AI-written crap on Amazon and all over the internet (Washington Post article)

[highplainsdem]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/05/05/ai-spam-websites-books-chatgpt/
https://archive.ph/Po4I0

Chris Cowell, a Portland, Ore.-based software developer, spent more than a year writing a technical how-to book. Three weeks before it was released, another book on the same topic, with the same title, appeared on Amazon.

-snip-

The book, titled “Automating DevOps with GitLab CI/CD Pipelines,” just like Cowell’s, listed as its author one Marie Karpos, whom Cowell had never heard of. When he looked her up online, he found literally nothing — no trace. That’s when he started getting suspicious.

The book bears signs that it was written largely or entirely by an artificial intelligence language model, using software such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT. (For instance, its code snippets look like ChatGPT screenshots.) And it’s not the only one. The book’s publisher, a Mumbai-based education technology firm called inKstall, listed dozens of books on Amazon on similarly technical topics, each with a different author, an unusual set of disclaimers and matching five-star Amazon reviews from the same handful of India-based reviewers. InKstall did not respond to requests for comment.

-snip-

“My concern is less that I’m losing sales to fake books, and more that this low-quality, low-priced, low-effort writing is going to have a chilling effect on humans considering writing niche technical books in the future,” he said. It doesn’t help, he added, knowing that “any text I write will inevitably be fed into an AI system that will generate even more competition.”

-snip-

Much more at the link, especially on AI-generated content - what the Post calls "vast, unvetted pools of online data [that] may not be grounded in reality" - flooding the internet.

Amazon removed those inKstall books after the Washington Post contacted them, but since they have no policy against AI-written books, that apparently was because of the fake reviews.

AI really IS going to have a chilling effect on human writers and artists.

Btw, this article also mentions fake AI art getting too much attention online, something I posted about yesterday - https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217887161 .

[Prairie_Seagull]

1. How long before we get speeches written by AI? Have we already? nt

[highplainsdem]

3. Political speeches? Already have, at least since January:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217604200

[erronis]

9. And speeches written by LI (Low Intelligence): see ALEC and most (r) speechwriters.

Just like most sermons, these are canned using bits and pieces from prior speeches/sermons.

[RKP5637]

2. The implications of AI can be so severe to a country/culture. n /t

[Baitball Blogger]

4. Plagerism?

[DFW]

17. In Republicanese, yes

Worse is the English version "plagiarism"

(Republicans don't care)

[Baitball Blogger]

21. .

(Closest thing to an embarrassed emoji)

[DFW]

22. LOL!!

Sorry, couldn't resist

EXCERPTS FROM THE OFFICIAL DICTIONARY OF REPUBLICANESE

In Republicanese, many words that sound alike may be spelled differently at random. A few prominent examples:

In Republicanese, the following words may be spelled at random using any of the three ways given:

A.) Two, Too, To
B.) Their, They're, There
c.) Your, Yore, You're

The Republicanese version of Robin Hood therefore starts with "In days of you're...."

The only rule is that the correct use of them as in English is never permitted twice in a row.

Words with single letters that change meaning when that letter is doubled must never be used in correct English context. The classic example is “lose” vs. “loose.” In Republicanese, if you do not win an election, then you “loose” that election. Conversely, if your (Republicanese: you’re) belt is too tight, you need it more “lose” in order to be comfortable. Another example would be the Republicanese, “I met Donald Trump, and he was rudder than I imagined,” vs. “I grabbed the ruder and was able to steer the boat to shore.”

In English, the contraction for "it is" is written "it's." To show possession referring to something previously mentioned, one writes "its." In Republicanese, it is the other way around.
Example:
English: “It's impractical for a building to have its solar panels in the basement.”
Republicanese: “Its impractical for a building to have it's solar panels in the basement.”

In Republicanese, an apostrophe is used to form a plural, whereas this is never correct in English. But it must be done at random, never systematically. For example, Bill and Hillary are "the Clinton's," but Bill, Chelsea and Hillary are "the Clintons." The other way around is also correct. In Republicanese, either form is correct as long as it is not spelled the same way twice in a row.
Example:
In English, one writes "The Clintons like dogs."
In Republicanese, this can be written as "The Clinton's like dogs," or "The Clintons like dog's" or "The Clinton's like dog's." The only version that would be incorrect in Republicanese would be to use no apostrophe at all. Only English is written that way.

[Arthur_Frain]

5. Time to form the Beni-Geserit order

nt

[LudwigPastorius]

19. Get your Butlerian Jihad T shirts here:

https://www.teepublic.com/t-shirt/41085971-butlerian-jihad

[dweller]

6. Here we go ...

✌🏻

[mahina]

7. This is pretty great

I only became aware that we were listening to a AI generated ‘music’ when I started, noticing my heart hurt.

Youtube playlist relaxing instrumental Hawaiian music is loaded with fake ‘music’.

[Artcatt]

8. As an artist I have less than no motivation to feed this beast.

Processed cheez-whiz art may be humanity’s destiny.

[AllaN01Bear]

10. we need to step back from ai and do a loong think. like all tools ai can

be missued and let laws catch up.

[highplainsdem]

27. We should. But there's an AI arms race, mostly between companies, with Google versus

Microsoft partnered with OpenAI the main one. And there are lots of AI startups with lots of venture capital behind them. And open source software as well. This has been getting worse for years, but the real stampede began with OpenAI CEO releasing ChatGPT - only 5 months and 6 days ago.

[deurbano]

11. I'm realizing odd-sounding articles I assumed were written by non-native English speakers

from other countries may have actually been AI-generated.

[highplainsdem]

26. ChatGPT actually writes pretty well. It can also churn out complete

Last edited Sat May 6, 2023, 05:02 PM - Edit history (1)

bullshit that sounds reasonable (or looks reasonable, if it's coding, which it can also get wrong). Bad actors whose first language wasn't English have a convenient free assistant with ChatGPT. Ditto illiterate RW Americans who can now have ChatGPT write more lucid and convincing conspiracy theories and smears of Democrats.

[cagefreesoylentgreen]

12. OTOH

I’ve had false accusations of AI writing thrown at me. Sure, what I write is “just” fanfiction but I know I’ve slaved over every little it of it, only for my inbox to get spammed by false accusations.

This AI/ChatGPT crap is bad for everyone.

[highplainsdem]

13. AI detectors, themselves AI, are basically worthless, giving a lot of

both false positives and false negatives.

I've read that those detectors say the Constitution is AI-written.

The detectors can also give different analyses of the same piece of text just minutes apart - the same way AI will give different results to the same prompt at different times.

Apparently anything that isn't casual writing is likely to be misidentified as AI. I've even seen people in the ChatGPT forum on Reddit, talking about AI-written reviews on Amazon, say they look for words like "however" and "additionally" and now believe use of those words indicates something was AI-written.

[NJCher]

28. damn

as I writing teacher, I used to tell my students it was almost impossible to use too many transitional words.

Guide your audience along, tell them where you're taking them, etc.

[DENVERPOPS]

14. Maybe AI

is some martians just screwing with us from afar...........

My thoughts turn to all of those move goers who laughed at "HAL"....................

Or, that earth is a project by some advanced culture, that they designed to show the entire universe, that if left on their own, humans can and will certainly destroy not only themselves, but their very own planet........Needless to say, at this time, they are intently watching Putin...........

[orleans]

15. how did AI get ahold of this person's book title

3 weeks before release date?

was it being publicized that chris cowell's book was due to be released?

just wondering...

[DFW]

20. There are all sorts of ways that can happen

It would suffice for someone to casually mention a proposed title to someone else, who repeats it, etc etc.

When I got an idea for my second novel, I ran an idea for the title by an editor, and she said something more imaginative would be better (polite speech for "That sucks! Think of something else!" ). I thought of something else, and she said "That's fabulous! Use it" Who knows who else she muight have mentioned it to? Or me, for that matter?

Now all I have to do is finish it! I got about a third of the way through when my work responsibilities got crazy, and now I don't even have the time to finish a cinniamon babka when I'm in New York.

[highplainsdem]

23. Publishers send out catalogs of upcoming releases. Or at least they used to.

So now someone using AI could use the titles and hope readers will be confused and order their book instead of the professionally published one.

[Emrys]

31. When I get offered a book editing project by a publisher,

sometimes they'll give me few or very sketchy details, so to find out what sort of hell I might be letting myself in for if I accept it, I'll check out the listing on the publisher's website, which will helpfully predict what the results of my labours will eventually produce. Not infrequently, the author hasn't even finished their initial work at this stage.

Granted, sometimes things don't pan out as they've predicted, but that's publishing.

[highplainsdem]

40. I was thinking of seasonal catalogs, books that will be published very soon.

Which would still give someone who wants to peddle an AI-written book with an identical title and similar subject plenty of time.

[progree]

16. It would be frustrating to buy the book and some/most of the code snippets didn't work or

didn't do what the text described it as doing. It makes me less likely to buy a programming book without having spent a considerable amount of time leafing through it.

[highplainsdem]

25. Probably best to google the book title and author first, rather than trying to check

some of the code as you leaf through it.

[progree]

32. Oh, for sure. And the publisher. And a careful review of the reviews. And yes, I know some / many

of the reviews, both negative and positive, are fake. But then not everything one reads on message board, even a progressive message board, is true either.

[LudwigPastorius]

18. "What sort of creature is man's next successor in the supremacy of the earth likely to be?"

We have often heard this debated; but it appears to us that we are ourselves creating our own successors; we are daily adding to the beauty and delicacy of their physical organisation; we are daily giving them greater power and supplying by all sorts of ingenious contrivances that self-regulating, self-acting power which will be to them what intellect has been to the human race. In the course of ages we shall find ourselves the inferior race.

This was written in 1863.

[highplainsdem]

24. Wikipedia page on that:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_among_the_Machines

[Emrys]

29. I've been finding content on a few sites for a while that I think must have been AI-produced

(no, not here on DU yet), though with an emphasis on artificial rather than intelligence.

I stumbled across them in the "People also ask" section of Google's search page, all to do with music. They're evidently blatant clickbait, so I'll just mention one specifically: Fuel Rocks. Here's a sample:

Bands That Don’t Feature A Bass Guitar

In the world of rock music, there are a variety of groups that don’t feature a bass guitar in their music. Some of these groups are The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and The Who. While each group has a different sound, they all share a commonality in that they don’t have a bass guitar player. This lack of a bass guitar gives these groups a unique sound that sets them apart from other rock groups that do have a bass player.

https://www.fuelrocks.com/bands-that-dont-feature-a-bass-guitar/

Grammatically fine in that first para (though if you click through, there's a serious glitch in the next para). Fomulaic as such articles go. And obviously an utter load of spectacular bollocks.

Another site was going into involved detail about some issues to do with tuning guitars, specifically the G string (right enough, notoriously problematic on some guitars). It even featured a well-drawn diagram to show you what and where the G string is on a guitar. Except they had an arrow pointing to the D string.

If these were AI products and not just the sloppy ill-informed burblings of some slave scribe, I don't think much of the brave new world that beckons us.

[highplainsdem]

34. Thread on fuelrocks.com from the Bass forum on Reddit four

months ago, with various theories about the site:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bass/comments/109bsfs/this_article_is_so_poorly_written_and_wrong_on_so/

[Emrys]

36. Fascinating, thanks, and glad to see it's not just me.

I was so aghast at the inaccuracy, and often the text contradicting itself in the same paragraph. that I wandered though the site for a little while, boggling. Then it started making my head hurt, so I stopped.

But not before I went for one last dive to see if I could find any trace of adverts - apart from a few sparse generic links to Amazon, nothing I could find.

What I did find while doing that was the wordiest pile of convoluted nonsense I've been exposed to since the last time I was tricked into listening to part of a Trump speech when I'd hoped I was being Rickrolled. I'll copy it here (no link) as I may want to marvel at it some more at a later date:

How To Splice A Guitar String In 5 Easy Steps

If you’re a guitar player, sooner or later you’re going to need to know how to splice a guitar string. It’s not as difficult as it might seem, and with a little practice, you’ll be able to do it quickly and easily. The first thing you need to do is gather the supplies you’ll need. You’ll need a new guitar string, a wire cutter, and a small piece of sandpaper. You’ll also need something to use as a work surface. A cutting board or a piece of cardboard will work fine. Once you have your supplies, the first thing you need to do is cut the old string off the guitar. Be careful not to damage the guitar’s finish. Use the wire cutter to snip the string as close to the guitar’s body as possible. Next, take the new string and thread it through the guitar’s tuning peg. Once the string is through the tuning peg, you’ll need to make a loop. To do this, simply make a small loop in the string and then thread the end of the string through the loop. Now you’re ready to splice the string. Take the end of the string and hold it next to the middle of the string. Use the wire cutter to make a small cut in both strings. Now, take the end of the new string and insert it into the cut you just made in the old string. Make sure the new string is inserted in the same direction as the old string. If you’re not sure, hold the two strings up to the light. The new string should be inserted so that the light shines through both strings. Finally, use the wire cutter to make a small cut in the new string. This will allow you to thread the end of the string through the loop you made earlier. Now, pull the two strings tight and tune your guitar. You’ve now successfully spliced a guitar string!

Can You Repair A Broken Guitar String?

After you’ve yanked the broken string free, gently twist it back through the ball’s end. You can pull the string end out a little more, and then stick it through the ball end. Twist the string on its own several times to secure it. The ball end of the string should now be attached to the broken end, followed by the broken end of the string.

Although a broken string may appear to be a minor annoyance, it will prevent you from playing great music. There is only one solution for fixing a broken string. It is up to you to replace it if you want to repair it. You won’t have to know advanced math to change your strings. It is only a matter of knowing how to measure your strings. If your strings are less than four or five months old, you don’t need to purchase the entire set. If you prefer to avoid going to the music store on a regular basis, purchase a set of individually packed strings.

It is necessary to uncoil the string manually. If you wear them, your tuners will stay healthy and more comfortable. It will take several hours for a new string to reach its proper tuning after it has been broken in. If your new string is beginning to break in, it will almost always be out of tune. Keep your hands as safe as possible at all times while performing this task. It’s also worth noting that you don’t always need to replace your entire string set.

String replacement should be done more frequently than not. If you replace your guitar’s strings, you will most likely save money in the long run. A full restring can cost anywhere between $5 and $30, while individual strings can cost anywhere from $5 to $15. If you’re wondering, you can change only one guitar string. Each string is available individually. If you are bent a string, keep in mind that if the high e string snaps or breaks, it will leave a gap. You can replace the string to ensure that your guitar is in good working order and does not need to be replaced in the future.

New Strings For An Old Guita

If your guitar is close to the end of its useful life, you might want to replace the strings rather than repair them. The reason for this is that finding the correct gauge of string for a repaired guitar can be difficult, and new strings may not fit well. Replacing the strings will also prolong the guitar’s lifespan and make playing easier.

[highplainsdem]

37. Wow. That's really... LOL! There are no words to describe it.

It makes me laugh, but I also feel like I'm going to get a headache.

[moonscape]

30. Increasingly glad I'm in the

late stage of life, having lived when I did.

The world, planet, is a scary place to this Senior. I know every generation feels this but this time it’s true!

[lostnfound]

35. Similar thoughts here

What’s human and what isn’t, has gotten to be a very complicated question

[highplainsdem]

39. I'm hearing comments like that more and more often. Can't think of any

technological change other than AI that's provoked that kind of response.

It's depressing that people like OpenAI's Sam Altman knew very well how disruptive AI would be, how potentially harmful, yet felt it had to be unleashed anyway. No one in their right mind chooses to beta test something that can do so much damage on all of society.

[moonscape]

41. Environmental destruction

also provokes it in me.

Saw an interview Amanpour did with Connor Leahy last week on PBS which was beyond disturbing. I was asleep at the wheel I guess, but AI definitely exploded onto the scene for me.

This is audio of the interview that rose my neck hairs.

https://edition.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/amanpour/episodes/81ae

[highplainsdem]

42. I'd like to listen to that interview, but the link doesn't work. Just found another:

https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/amanpour/episodes/81aed792-17da-409c-bfcb-aff6015473c7

[moonscape]

43. Ah, the copy didn't grab the full link. Thanks

for correcting. Worth a listen.

[highplainsdem]

44. I'm listening to it now. There are a lot of videos with Connor Leahy

on YouTube, too.

[highplainsdem]

45. Just finished listening to it. You can hear how very worried

Leahy is. Just like Max Tegmark, Geoffrey Hinton, and all the others warning about how dangerous AI could be.

I wish we could have AI leaders like Sam Altman called to testify under oath before Congress about the risks of what they're doing, as Leahy suggested. But I can't imagine Republicans cooperating in that unless they see a political advantage.

[moonscape]

46. As Leahy pointed out and was quoted in this

piece … https://sifted.eu/articles/connor-leahy-ai-alignment … there are thousands pf people and billions of dollars working to strengthen AI and fewer than 100 people in the entire world working on control “which is insane.”

[Baked Potato]

33. I've been following your postings and also

U.S. Patent Office actions concerning AI and “patenting” in general.

Presently the USPTO is sticking to original laws and intent with respect to a “human” being necessary for consideration of granting patent protection.

Excerpt of a 2020 USPTO decision which mentions many times how an “Inventor” must be a human:

Under 35 U.S.C. § 115(a), "[a]n application for patent that is filed under section 111(a)...shall include, or be amended to include, the name of the inventor for any invention claimed in the application." An "inventor" is defined in 35 U.S.C. § 100(a) as "the individual or, if a joint invention. the individuals collectively who invented or discovered the subject matter of the invention."8

To the extent the petitioner argues that an "inventor" could be construed to cover machines, the patent statutes preclude such a broad interpretation. Title 35 of the United States Code consistently refers to inventors as natural persons. For example, 35 U.S.C. § 101 states "Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter...may obtain a patent therefore, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title" (emphasis added). "Whoever" suggests a natural person. 53 U.S.C. § 115 similarly refers to individuals and uses pronouns specific to natural persons--"himself' and "herself"- when referring to the "individual" who believes himself or herself to be the original inventor or an original joint inventor of a claimed invention in the application.' It further statesthat the inventor who executes an oath or declaration must be a "person." Other sections of Title 35 take the same approach. 12Therefore, interpreting "inventor" broadly to encompass machines would contradict the plain reading of the patent statutes that refer to persons and individuals.


https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/16524350_22apr2020.pdf

[highplainsdem]

38. Thanks! We do need patent protection, like copyright, to stay with humans.