From a purely economic standpoint, AI is its own worst enemy. Quicker to produce books made even cheaper and even automate-able?

You could have AI generate the next Shakespeare and you'll almost certainly never get noticed amidst the flood of competing books.

It's fun to talk to an LLM yourself, but when I come upon someone else's output my eyes glaze over. I'm fine if an author uses AI to help them outline the book, brainstorm ideas, but I want the actual book to be written by a person.

While I personally agree, I figure an economic argument bypasses the often recited "but AI will get better!"

That very argument is also AI's downfall when it comes to writing books that'll sell.

Why read someone else's books? LLMs are the ultimate choose your own adventure story generators. Give it a scenario and some characters and some conflict and generate your own story. Sit down with ChatGPT and just have a good story time for yourself for a couple of hours going however you want to go. Want to focus on action and adventure? Or do you want interpersonal drama? Or both? You decide!

The LLM just reflects you back. I have a system like that and it can be very fun, but it's become clear that it will just lie to try to make me happy. One of the reasons people read books is to have access to another (probably unique) perspective.

How will you know?

If my eyes glaze over! For now output has a very programatic feel. Maybe not later, who knows?

It's an interesting moment we're at. Circles of trust are going to be really important. The internet is gonna be assumed-bot soon. TikTok is pretty much there already.

I wrote a story about this: https://tomasbjartur.substack.com/p/that-mad-olympiad

Great story thanks for sharing