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Comment by peutetre | Hacker News Reader

But why would I buy those books or listen to those podcasts that are synthetic affectations of no substance?

In the case of those books and podcasts, who cares if you read or listen to them? The point is that the books are sold and make the right lists. The point is that the podcasts are downloaded so ads can be sold or that vanity numbers can be reported.

In terms of such music and films (whether created by human or AI) sometimes it's just because we are social creatures and need shared experiences to talk with others about.

But knowing it's synthetic, why would you buy the book or listen to the podcast in the first place? There's nothing social or shared in a synthetic affectation.

In an ideal world, I would sit down with an espresso or a beer, and review collections of research papers on a regular basis.

In reality, between work, sleep and family, I rarely have anything resembling that kind of time and mental energy reserve available.

But, what I can afford is to listen to podcasts while doing other things. Doing that gives me enough of an overview to keep up with a general topic and find new topics that might be worth investing into deeper.

Wouldn’t it be great if someone made a podcast channel specifically for “Papers corysama wants to hear about at this moment”? I think so. Apparently, so do a lot of other people. But, they don’t want to list to my specific channel.

I wouldn't read an AI-generated book (except maybe once as a curiosity), but I would definitely listen to AI-generated music if it were good enough.

Reading a book is a time investment so I want it to convey the thoughts of another human being, otherwise it would feel like wasting my time. Listening to music, on the other hand, often is something that I do while I exercise, to keep a brisk pace and not get bored. As long as it sounds good, fits the genres and styles I like and is upbeat enough for exercising, I wouldn't have much of a problem with AI music - maybe it would even be a plus, since there are some specific music genres where I have already listened to pretty much everything there is (and no more is being made), and it would be great to have more.

I don't listen to podcasts, but I suppose in that case it depends on how you do so: devoting your full time and attention like a book, or as a background while you do something else like exercise music? As far as I know, many listeners are in the latter case, so I don't see why they wouldn't listen to AI podcasts.

There's background sounds and there's music. Music can communicate as much as the written word. I've listened to algorithmically generated bloop-blops and it's fine for background sound, but if it can't touch my heart it's not really music to me.

To me, as soon as I know it was fully generated it looses it's magic. It doesn't matter how good it is.

I see the same with potteries. A factory made pot cannot have more value than a hand made pot with the signature of a human. This touches the very fabric of society. Hard to explain.

I think it comes down to your area of interest. As a musician and music lover, I spend a significant amount of time trying to find or create music that is both original and good. AI generated music can be a competent imitation of well established ideas and forms, but that’s of zero value to me - I’m not looking for ‘more of the same’ - quite the opposite.

Of course. In my case, I'm not saying that I could do with AI music in any context either. Sometimes I play music in the living room, and I pay real attention to it, obviously AI won't do there. But when I'm using the music just as a background for exercising? Then sure, why not.

So you’re basically saying filler music, elevator music, backgrouound noise or whatever names it may come under. Since there’s already so much of it out there and since AI one isn’t novel in any way, I have a hard time understanding why you’d choose AI generated one.

I don't agree with either of your premises.

Too much of it -> No, there are entire musical genres (e.g. italodance or big beat) where I have already listened to pretty much everything available, and they are not expanding anymore because they are not fashionable. It would be nice to have more songs and be surprised.

Isn't novel in any way -> This is not how it works, there are studies showing that AI can be creative. Or at the very least (since the definition of creativity can be controversial) produce output that is indistinguishable from novel, creative output, which is enough for the purpose discussed here.

LLMs are already better than books for exploring some ideas. But in conversation form.

Until we get better versions of o1 that can generate insights over days and then communicate them in book form the loss of interactivity and personalisation makes LLM books pointless.

An interactive conversation / tutorial session beats a book pretty much all of the time. Nonfiction books contain a lot of information that's redundant to a reader familiar with the topic, and not enough for someone new. They don't backtrack if you clearly missed an important point. And so on. It's like fractal geometry.

If an AI agent understands you (and book writing, and the topic of the book) well enough then it should be able to write you a pretty nice bespoke book.

I do suspect that interactive media is just strictly better in theory. But maybe there will be a period of time where bespoke AI-generated books make sense.

The problem is a whole book worth is a long time to go between feedback and questions. I don't see how the agent would know the reader that well, knowledge is embedded in the brain and only comes out when prompted.

> I would definitely listen to AI-generated music if it were good enough

Why not just seek out the original works that the AI stole from?

Because that's not how it works.

Yes it is. How else are they "trained?"

Your comment implies that there is an existing piece of music, which can subsitute the generated music. While subsitutability varies from person to person, your original statement implies for me that each generated music has an accompanying original music that you can listen to instead (of which it was "stolen" from), since it is similar enough. I think we both know that that is not the case.

I know that you likely intended to imply that you can subsitute the aformentioned AI music with an existing piece of music of the same genre, but that is not a view shared by all. Sometimes the generated music scratches such a specific and personal itch, that it cannot be replicated by something in the same genre.

A better counterargument to your original comment would be "It is not an exclusive situation. I can listen to and support both generated music and handcrafted music at the same time. They both contain music tracks that I like."

You don't have to be a big fucking nerd about it, you know what I meant. The generated music wouldn't exist without the foundation of stolen music made by people.

No, I didn't know what you meant. Communication is hard, and there are multiple ways to interpret your statements. It is better to be specific.

To be more specific about the second sentence, if there are any readers in doubt:

> The generated music wouldn't exist without the foundation of stolen music made by people.

The word "stolen" is a value judgement that is not shared by all. It is a word meant to invoke an emotional response in the reader. For example, Stallman has argued that the data could not have been stolen, or else it would not be there anymore. So, removing this word gives you:

> The generated music wouldn't exist without the foundation of existing music made by people.

Which is a true fact that has never been in debate.

However, this is not relevant to the main point that not all generated music has a suitable handcrafted substitute, and that there is no actual need to choose exclusively to listen to generated or human crafted music. Furthermore, the conversation has turned uncivil (the first sentence). Therefore, goodbye.

>But why would I buy those books or listen to those podcasts that are synthetic affectations of no substance?

A randomly selected NotebookLM podcast is probably not substantial enough on its own. But with human curation, a carefully prompted and cherry-picked NotebookLM podcast could be pretty good.

Or without curation, I would use this on a long drive where audio was the only option to get a quick survey of a bunch of material.

That's the same question I have. There is already a ton of great podcasts/music/everything in the niches that I like that I don't have the time to listen to them all. I also like to have quiet introspective time.

So where does AI regurgitated slop fit into my life?

In the case of NotebookLM, the AI generated podcasts aren't competing with existing podcasts, they're competing with other ways of consuming the source material. Would I rather listen to a real podcast? Yes. But no one's making a real podcast about the Bluetooth L2CAP specification.

All podcasts compete for peopled time and attention.

I’ve probably bought ten books in the last five years that I’ve never read.

I’ve heard at least one ad from dozens (probably a hundred) podcast episodes that I didn’t finish.

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