the literary equivalent of:
That was the sanitisation of Roald Dahl’s books, which already happened and was likely celebrated on Lemmy.
likely
You’re just straw manning without the commitment.
I’m gardening, what are you talking about.
Could you maybe give some links for the ones who didn’t get what you’re writing about, like I did?
Yeah, those edits were idiotic, all right, thanks for sharing
But I was more keen to see who celebrated those. Although, I am sure such people probably exist not only in the Dahl Estate
It was possibly on Reddit, but you can imagine the rhetoric. I actually do think it was on Lemmy. I believe I said that the Oompa-Loompas being literal African Pygmies was a bit much, and could remember feeling that way even as a young child. I think even Mr Dahl himself might have come to the same conclusion in later life.
This is okay for people to change their views, I think it’s better to add author’s or editor’s commentary in such a case, not censor the shit out of the book
So they’re ruining the original artistic vision, dumbing down literature despite existing whithin the greatest age of information, all while possibly ruining the original message and meanings of the book. Tech bros need to walk outside, touch grass, feel the warmth of the sun on their skin, and maybe try talking to an actual human for once in their life.
I’m proud of my demon spawn
She’s a tech savvy electrical engineer who spends her working hours mucking about with semiconductors.
When she’s not at work, which seems to be pretty much all day every day, she’s out on remote hiking trails with primitive camping gear.
From this old man’s perspective, she’s living the ideal balanced life.
Computer engineer here. I’m similar, spend a lot of my time mucking w/ semiconductors & such at work - I wouldn’t quite say CompEs and EEs are “tech bros” though. Tech savvy? Sure! But tech bros I like to think are the people who are more interested in monetizing tech than actually knowing how to use it.
That said, I most certainly consider myself a demon spawn.
Yep. As much as I know, those of us with the know how aren’t actually doing these shitty things, it’s always someone else who takes a sledgehammer to a screw.
Username checks out.
I dunno - if A.I. is suggesting tech bros launch themselves into the sun, I could maybe get behind it.
But if tech bros launched themselves into the sun we would loose… Uhhhh… Genuinely I can’t think of anything they contribute to society
We would irrevocably lose quite some amount of rocket fuel and metal, for sure
hey dude, what is the prompt
I guess I closed the tab, so I forget exactly, but something to the effect of “Simplify the following text for a 5 year old” then pasted the parent text inside double quotes.
Not reading that essay
Found the apps target audience. Assuming that wasn’t satirical.
Ah you never know. Turns out I’m both being satirical and a certified moron
Schrödinger’s commenter
Well, Magibook is here for you:
What if every book was written like “50 Shades of Gray”? Or if every steakhouse only served McDonald’s hamburger patties because steak is too complicated for some folks?
Thanks, will have a wank in a McD since that’s what you suggest
(I like your dumbed down version)
deleted by creator
if understanding one sentence is difficult for you etc
The amount of adults for whom the internet is just looking to an endless stream of funny pictures is astonishingly high.
If while reading that sentence you’re missing the tongue placed firmly in a cheek maybe consider…
Looks like we found the target audience for that app!
This is about finding “solutions” for stupid people that can then be used to extract information and wealth from them. That’s a capitalist problem. Tech bros are merely one flavor of snake oil salesman.
no.
Or alternatively get walled off in their own part of the internet where they can only harm themselves.
It’s not the tech bros. It’s clients asking for this shit. Tech can do anything and as it progresses it will continue to be able to do anything .
It’s the Clients misusing $$ has and always been the real devil here.
I always assumed that tech bros were the client, not the developer. They’re the frat bros of the tech world. They don’t know or care what a technology does. They’re just going to slap it into anything and everything and hype it up like crazy to make that tech bubble money before it inevitably bursts.
I guarantee you, this was not developed by tech bros. Just quick buck opportunists.
Here we come Newspeak and Doublethink!
Big brother is always watching
But that’s not the great Gatsby that’s the ok Gatsby
Wow it’s like they’re actively trying to make people dumber and not even hiding it anymore
You don’t needs smarts anymore. We have calculators and AI.
Tools exist for a reason. I’ve done signal processing by hand, it sucks.
hipster engineering -
“Man I’m just saying, committing the Laplace tables to memory and working with a slide rule just hits different.”
Calculators are no replacement for smarts. They just take away the parts that don’t need actual thinking.
How is learning a new language being dumber? This is awesome.
Something like this to produce graded readers is a great idea, but I don’t see anything in the ad itself that indicates it’s for language learners. If this is for a general audience for native speakers, then it’s enabling people to avoid learning to read (and ultimately use) more complex and nuanced language, in favor of infantilizing consumers and spoon feeding them everything.
The only use case I could see this being a positive for when aimed at native speakers would be something like adult literacy programs, or maybe homeschooling for kids with difficulties learning to read who don’t have the trained, professional support that one would hope they might have in a more typical school setting. For adults who struggle with illiteracy, I could see this being quite beneficial, though. It’s something that people will often be embarrassed about to begin with, and somebody who’s feeling self-conscious about this could be demotivated by only being able to read books aimed at children. Even if they say “Screw it, I need to do this,” it can be difficult to maintain motivation and interest when the only content you can find at your reading level is written for little kids. If they could have adult materials adapted to a level that’s challenging but manageable for them, I could certainly see that being a good thing.
language evolving doesn’t make people dumber
It does if that “evolution” consists of removing large or complex words simply because they’re “too hard”
They aren’t removed because they’re too hard, they’re removed because they’re inconvenient. They are removed when there is a more succinct and/or better understood alternative, for example “evolution” doesn’t have a good alternative to replace it. Memorizing relatively obscure words isn’t intellectual, and as simple building blocks as possible can often better communicate more complex ideas. There’s a reason C is better liked than C++
Reduce teen literacy levels with this one easy step!!! Teachers hate it!!!
I love that they picked a book that is 90% nuance and symbolism for a tool that destroys nuance and symbolism…it’s like claymation Shakespeare celebrity death match.
That was a “hard book”? I fear for future of humanity.
"It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair”.
Becomes… “Things were confusing”
Old enough to remember when you’d just get the Cliff’s Notes or read the Great Illustrated Classics version.
But now you can have a computer give you an even shallower and less coherent version of the book.
“The highs were high and the lows were low. Specifically for the two cities and the people in them that this novel is about.”
Turn HARD books into EASY books by learning what words mean!
Fuck it downvote me for having the wrong opinion but I am okay with this existing. Looking at the full feature list it has additional vocabulary learning tools and the reading level is scalable which might make this a hugely helpful tool for new or very young language learners.
CliffsNotes already exists, yes, but summaries are different from paraphrasing, and it is very hit or miss with the accuracy of its summaries which usually have terrible grammar and writing quality anyway, making it awful for most English learners’ applications.
Don’t like it? Don’t download it.
I don’t have a problem with simplified versions of texts – archaic language, ornamented prose, and obsolete cultural references shouldn’t stand in the way of someone having access to the ideas contained in great literature. But I like it when people do the simplifying–like “Reader’s Digest” versions, or Cliff’s Notes, or whatever. It’s a skilled profession that already doesn’t get the credit it deserves, and I worry AI will eclipse human work with voluminous inferior results.
I am with you. Again though as I mentioned the CliffsNotes tend to he very poor in quality, so I feel this tool can act as a supplement to aid in the user’s education if free or low cost tools are all they can afford. :)
It’s fine for nonfiction, but I don’t see much point for contemporary fiction books. If it’s not on your level, just something easier
I see what you mean, but sometimes you want a particular story, not just something on your level.
Yeah, as fun as it sounds to jump on the bandwagon and shit on this app, I don’t hate it. Especially if you actually go to the appstore page and look at the intended audience. Saying “lol git gud n read” is being pretty ableist to like, at least half the groups on that list.
Yeah, the amount of ableism (and classism, racism) in the post and comments is fucking gross.
AI is a tool.
Are capitalists using it for evil? Sure.
Is this specifically an evil use?
Only if your goal is to exclude people who you see as lesser than yourself from accessing information you have the privilege to freely access.
Personally having the knowledge and ability to read books in general, but in what is often outdated (or not even someone’s first) language, unaided, doesn’t mean everyone does (or that everyone ever will be, even in whatever “perfect” world they like to imagine where people with different needs don’t exist), and making literature more accessible will only ever be a positive thing (again, unless someone’s goal is to exclude people they see as lesser than them, which evidently many do, in which case, rallying against accessibility aids is right on brand).
People need to get off their high horses and start aiming their anger where it belongs (how about the billionaire owned governments that ensure the population is poorly educated to make us all, yourselves included as is clearly evident here, easier to manipulate, or that exclude those of us with different needs and learning styles and classifies us as “burdens”, or the billionaires making billions more from commodifying freely available information), not join hands with oppressors and stomp anyone they consider bellow them.
This is a textbook strawman argument. The foundational premise of this argument is that the only reason someone could have for opposing a tool like this is because of a desire to exclude others from accessing specific works that they believe hold a specific degree of cultural capital, and, as such, anyone who makes an argument against this technology must, therefore, automatically hold this position.
Which is not the case. One argument against this technology is that it at best mangles and at worst destroys the underlying meaning and significance of a work of literature. Your argument seems to consider the form of language of a work of literature as window dressing to it - something with far less meaning or significance than its summarizable content. But for many works of literature, it’s not. Some things are written to be difficult. Some things are written to be accessible purely to adults with a complex grasp of the language. Some thing are meant to challenge a reader. That’s why every year in school you’re assigned slightly harder books - because learning is a process of continually being challenged. And this is a tool that actively seeks to negate that. If you’re learning English and you want to read a famously difficult English novel, why reduce its complexity to the point where you’re not even reading the actual novel instead of just reading a version translated into your native language? Or get two copies, one in English and one in your native language, side by side and compare the language in each? A good translation by a skilled translator can preserve most, if not all, of the artistic value of the original, as opposed to this, where a huge chunk of the underlying artistic value of the work itself has been drained from it like blood from a slaughtered animal.
As such, the issue is not “wanting to keep the work out of the hands of ESL learners or children.” It’s about not wanting the underlying work diminished.
I would also argue that this is a tool ripe for exploitation in the worst ways possible, as “simplification” is a stone’s throw from censorship. Some group doesn’t like the inclusion of LGBT characters in a famous book? Use this AI tool to programmatically erase any mention of them. Some group doesn’t like that a book is critical of capitalism? Suddenly, large parts read like a parable straight from the mouth of Supply-Side Jesus. I know, let’s cut out all mention of race in Huckleberry Finn. Now it’s just a fun story about a kid and his…“friend”…traveling down the Mississippi! And if you were reading a novel in this way for the first time, you probably wouldn’t have any idea that this wasn’t what the author themselves had written and that you were reading a warped, ideologically twisted homunculus of the original.
Well put. If anything, an aspiring English learner using this tool will likely feel inspired by these stories to the point that they return to them and read them normally later on :)
Right, there are so many different reasons people would find this helpful.
Well said.
Wrong. People getting stupider affects everyone, not just them.
new or very young language learners
oops you called these people stupid. NEXT!❤️
I think many of you are quite unfair to who this might help. As an adult with dyslexia and English as my second language, this would let me have an easier time getting through literature and experience the stories as the are, not how they are written. I get that nuances and details are being lost in the conversation.
But if I still enjoy the greater story, does it really have to matter to you how I or someone else enjoys our reading?
The way the ad is presented makes it look like there’s something wrong with the original (❌) and that the mangled version is better (✅), as if it was actually improved.
The tool removed all the subtext from the original by using this very neutral, matter-of-fact language. There is actual information lost there, not just rigmarole. And that’s the example they chose to put into the ad.
LLMs will also make shit up or completely misinterpret what’s being written, I wouldn’t trust it to get through an entire book without grossly misleading the reader or flipping out. They can’t parse that much text at once right now so all interpretation of a chunk of text will have only a very broad, short and possibly wrong/irrelevant summary of what came before for context.
I don’t even want to know what this would do to something like a Pratchett novel or a textbook.
As far as accessibility tools using machine learning go, wouldn’t a text-to-speech reader app be better for dyslexics anyway?
I do not disagree with you. But i think it is up to the individual how they consume their media. And I agree with the pitfalls of LLMs, I just questioned all the super negative views of this that where upvoted when I entered this thread.
And when it comes to audio books and ai voice synthesis, they might be good tools, but does not necessarily achieve simplify the language. And also, i wish I was a better reader, not a better listener.
All fair points, my issue is mostly with how this is advertised and that I would not want to learn anything from an inherently untrustworthy LLM. Would have liked to use something with quick access to both human-made explanations and a built-in dictionary/thesaurus when I was learning English myself.
Then why not just read the summary of the plot on Wikipedia? It’s not about the nuances or the details, it’s about actually taking the book versus knowing what the plot is about. The voice of the author matters, and if you’re not getting that through a rewrite you’re not getting the book as written.
Additionally, literature is one of the most effective ways we have of bettering our feel for a language, and expanding our comprehension and ability. This is even more true for second language acquisition.
There was a famous Hungarian interpreter in the 20th Century who claimed reading books was almost all she did to acquire languages. You just skip over the words you don’t know, until after seeing it many times you get an “aha!” moment and work out what it means (and if it doesn’t come up again then maybe it’s just not that important?). She wrote about it in this book.
If you were to rewrite the text to remove the words completely you’re depriving yourself from ever being able to improve your language, all the while sapping the colour and joy out from the words.
As for dyslexia, I don’t have much experience with that but I do have with ADHD and getting distracted while reading, and have found audiobooks to be indispensable. I find them harder in foreign languages than my native, but that usually means I end up listening at 1x the speed rather than 2,5x the speed. I used to struggle getting through many books since leaving school until I could listen to them.
I just highlighted that there are some people out there that this product might give value. If someone wants to read a paraphrased simplified book, I think that should be fine. :)
If they lose out on nuances it’s on them, but maybe it sparks an interest in reading in general if the first tästeps are easier.
My real concern is that AI in its current form is not great at context and continuity. I see it similarly as translating between languages: Google can do a decent job of directly translating a phrase, even adjusting grammar a bit, but it can’t tell when it needs to explain or replace an idiom, or which details it definitely needs for symbolism and which can be safely disregarded, or detect when a word is being used in an archaic or unusual way.
So I think this would be a great project for a human with a keen understanding of literature to undertake, but honestly I think an AI paraphrasing without a large amount of editing would would give you a fairly bland and possibly confusing read.
I agree that current ai is not the saving grace some make it out to be. But as a proof of concept, there is nothing wrong with the product presented in the post.
look at the community this was posted in. opinions/votes will be coming in hot and preloaded. If this was ‘tech’ or something on mander.xyz, sure. but “fuck ai” might be a wee bit slanted.
it is a little weird though for them to post something actually good about AI and then get angry it’s doing good. I mean, even Flying Squid is on the hate-train today. Everyone is hating because either they’re selfish (like FS) or narrow-minded / prejudiced. It’s a shame.
“Fuck X” communities are the worst with toxic irrationally. BRB, gonna go start “fuck ‘fuck X’ communities”.
I was all aboard the hate train, because it seems like defacing a work of art. Your points are valid and now I’m thinking it isn’t bad after all. This can make those stories more accessible, and it’s not like the original was destroyed. If you want to read the original just get it instead of this.
The context of the next passage is laughably applicable but would it be stripped?
Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.
Had to scroll down so far to find ESL. This is a truly excellent tool for a language learner if working as intended. If it were available to create graded reading materials in many different target languages it would be worth its weight in gold.
Is your username referring to a “BiPAP” and a “Pappy” (like a grandpa)? So like, “I am BiPappy”?
Or maybe even a bisexual grandpa?
Neither, “lambi” is a brand of toilet paper, and “papp” is short for “paper” in my language
Ohh, that’s an “L” and not an “I”. I haven’t thought about lambi toilet paper in a really long time
I thought PapP was a play on the word “Pappy”. I also have a medical background, so BiPAP is a common term for me. I appreciate the breakdown though
In my head though, I’ll probably still be seeing your user name along the lines of “I Am Biphasic Positive Airway Pressure Daddy”. It’s got a certain ‘ring’ to it lol
It is so important to take the artistic out of art. Especially right now when shitgasming AI is spaffing out content with no artistic value whatsoever!
I saw a great comment the other day that someone didn’t believe in human souls until they saw what AI “art”. The difference between human art and AI garbage made them conclude there was a distinctly human touch necessary.
There is still a wide gap between human consciousness and what they are calling AI. He is comparing a self-aware, thinking being to a program that picks the next thing based on what it has seen a lot of. I am not arguing for human souls, just that he is comparing apples and moon dust.
Our ability to feel and connect with the feelings of others isn’t proof of the soul, but to me that ability is as important as any metaphysical endowment
If you take the art out of artistic all you’re left with is a stick. But it’s missing the letter “k,” so it’s a broken stick.
Running the king james bible through this
This omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent dude created the universe, the world, the biosphere the angels and humans and then kept punishing them for not living up to his expectations, so he sent a few prophets to set some ground rules, but that did not work…so he impregnated a virgin and told her son, a real stand up guy, to sacrifice himself in order to clean everyone’s sins to set a shocking example of the extreme love he expects for the future. The end.
PS: his disciples also sent letters about theology to each other, about practical matters and the end of the world :o)
Omg, chat gpt is cool. I always wondered what was in that book.
Bill of rights next
Hi all out and do the Catholic Bible instead lol
Yeah, this is fucking bullshit, but it’s not like Cliff’s notes haven’t been a thing for a long time. This is just another way for someone being forced to read something to slack off. No one who actually wants to read the book would ever consider this.
Why expand your vocabulary! Who needs to not only communicate more effectively but potentially even expressing more intangible feelings and experiences while communicating.
