A lot of coders are using almost exactly the same approach, and it seems to be bearing fruit.
Very true, but perhaps beyond my rapidly expanding misanthropy I can also dislike the process that feeds it. I don’t see it any differently than people disliking companies that push unhealthy and addictive foods, or drug pushers, or any other potential societal malignancy.
Just because we can make the thing and people will buy it doesn’t mean we should make the thing. And the more people that adopt the “lowest common denominator” production process the more we rob ourselves of the joy of creation itself.
First, the societal view on HN-approved hackers is not always positive.
Second, society is bad at recognising systemic problems, that doesn't mean they aren't problems. Something with short term gain for long term harm is a particular problem for our society to handle.
> It is not like she is one-shotting books with a single prompt
It's not clear where she gets the original concept - maybe it's an original idea - fine. But maybe that's another few prompts. Which would make her little more than a meat proxy.
> she has a structured process starting from a human outline and ideas
It's not massively complicated though is it.
> plus human review at the end.
Yeah, it's the proofreaders having to work through hundreds of pages of slop I'm bothered about. Even if you assume the latest models are awesome it's not like this is Astra/frontier output is it?
Complicated enough that very few people have award winning stories. Not even books - you can write 5 great pages and get relatively well known. But apparently it's not that easy.
If the society is so dumb that it does not deserve to survive, then so be it.
Are you up for that line of thought?
People aren't returning the bad Temu products, it's not worth the trouble, could be the same with these books, assuming they are cheap enough.
She has not broken any laws nor done anything scummy; what she has done is studied and system and hacked it to her ends: a true hacker in the HN sense of the word.
Now, I hate AI slop as much as anyone can hate it, but if society is so insensitive to actual quality that it will reward slop to the tune of a millions dollars, the the problem lies with that, not her.
And to her credit, it is not like she is one-shotting books with a single prompt: she has a structured process starting from a human outline and ideas, plus human review at the end.