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Not super related but a friend of the family I’m visiting stopped by yesterday and was bragging about her son, who recently prompted an LLM to write a fantasy series “in the style of the Witcher”, did some loose editing, and published the books on amazon. She wrapped up with “He did some research and it isn’t even plagiarism!”
I tried to look occupied with something else, but she explicitly called out to me “What do you think?” It took everything I had not to lunch into an anti-AI rant starting with “Actually, his pollution of the literary space syphoning money away from real authors is plagiarism, and here’s why!”
This is a perfect example of why AI will succeed no matter how mind-numbingly stupid it is: it will give people the warm and fuzzies without having to do jack shit. Yes, they “prompted” the LLM. Yes, they “edited” the output, and yes it was published on the biggest fucking commercial website to exist in the history of man. All of those “achievements” pale in comparison to writing an actual book with your own creativity and words and finesse. But since most people can’t expect themselves or their offspring to pull off such a difficult feat, this ‘second-place’ surrogate will do just fine and so we will all pay with what few resources we haven’t already annihilated in order to keep the gears grinding a little longer. 🙏
I weep. It was excruciatingly hard already to find someone interested in your work to bring it to market, agents literally drown in awesome books they can’t publish profitably. A perfect example - A Confederacy Of Dunces - couldn’t find an agent/publisher until after the writer’s death, then immediately won a pulitzer. this was the late 60’s-70s iirc.
Now add the torrent of new writers with an interconnected world wide network.
Then add the tsunami of AI garbage.
We’re going to lose masterpieces because of that tsunami, and instead we’ll get AI garbage.
Not just in this field. Crap is drowning out real work in the sciences as well as arts. Both in terms of where funding goes as well as the output. It’s a cultural disaster.
scientific publishing was hurting bad (signal to noise and ethics issues) before AI… yeah, this is gonna be really bad.
The web also got bad before AI. The last time you could do a web search and find pages written by enthusiastic experts and hobbyists just sharing what they have to say on the topic of your query was, like, 2005. Then, it flipped. The advent of web ads meant people could easily make money from publishing websites. Sounds great. Except it brought in people whose main goal was making money, not sharing what they love. So then the results of your queries are links to pages covering the topic in the most superficial way and the author is a total nobody if you even know who the author is. There are businesses who figure out what users are searching for and then vomit out websites targeting those popular queries.
The same happened to YouTube. Like 99% of YouTube at this point has to be video essay channels with clickbait videos on superficial topics way longer than they need to be and released on a very frequent schedule. Early YouTube was one hit wonders. Ain’t no incentive to publish regularly without ad revenue.
The good was being drown out by the bad before AI. AI is only accelerating it.
The participants in this are so selfishly rotten. I can’t imagine I’d be able to sleep at night.
This generation of AI won’t “succeed”, I will be surprised if any current companies survive the eventual bubble pop. The LLMs will survive obviously as any other useful tech does.
With the amount they have been funded, borrowed and valued at they need to replace a mass of workers with “Agentic AI” to make the trillions of return they expect/need in like 4 years from now. LLMs doing this is a pipe dream, more GPUs won’t make an LLM sentient. And every other use case is a losing proposition for these companies.
and yes it was published on the biggest fucking commercial website to exist in the history of man.
that doesn’t mean it will be bought and read, not in the large numbers, so hold your horses there.
and i have to say i find the story not very trustworthy. i can’t imagine that llm would generate such long text and it would make enough sense that editing it wouldn’t need more work than writing the text from scratch.
Lol show me one example where ai is decent. It is nowhere close to talented people. Maybe on uni student level
“Maybe next he can try writting a book! :)” then stare into their soul
Gross. I would be dissapointed if that was my son
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Assuming he’s a kid, that’s a bit of a shitty take. Mom likely understands about half of what’s going on and just proud he did something that’s not watching brain rot YouTube.
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It took everything I had not to lunch into an anti-AI rant
Why did you hold back? It would be a lot better to just be honest about it.
Just let it go and don’t even ask for the book title is probably enough between 2 old friends.
I don’t know this woman, but she’s close with people I care about and responding to her bragging about her son with “His actions are terrible and here’s why” would have stirred up drama. I’m not going to convince her that I’m right and her son is wrong in the five minutes we had together.
Sounds like two failed abortions in two generations.
How many Netflix films have you made? Or are you just poor?
Oh they offered me, but you know I had to turn it down so that her dear son could have an equal chance at it.
I tried, but apparently it wasn’t “second screen” enough.
MVP comment right here. Netflix deliberately makes background noise instead of movies
I mean it’s true. She doesn’t like hearing it.
It’s like the old craft system. A cobblers son was most likely to be a cobbler because they grew up around the skills tools and equipment. If a parent has a high level of skill and resources it’s way easier to teach it to a kid for a kid and for them to succeed.
I mean I would loved to have a parent in a position to help fund and guide my first business venture like that kids has.
If I was successful, I would do that for my kids.
My parents and grandparents taught me how to go bankrupt…
Step 1: Mortgage inherited assets to follow the latest fad.
Step 2: Make no profit but spend tons money.
Step 3: Accept government handouts right and left but still lose money.
Step 4: Go bankrupt and lose everything you inherited.
Step 5: Blame everyone else for your own stupidity. Extra emphasis on people with darker skin color.
There’s a difference between skills based on practice and exposure because of your prarents, and then merely fact that your parents are rich and famous. I don’t blame the kid for taking advantage of the opportunity they got, no worries there. At the same time, it’s not a level playing field, so we should not pretend it is.
Life isn’t even close to a level playing field. The family you are born into had the greatest effect on your future success than nearly any other factor.
Would you then deny that your kid has a leg up on others if you did do all that?
I mean likely. I live in a better school district than most and have time to spend to help my kids with homework. I usually attribute all kid success to kid efforts. Don’t foresee myself as an adult going full narcissist and claiming credit,even partial, for the kid success.
It would be up to them to publicly acknowledge what they had other didn’t. Otherwise it’s kneecapping their achievements.
In her son’s case it’s going beyond that. She didn’t just encourage him to be an actor, use her connections to get him singing and acting lessons and get him in the door for auditions.
She herself got a movie made for him. You know she didn’t do rounds of interviews and decide at the end that her son was the best fit for the part. She set out to make a movie for him.
I wonder what she thinks a “leg up” means.
she know what it means, she just doesnt want to be called out for giving nepo baby a role.
As someone saw the first 25 minutes of the film, I can say … I hate nepotism.
Thanks for answering the obvious question that popped into everyone’s mind.
You’re the ones giving them money!
I only fly my flag on open seas 🏴☠️aye aye
How does this help the smaller actors, crews, effects people, etc?
Well, first we need to burn the corpos down to ash and rubble. Only then can I help anyone.
You can do both at the same time by buying indie films and music. Don’t forget Bandcamp and such 😁
In order to rise, something must first fall.
edit: jesus christ that was a ioke. I get that you guys are going through some shitty times now but do I have to add s/ everytime?
That’s some bullshit.
Don’t get me wrong, I support the collapse of corporate giants. They don’t deserve your money. But the small creators do.
What you’re saying is like saying “we can’t help these war torn villagers until the war is over”. The war will take years and the village children need to eat today. Its not a distraction, it’s the fucking point of the war.
Sounds like something Stephen miller would say honestly
people thought pratt came into his own, yea he was poor, but he was also given roles through his wife/agent, thats nepotism as well. now hes a shitty right winger about to be washed out.
By the time Chris Pratt got married, to an actress that was much more famous than him, he had already been cast in a bunch of roles, including his breakout role in Parks and Rec.
Yes, networking helps, but applying the nepotism label to all forms of networking (including meeting and marrying a celebrity) dilutes the label to near meaninglessness.
Is he actually good or is he a special boy like Lance Stroll?
Kate Winslet weirds me out when i read about her
Why, does she send you text messages like “I know you’re reading about me, I’m watching you through your bathroom exhaust duct”
Lol the actual reason is:
spoiler
- The way she talked about the Ammonite sex scene. Many articles on that & reddit discussions if you want to get a fuller picture, but the more you think about it the weirder it is. 1. Like why is she presuming that’s something the co-star, Saoirse Ronan, would want/need as a birthday present? 2. It seems infantilising 3. Other reasons…
- also it weems like something that should be kept private? Isn’t it the other actress’s place to tell people about that? I understand why requesting female only technicians for the scene was important though.
- There was another thing but I can’t find a source on it so she’s less weird in my eyes now that I’ve finished tne comment
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Well, that’s good to know, since my son has been trying to break into the film industry for a few years, and I don’t have any connections. I’m sure he’d let Kate produce and direct my son’s next script.
At what point do we stop saying ‘nepo baby’ and start calling it a ‘dynasty’? Because let’s talk about a few.
Francis Ford Coppola is a great director. Sofia Coppola is gorgeous, a midrange actress, and a very good director. Nicholas Cage is a great actor, a great producer, and not half-bad at direction either. Sofia got her start because her father wanted to give her a shot in Godfather Part 3. Nick tried to distance himself (hence the name change).
George Clooney is a fine actor (I’d argue the worst live-action Batman but the best live-action Bruce Wayne). Would he have gotten his start if it wasn’t for Rosemary Clooney?
Would Mariska Hargitay have gotten the shot at SVU (one of the most-watched TV shows of the 21st century) if she wasn’t the daughter of Jayne Mansfield?
How about Sean Astin? Son of Patty Duke, and adopted by John Astin. Could you imagine a better Sam Gamgee, though? Is he a nepo baby?
That’s where I have issues. Talent can pass in families. Why should we be hateful toward it?
I think there is a point to be made here - talent is the easiest part of success. You can drop by bars in any major city and hear musicians who have the talent to be a top 40 star. What is difficult is to get your “break” and toehold in the industry. I think that’s what the core issue is. Their parents are right in that their kids have the talent to be mid-tier in the industry. What’s infuriating is that they are not more talented than anyone else. They have an escalator into the industry whe everyone else has to fight their way up the back stairs.
Others have responded to you with part of what I wanted to bring up, but I also have another aspect to add to the rationale. These nepo babies aren’t just inheriting access and opportunities, but also a wealthy and comfortable upbringing. The child of a multimillionaire actor/musician/athlete not only has the inroads of their parents’ network and reputation, but also access to premium diets, exercise, doctors, schools, coaches, etc AND didn’t have to worry about getting a job at Chipotle or whatever while in high school or right after, and definitely didn’t have to balance that in order to help their family with bills.
It’s a lot easier to get into Hollywood when your parents are already famous, but that really only gets you the auditions. Being able to work on honing your craft for 40+ hours per week without becoming homeless, going hungry, or losing sleep is a motherfucking luxury. I rarely get to practice guitar anymore because my job is so taxing both mentally and physically, so I’ll probably never get better, so access to a producer still wouldn’t really help me to win out over a nepo baby. They could truly be the greatest of their generation because they were able to and encouraged to perfect their skills for their craft without having to spend their time on literally anything else.
A great example here is Taylor swift, one of the first billionare performers. Her parents were both insanely wealthy stockbrokers, who moved to Nashville from a 15 acre farm in Pennsylvania to support her music carrear. She started door knocking at 11 years old in Nashville until she got her first contract at 14. Her family could afford to uproot and move a 1000 miles to spend 3 years directly supporting their preteen daughter attempting to break into country music.
Taylor clearly has a lot of talent and is a hell of a performer, but even without all the direct contacts like a Winslet, intense wealth gives you amazing tools to win at life.
she got her first contract at 14
With a record company that her father invested in.
It doesn’t mean these people aren’t talented. But getting into the entertainment industry is notoriously difficult. Having a name that opens doors will definitely make it easier.
Also having the financial support to attend every casting and networking opportunity. Not having to worry about food, clothes and housing now or in the future is a big advantage (related to nepotism).
I don’t think we should shit on legitimately talented people because of their relationships with other talented people. Less talented people that only got chances because of their families? Well, we have a duty to make fun of them as much as possible. I also think that we need to acknowledge when talented people get roles in large part because of their families.
I think a lot of people who trumpet the “but they’re so talented!” line, don’t realize just how much genuine talent is actually out there washing dishes in between doing plays in 300-seaters.
Nicholas Cage certainly got benefits from his family name. Helping him get in the door at interviews.
But he chose not to use his family name so the movie going public didn’t associate him with his Uncle.
And he started his career with small supporting parts before working his way up to leading man.
He didn’t have his famous mother write and direct a movie explicitly for him to star in.
What does Marx think of nepotism and nepo babies?
I think Groucho was cool with it, but his brother Karl had some thoughts
I mean he worked with his brother’s so can’t be that against it
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