes of the whole session. Review it everyday and keep shrinking it down as much as possible. That file I preload as memory for next session.

• sdevonoes

  last Saturday at 8:07 PM

  Good try, Sam Altman

• dwa3592

  last Saturday at 5:44 PM

  >>Stopped reading books.

  Because they could AI generated or because summaries are enough to understand the main ideas?- what if the book is AI generated in the first place?

  What about news articles?

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