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Vote on which of Hacker News' challenges for AI have been met

202 points · 271 comments · stabbles

lelanthran · 1790924879 · focus · HN ↗
I am more interested in the 18 people who replied "yes" to "An AI wrote an entire coherent book".
Maybe they mean a non-fiction "Learn Javascript in 21 Days" type of book? If not, I really want to read a novel-length (or even novelletee - 80k words or so) book written by an AI to see for myself if the results are comparable to non-self-published authors.
1. lordnacho · 1790928238 · focus · HN ↗
  I guess there's a difference between a coherent book, and a good book?
  I've gotten AI to generate an entire book, with the plot points kept coherent (this character knows that when this chapter starts, that kind of thing). It didn't impress my wife, but it was a book.
  1. lelanthran · 1790942528 · focus · HN ↗
    Please share it, and tell me if it was one-shot or not.
    lordnacho · 1790949360 · focus · HN ↗
    It wasn't one-shot, I answered a few questions to do with the structure. But all the hard word was done by Claude.
    Not sure how I'd share it. I suppose I could order a copy for you.
2. suddenlybananas · 1790930438 · focus · HN ↗
  A French-language novel that had won a lot of acclaim (shortlised for the Prix Goncourt) seems to have been written by AI: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/world/europe/thelyson-orelien-ai-canada-haiti-france.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/world/europe/thelyson-ore...
  Admittedly, I don't think there's any chance it was one shot, rather a pastiche of many, many prompts guided by the quasi-author.
3. DrewADesign · 1790934605 · focus · HN ↗
  Things like this are a Rorschach test for anybody with a significant ideological bent.
  Challenge: “A stopped clock can’t be reliably used to tell the time.”
  Group A: “A stopped clock is incapable of displaying the correct time and anybody that says they’ve seen one do so is a stupid lying liar! I saw a pre-release paper that proved it!”
  Group B: “I looked at my stopped clock 5 times yesterday, 12 hours apart confirmed with the atomic clock, and it was within 2 seconds of the correct time every time except once. The people that can’t use stopped clocks to view the correct time are dumb dumbs that are looking at them wrong.”
4. wongarsu · 1790942480 · focus · HN ↗
  I played around with getting AI to write stories, on and off over the last couple months, and I would say this statement is true. You would need a good skill file and the ability to use subagents and scratch files.
  But a standard coding harness and a good agent that isn't too narrowed in to coding (Gemini or Grok work) with a good skill file and a short prompt can get you a coherent book, with reasonably thought-out story arc, multiple characters, internally consistent world, etc. The pacing will suck, and there will be some misunderstandings about the physical world that read like plot holes.
  I would say AI can currently write coherent, but not compelling books. The "good writing" claim isn't really true yet imho. But just like with code you can bring it from 80% there to 95% there with a little hand-holding and guidance along the way.
  Not that I think good writing skills are even enough to make AI books compelling over human-written books
  1. lelanthran · 1790942684 · focus · HN ↗
    > I played around with getting AI to write stories, on and off over the last couple months, and I would say this statement is true. You would need a good skill file and the ability to use subagents and scratch files.
    Would you consider it a one-shot event, or something you have got to prompt carefully until it gets the 80k wordcount?
    wongarsu · 1790954068 · focus · HN ↗
    You need some amount of bigger-picture planning to happen before the AI starts with the text of the individual chapters. And preferably some preamble in front of each chapter to plan it out, and some notes about each chapter to keep things consistent (like where were certain items left, etc)
    But AI can run through those steps on its own if you don't want to give input in between. You have to give it a guideline of what steps it should take, but that's likely just because there is lots of reinforcement learning being done on the steps to produce good code, and basically none on the steps to write a complex story
    r721 · 1790968017 · focus · HN ↗
    >some notes about each chapter to keep things consistent (like where were certain items left, etc)
    This sounds like a "continuity supervisor" job in movie industry:
    >A script supervisor (also called continuity supervisor or script) is a member of a film crew who oversees the continuity of the motion picture including dialogue and action during a scene. The script supervisor may also be called upon to ensure wardrobe, props, set dressing, hair, and makeup are consistent from scene to scene. The script supervisor keeps detailed notes on each take of the scene being filmed.
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Script_supervisor" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Script_supervisor
5. Buttons840 · 1790943257 · focus · HN ↗
  My aunt came to visit and brought a book she read [0]. I came into the room and saw it sitting there and was immediately suspicious that it was an AI book because of the cover; and the typesetting of the book was odd, like the book was created in MS Word.
  I'm quite certain it is an AI book. My aunt read it and enjoyed it.
  I would say this rises to the level of a "coherent" book. Although I would not consider it a "good" book.
  [0]: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/BOY-SIERRA-MORENA-Rodr%C3%ADguez-Wolves/dp/B0HG9W5N2Z" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/BOY-SIERRA-MORENA-Rodr%C3%ADguez-Wolv...
  1. lelanthran · 1790945631 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah, but it's non-fiction, which means that coherency does not need to be maintained during generation - it can always be recalled from a) the model's training (assuming this event was in the training data), and b) any context it was given in an initial prompt.
    The test here was, specifically, coherency, which I feel is going to be difficult for even SOTA models to track over the standard novel length of 100k words (80k for YA novels).
    Maybe if it's a novel about a single individual in a limited setting (so, pretty boring, but we are not measuring quality of plot), a SOTA model can keep it coherent?
    I dunno how it would do with something like Stephen King's IT or Under the Dome (multiple parallel plots over 450k words, involving multiple main characters, with events on every single page needing to be coherent with the rest of the book), but before we even get there, standard novel lengths (around 100k words) would be the test for coherency.
6. bhelkey · 1790959055 · focus · HN ↗
  A "coherent" is not the same as "comparable to non-self-published authors".
  Early LLMs were trivially non-coherent. The stories it wrote should shift constantly. The story could start on the moon, then the character could drive to Madison, Wisconsin.
  A more obvious way to see this is in video generators. If the "camera" turns 180° twice, we often look at a completely different scene.
  Can current models write an entire coherent book? I don't know. I have never wanted to generate such a book. But "do I like this book" is not a good test for coherence.

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