how exactly?
it's already trained on the entire corpus of human generated text and outputs garbage
there's not a second internet to plagiarise
1. everyone with any content of value is now blocking the AI crawlers, because they suck up content and resources whilst offering nothing in return
2. the only people not blocking them are websites that are entirely AI slop
the high point may have be in the past...
"Good" in which sense? That people read it and/or pay for it? But people already did, before LLMs: they read and paid for the most terrible, cliched, trite stuff. I mean, there are whole genres that are basically trash, before anyone even dreamed of AI (I'm pretty sure 90% of mainstream Hollywood script writers can be replaced by an LLM; they already feel like they were written by one anyway. This is not praise of LLMs, it's criticism of Hollywood!).
Surely, then, a "good" book is not merely something people will read or pay for. So why would AI become "good" at it, in which sense?
Reading/writing is a human activity. If you cut humans from a big part of the loop, how can the result ever be good?
This isn't the same context as writing code or building apps.
It was made out of a few wheels, the outer one larger than the inner ones, all attached with a pin in the middle. He had written types and characters and events on the edges of the outer wheels.
He would ask you how the movie starts, what were the main characters, adjust the outer wheels containing these items and get the rest of the plot with very high accuracy.
Hollywood is a home of amazing masterful artists but the suits mostly bet on what has proven to work.
I didn't mean to say the people who work in Hollywood don't know their craft, plenty of skilled people who I'm sure would produce wonderful work (and sometimes do!) if given the chance.
I meant Hollywood as this machinery of algorithmic clones, as described perfectly by your anecdote about Buñuel.
Fun fact: we actually don't, that's a leap of faith on your part.
This problem isn't new. People don't create art based on supply and demand. I don't think there's a future where people stop making things just because computers can do it too. It may be impossible to make a living off of art, but we will keep making it. Ask artists today and many will tell you it never felt like a choice to begin with.
I typed my original comment in a despondent mood while eating. Born out of frustration with not having much time between my dayjob and family to practice/write, which gives the LLM's ability to effortlessly write prose a bitter taste.
Reflecting on it more, though, I'm not as bothered. I don't _really_ care if an LLM is "better" than me, now or in the future, because I do enjoy the process of reflecting my ideas and experiences onto page, or, word processor.
And, beyond that, the homogeneity and uniformity of the LLM output is kind of exhausting. I'm sure this is something that can be "improved" at various stages of the pipeline, but some imperfection and variety is nice too.
I worry we will have a lot less good writers or artists in the future. Everyone starts bad, without the skill. The hurdle is, why should I put in effort to learn, if AI is already somewhat good.
Someone mentioned here before, we learn to judge skill before we can learn the skill itself. The drive to jump the gap is what creates the genius.
Please don't give up, you can do it!