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

202 points · 271 comments · stabbles

  1. lelanthran · · 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. Buttons840 · · 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:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;BOY-SIERRA-MORENA-Rodr%C3%ADguez-Wolves&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B0HG9W5N2Z" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;BOY-SIERRA-MORENA-Rodr%C3%ADguez-Wolv...

      1. lelanthran · · focus · HN ↗
        Yeah, but it&#x27;s non-fiction, which means that coherency does not need to be maintained during generation - it can always be recalled from a) the model&#x27;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&#x27;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&#x27;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.

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