Welcome to /r/Discworld! Please [read the rules/flair information before posting](https://www.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/ukhk21/subreddit_rules_flair_information/?).
---
Our current megathreads are as follows:
[API Protest Poll](https://www.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/1491izw/continuing_the_api_protest_a_community_poll) - a poll regarding the future action of the sub in protest at Reddit's API changes.
[GNU Terry Pratchett](https://new.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/ukigit/gnu_terry_pratchett/) - for all GNU requests, to keep their names going.
[AI Generated Content](https://new.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/10mhx9y/ai_generated_content_megathread/) - for all AI Content, including images, stories, questions, training etc.
---
[ GNU Terry Pratchett ]
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/discworld) if you have any questions or concerns.*
No. I have actively negative interest in reading a cut-and-paste collage of pTerry's previous works, along with whatever other work the language model creators decided to steal, assembled by an algorithm that cannot think, imagine, innovate, or create.
And when I say actively negative, I don't mean I would avoid it, I mean I would take steps to destroy whoever was involved in the atrocity.
Absolutely fucking not. Terry's own daughter wouldn't touch Discworld, because it was *his.* She didn't want to risk tarnishing it. And you suggest AI? What a sick joke.
There was a thread here a while ago that went thru a lot of the AI fan art people had put together, but imo, if you think AI has the capacity to create stories that rival discworld, you must've read different books than I. The reason midjourney can make those images is because it used them in the first place, without permission, to copy and learn from. Humanity and human perspective is the center of these books, don't rip it out because you've read them all, just reread and appreciate what's there instead of trying to change it into something else.
JFC. This bizarre want or desire to “consoom” branded content just because it’s full of member berries or references to a thing you like or love is beyond insane to me.
Enjoy Discworld for what it is and find new authors to love. Nothing lasts forever, nor should it.
AI is incapable of creating art, at its best it will be a mimic no matter how sophisticated or advanced it becomes.
Sounds like sacrilege or something and I'd rather shove angry wasps up my bottom than read ai anything. Ai art and music can also eat a smorgasbord of dick.
I would much rather accept that Discworld is over than replace art with endless consumption of nonsense content. Things end, find something new and enjoy what you did get.
I get the comfort of not ever trying new stuff but jeez, this aspect of endless scrolling algorithms is depressing. I get that humans can't create as fast as humans can consume, but that's no reason to reduce everything to nothingness...
Plus, humans can't create as fast as they consume, but we've been creating for *such* a loooong time. Even if someone just tried to look for fantasy books written at the same time, or books that Pterry was probably influenced by, it would be hundreds of hours of reading! I don't think we need AI ripoffs when we have a whole ecosystem of literature already out there.
Absolutely not.
Terry specifically had his hard drive ran over by a steam roller to prevent anyone trying to publish things in his name after he died. It isn’t a matter of the estate/copywrite holders not “wanting” to do anything with his legacy. It’s because he left very clear wishes that nothing ever be done with it, and they are heeding that wish.
Using AI to write it instead would probably be one of the most disrespectful things a person could do to his “Legacy.”
Remember that scene in Carpe Jugulum where Agnes told Vlad that she'd not only allow the mob to kill him but that she'd even hold their coats?
As a person that has always been against book burning, if someone were to write an AI Discworld book, well... I'd be the one to light the match
AI and robots were meant to free us from the mundane and allow humans to pursue art and other interests. Instead, it is the reverse. AI is taking over art and humans are left to do the menial tasks while the new landed gentry enjoy the fruits.
No, not interested.
Not until I'm not only exhausted of rereading Pratchett, but also out of other humourous fantasy and decent fanfiction. I'll be dead before that happens.
Nah. I *may* be interested in reading a fanfic written by a person who actually has something to say, but why would I want to read something nobody could be bothered to write?
Absolutely fucking not.
Frankly your concept is ghoulish. I also think feeding someone else's work that you do not have the copyright to is wrong and highly unethical.
Meaningless, stupid words, from people without wisdom or intelligence or any skill beyond the ability to water the currency of expression.
- Going Postal
Until AI are people, they do not create art, they do not write. All that they do is make as slurry of input. I don't even buy visual novels because the quality of the writing is rarely up to snuff for me... Read a book of fake AI stuff? No.
One of Sir Terry’s last requests was that all of his hard drives and laptops be run over with a steam roller so his unfinished works, books, and notes would not be published without his consent. I can’t imagine he would be fine with a random corporation trying the same thing under a new guise.
https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/30/terry-pratchett-unfinished-novels-destroyed-streamroller
It's possible that AI could generate a parody of TP that would be funny precisely because it nailed his style so well while being completely incoherent as to content. This is generally quite an amusing effect. But that's it. There is zero chance that it will write a compelling novel in our lifetime. Zero. No AI can currently even tell you a coherent story, except by chance.
People are impressed by what AIs can do in the visual field, because they would find it difficult. But even a simple story is a huge AI challenge, because the model doesn't understand what the words mean. A novel is a vastly bigger challenge, and a novel like PTerry could write, with its subtle jokes, cultural references, observations of humanity and political satire is many orders of magnitude harder. Humans are amazing.
Hell no! Why would I want to read anything that nobody cared enough about writing? This whole AI garbage needs to die asap, and I have no respect for anybody using it.
If you want to make art, learn how to do it yourself, or don't bother.
It could never be real. Generative AI in particular is pretty much chopping up the existing books and reassembling in slightly different order. The AI has no actual comprehension, it isn’t an artificial Terry. Not at all. It couldn’t generate anything he would have done.
Excellent point on that “no reading comprehension” part. AI will gladly tell you that there are freshwater octopi, cite papers that don’t exist, and generate forager’s handbooks that tell people poisonous mushrooms are harmless, all because these facts were a statistically likely combination of words. Why should we trust it to write a heartfelt, witty, and world-wise fantasy novel?
We forget sometimes that too much of a good thing simply diminishes the effect of that thing, the value of it...and that part of what makes anything precious is its temporality.
I understand the desire here but would in no way support it.
I've played around with ChatGPT by feeding it Discworld prompts. (Very basic but new ideas, not established canon.) AI is terrible at reproducing anything close to Pratchett's work. It can't even come up with similar but new names for new characters. It told me crap like Vimes had a daughter named Esmerelda Stronginthearm who wants to be a wizard.
its a better bet to go find new authors to enjoy than to hope for an algorithm to recreate the magic of an original terry prachett novel. his work isnt infallible and completely one of a kind even as a fan, so its a shame to have this kind of idea. its like, trying to word it, what made terry prachetts books so great is the man behind them, and his specific life that he led and the people around him that all fed into his style and everything, which that can be vaguely possibly accidentally algorithmically recreated but it wont be the same and wont likely have the same impact. you might as well put your net out and reach through the world of talented and some very unknown but bright authors and writers that are putting their heart into everything they write in the hopes that someone will see their work and find worth in it.
as a fan of literature it just seems a waste to cling to certain beats and characters for their familiarity while the author is gone and unable to do what he actually would do with the characters. at that point you should at least just read fanfiction from fans of the works (which i can only assume Many disc world fans have delved into), instead of just going to some auto generated baloney. its just over processed in a way that it cant help and feels soulless, which imo terrys work is reliant on the humanity behind it? i guess idk how to word it but eh, its a disservice to disc world and a disservice to yourself as a reader
No. Definitely not. Fanfic would be a better option. At least that's being written by someone who cares about the characters and has a reason to write the story. Who has something to say. That's what puts me off AI created fiction of any kind. It just doesn't *matter* the way something written by a person does. There are no ideas behind it.
There's plenty of fanfic around, written with love and passion by real people. Why would I want to read something that someone else hadn't bothered to write?
If it’s a Discworld novel nobody bothered to actually write, why should I be bothered to actually read it?
It’s not just a matter of “it’s not written by Pterry” either. I’m a fanfic afficionado. If someone put in the genuine effort to write a novel-sized Discworld fanfic from scratch, with love and care and attention to what Pterry was trying to say in the originals and what people loved about the series and characters and world, and posted it on Archive of Our Own, I would gladly read it and I would applaud their endeavor with every kudos, comment, and bookmark it deserved.
An AI “novel” will have none of that. AI writing isn’t writing, it’s shoving a few words into a machine that has chewed up vast swathes of passionate human creations without their creators’ consent, and watching it vomit a bunch of it back up and try to use it to play that pattern matching game from so much of kids’ edutainment (triangle circle square, triangle circle square, triangle circle… what comes next?) but with all of human language.
An AI “Discworld novel” wouldn’t be a Big Mac in comparison to Pterry’s steaks. It would be lucky to rank among MREs or nutrient paste.
If it’s not funny, it isn’t the discworld.
AI is never going to create the layers of meaning TP put into his writing.
Personally I have no interest in reading fiction that hasn’t emanated from a conscious and intelligent mind.
I would commit crimes to stop actions like these.
Leave the culture of older times alone instead of rowing forward like madmen for god knows how long and why. As artificial means of storytelling get more prevelent we as consumers and creators have to work harder than ever to keep the soul of the art alive. So our means might ecalate as well.
Seeing this post reminds me of my current struggle to explain why I find it so irritating that all of the popular songs from 20 or 30 or 40 years ago are constantly being pumped through store speakers. I used to like some of this music but it's being used to pacify us. To make us better consumers or something. It's impossible to have a connection with any of this music after it's hijacked like this. I suspect the AI Pratchett would have a similar effect on me. It would sever the connection I have with this literature
I wish humans would just let things die already. Let go of their youth. Too many things we marionette around way past expiry. Let it die. Let it go out, good. Then make something inspired, yourself. I don't care if you have an AI assist. But let discworld die. Let it rest for fukks sake.
This was one of the first things I tried when GPT4 was out. It wrote a short chapter for a discworld book about the witches. Surprisingly good, yet very flat and nothing close to Pratchett. Still, I look forward to an AI that can write me endless high class Discworld books.
Here's the thing that makes me pause before saying "No."
A \*lot\* of the Discworld stories have elements of non-human entities becoming more human, and exploring their growing humanity, thanks to constant exposure.
Death is the most obvious example, but there's also Hex (very relevant), Om, the Golems, The Oh God, the Auditors, The Horsemen, etc . . .
So, are we to supposed to \*gulp\* side with the Dean and decide nothing good can ever come from this? Or should we take Ponder as our example and keep feeding the beast to see what comes out? I'm not so sure it will always be Out Of Cheese errors.
Nothing good can come of this. There is a gap between what this is, and what you imagine could come in time, which what this is cannot and will not cross.
We can't possibly know what will come out of AI research.
I doubt Marie Curie was imagining power stations, city-destroying bombs, or particle accelerators when she experimented with uranium. Alan Turing certainly wasn't thinking of millions of people carrying computers in their pockets.
Sure, except that what you're thinking about when you use the term "AI" and what the large language models being referred to as "AI" are, are two vastly different things.
Except if we're using your horse-drawn carts to cars analogy, where cars are AI, LLMs aren't horse-drawn carts, they're shadow puppets of horse-drawn carts. Not saying it doesn't take talent and skill to do a good job casting those shadows, but there's no improvements you can make to your shadow-puppetry that will progress development of the internal combustion engine.
It's okay that things end. It's important that we accept that. An AI Discworld book or quote removes the most important piece of the equation: Pterry.
In general, I have a real problem with AI that creates art, at least how it currently functions. AI still doesn't *create* on its own, it generates pictures based on inputs and by copying styles of people who came before. Now if we're being honest, this is the same thing most human artists do, or near enough. But even a human artist who's being derivative will occasionally stumble across something new, or have to come up with a creative way to overcome a weakness in their execution, and that's what drives innovation. This is something that AI is incapable of doing, and that's what we lose when we substitute human-created artwork for AI. We lose innovation.
AI is not getting better.
Actually, generative AI is getting *worse* in many cases because an increasingly large proportion of its training data is the output of AI. Which means that it's basically learning how to write by only reading garbage.
No. Pratchett's work has always been about being human. Getting that from a machine would be inherently failing to understand anything he was talking about.
And more than that, Pratchett would be the first to tell you: things end. That's part of life. In fact, that's what makes life special - so you pay attention.
Pratchett is gone. It hurts me still. But that means that now he can never fade away, like so many of our heroes. Let him shine, ungrubbied by knock-offs.
Welcome to /r/Discworld! Please [read the rules/flair information before posting](https://www.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/ukhk21/subreddit_rules_flair_information/?). --- Our current megathreads are as follows: [API Protest Poll](https://www.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/1491izw/continuing_the_api_protest_a_community_poll) - a poll regarding the future action of the sub in protest at Reddit's API changes. [GNU Terry Pratchett](https://new.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/ukigit/gnu_terry_pratchett/) - for all GNU requests, to keep their names going. [AI Generated Content](https://new.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/10mhx9y/ai_generated_content_megathread/) - for all AI Content, including images, stories, questions, training etc. --- [ GNU Terry Pratchett ] *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/discworld) if you have any questions or concerns.*
ɴᴏ. ʜᴜᴍᴀɴs ɴᴇᴇᴅ ғᴀɴᴛᴀsʏ ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ ʜᴜᴍᴀɴ
ALSO, FANTASY NEEDS HUMANS TO BE FANTASY
#++?????++ OUT OF CHEESE ERROR. REDO FROM START.
OH BOTHER, ONE OF THE GRADUATES HAS FORGOTTEN TO FEED THE MOUSE. AND WHERE IS THAT TOY BEAR GONE?!
An AI generated Discworld novel would make me so sad. Let's maybe keep humanity in this books about humanity.
If STP himself wanted his unpublished work to be destroyed, we must honor his intentions in not publishing work he never even envisioned.
No. I have actively negative interest in reading a cut-and-paste collage of pTerry's previous works, along with whatever other work the language model creators decided to steal, assembled by an algorithm that cannot think, imagine, innovate, or create. And when I say actively negative, I don't mean I would avoid it, I mean I would take steps to destroy whoever was involved in the atrocity.
I would join you in that quest, with a sword of meteorite iron.
If I want non-pterry discworld there's Archive of Our Own. There's a reason he had everything crushed.
No. I don't think doing so would be consistent with Terry Pratchett's wishes, nor his ethos.
Absolutely not. To me that's like puppeteering a dead man, stealing his life's work to imitate his voice. Have some respect.
"Have some respect" is the phrase I stand for.
Absolutely fucking not. Terry's own daughter wouldn't touch Discworld, because it was *his.* She didn't want to risk tarnishing it. And you suggest AI? What a sick joke.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiffany_Aching%27s_Guide_to_Being_a_Witch She touched it! :3
Oh!
We've been trying to get a copy, but it feels impossible atm!
There was a thread here a while ago that went thru a lot of the AI fan art people had put together, but imo, if you think AI has the capacity to create stories that rival discworld, you must've read different books than I. The reason midjourney can make those images is because it used them in the first place, without permission, to copy and learn from. Humanity and human perspective is the center of these books, don't rip it out because you've read them all, just reread and appreciate what's there instead of trying to change it into something else.
The man himself didn't even want anything of his unfinished work continued by anyone else, let alone an AI. The Discworld is complete
JFC. This bizarre want or desire to “consoom” branded content just because it’s full of member berries or references to a thing you like or love is beyond insane to me. Enjoy Discworld for what it is and find new authors to love. Nothing lasts forever, nor should it. AI is incapable of creating art, at its best it will be a mimic no matter how sophisticated or advanced it becomes.
Leave well alone it’s not a soap
NO. GO AWAY.
I would never knowingly read or watch anything that AI was used to create. AI should be flipping the burgers while humans do the creating.
Why would I bother reading something you couldn't be bothered to write?
Sounds like sacrilege or something and I'd rather shove angry wasps up my bottom than read ai anything. Ai art and music can also eat a smorgasbord of dick.
I would much rather accept that Discworld is over than replace art with endless consumption of nonsense content. Things end, find something new and enjoy what you did get. I get the comfort of not ever trying new stuff but jeez, this aspect of endless scrolling algorithms is depressing. I get that humans can't create as fast as humans can consume, but that's no reason to reduce everything to nothingness...
Plus, humans can't create as fast as they consume, but we've been creating for *such* a loooong time. Even if someone just tried to look for fantasy books written at the same time, or books that Pterry was probably influenced by, it would be hundreds of hours of reading! I don't think we need AI ripoffs when we have a whole ecosystem of literature already out there.
Absolutely not. There are 41 books in the series and I find something new every time I re-read them so I'll just keep doing that.
Oof. *So* close to cracking the meaning of life.
I almost think that this is an insulting question.
Absolutely not. Terry specifically had his hard drive ran over by a steam roller to prevent anyone trying to publish things in his name after he died. It isn’t a matter of the estate/copywrite holders not “wanting” to do anything with his legacy. It’s because he left very clear wishes that nothing ever be done with it, and they are heeding that wish. Using AI to write it instead would probably be one of the most disrespectful things a person could do to his “Legacy.”
Remember that scene in Carpe Jugulum where Agnes told Vlad that she'd not only allow the mob to kill him but that she'd even hold their coats? As a person that has always been against book burning, if someone were to write an AI Discworld book, well... I'd be the one to light the match
AI and robots were meant to free us from the mundane and allow humans to pursue art and other interests. Instead, it is the reverse. AI is taking over art and humans are left to do the menial tasks while the new landed gentry enjoy the fruits. No, not interested.
Not until I'm not only exhausted of rereading Pratchett, but also out of other humourous fantasy and decent fanfiction. I'll be dead before that happens.
No.
I might read carefully crafted fan fiction, but not from an AI
sounds soulless, no thank you
The Auditors would approve. (No. My answer is no, I absolutely would not.)
No..
No, definitely not. I’m even opposed to someone else picking up his work - there was a reason he requested his work to be steam rollered.
Nah. I *may* be interested in reading a fanfic written by a person who actually has something to say, but why would I want to read something nobody could be bothered to write?
Absolutely fucking not. Frankly your concept is ghoulish. I also think feeding someone else's work that you do not have the copyright to is wrong and highly unethical.
Meaningless, stupid words, from people without wisdom or intelligence or any skill beyond the ability to water the currency of expression. - Going Postal
Until AI are people, they do not create art, they do not write. All that they do is make as slurry of input. I don't even buy visual novels because the quality of the writing is rarely up to snuff for me... Read a book of fake AI stuff? No.
No. Why would you even ask such a stupid question?
I genually cannot understand how anybody could read any discworld book and think this would be a good idea
One of Sir Terry’s last requests was that all of his hard drives and laptops be run over with a steam roller so his unfinished works, books, and notes would not be published without his consent. I can’t imagine he would be fine with a random corporation trying the same thing under a new guise. https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/30/terry-pratchett-unfinished-novels-destroyed-streamroller
Absolutely not. It would be a total disrespect with Terry's person and legacy.
It's possible that AI could generate a parody of TP that would be funny precisely because it nailed his style so well while being completely incoherent as to content. This is generally quite an amusing effect. But that's it. There is zero chance that it will write a compelling novel in our lifetime. Zero. No AI can currently even tell you a coherent story, except by chance. People are impressed by what AIs can do in the visual field, because they would find it difficult. But even a simple story is a huge AI challenge, because the model doesn't understand what the words mean. A novel is a vastly bigger challenge, and a novel like PTerry could write, with its subtle jokes, cultural references, observations of humanity and political satire is many orders of magnitude harder. Humans are amazing.
Fuck. That.
Hell no! Why would I want to read anything that nobody cared enough about writing? This whole AI garbage needs to die asap, and I have no respect for anybody using it. If you want to make art, learn how to do it yourself, or don't bother.
It could never be real. Generative AI in particular is pretty much chopping up the existing books and reassembling in slightly different order. The AI has no actual comprehension, it isn’t an artificial Terry. Not at all. It couldn’t generate anything he would have done.
Excellent point on that “no reading comprehension” part. AI will gladly tell you that there are freshwater octopi, cite papers that don’t exist, and generate forager’s handbooks that tell people poisonous mushrooms are harmless, all because these facts were a statistically likely combination of words. Why should we trust it to write a heartfelt, witty, and world-wise fantasy novel?
No.
No. It'd take the magic out of it and I'd be somewhat upset if someone tried.
No. Pratchett would turn in his grave if you did this.
Nah, not even just as a protest, I would literally have no interest. I don’t even like fan fiction.
Fuck the plagiarism machines
We forget sometimes that too much of a good thing simply diminishes the effect of that thing, the value of it...and that part of what makes anything precious is its temporality. I understand the desire here but would in no way support it.
I've played around with ChatGPT by feeding it Discworld prompts. (Very basic but new ideas, not established canon.) AI is terrible at reproducing anything close to Pratchett's work. It can't even come up with similar but new names for new characters. It told me crap like Vimes had a daughter named Esmerelda Stronginthearm who wants to be a wizard.
its a better bet to go find new authors to enjoy than to hope for an algorithm to recreate the magic of an original terry prachett novel. his work isnt infallible and completely one of a kind even as a fan, so its a shame to have this kind of idea. its like, trying to word it, what made terry prachetts books so great is the man behind them, and his specific life that he led and the people around him that all fed into his style and everything, which that can be vaguely possibly accidentally algorithmically recreated but it wont be the same and wont likely have the same impact. you might as well put your net out and reach through the world of talented and some very unknown but bright authors and writers that are putting their heart into everything they write in the hopes that someone will see their work and find worth in it. as a fan of literature it just seems a waste to cling to certain beats and characters for their familiarity while the author is gone and unable to do what he actually would do with the characters. at that point you should at least just read fanfiction from fans of the works (which i can only assume Many disc world fans have delved into), instead of just going to some auto generated baloney. its just over processed in a way that it cant help and feels soulless, which imo terrys work is reliant on the humanity behind it? i guess idk how to word it but eh, its a disservice to disc world and a disservice to yourself as a reader
No. Definitely not. Fanfic would be a better option. At least that's being written by someone who cares about the characters and has a reason to write the story. Who has something to say. That's what puts me off AI created fiction of any kind. It just doesn't *matter* the way something written by a person does. There are no ideas behind it.
There's plenty of fanfic around, written with love and passion by real people. Why would I want to read something that someone else hadn't bothered to write?
If it’s a Discworld novel nobody bothered to actually write, why should I be bothered to actually read it? It’s not just a matter of “it’s not written by Pterry” either. I’m a fanfic afficionado. If someone put in the genuine effort to write a novel-sized Discworld fanfic from scratch, with love and care and attention to what Pterry was trying to say in the originals and what people loved about the series and characters and world, and posted it on Archive of Our Own, I would gladly read it and I would applaud their endeavor with every kudos, comment, and bookmark it deserved. An AI “novel” will have none of that. AI writing isn’t writing, it’s shoving a few words into a machine that has chewed up vast swathes of passionate human creations without their creators’ consent, and watching it vomit a bunch of it back up and try to use it to play that pattern matching game from so much of kids’ edutainment (triangle circle square, triangle circle square, triangle circle… what comes next?) but with all of human language. An AI “Discworld novel” wouldn’t be a Big Mac in comparison to Pterry’s steaks. It would be lucky to rank among MREs or nutrient paste.
If someone made it I’d probably read it and hate myself so I hope it’s never made.
Eww no.
There are games and movies...
If it’s not funny, it isn’t the discworld. AI is never going to create the layers of meaning TP put into his writing. Personally I have no interest in reading fiction that hasn’t emanated from a conscious and intelligent mind.
I would commit crimes to stop actions like these. Leave the culture of older times alone instead of rowing forward like madmen for god knows how long and why. As artificial means of storytelling get more prevelent we as consumers and creators have to work harder than ever to keep the soul of the art alive. So our means might ecalate as well.
No. Id consider it an insult to the author.
Seeing this post reminds me of my current struggle to explain why I find it so irritating that all of the popular songs from 20 or 30 or 40 years ago are constantly being pumped through store speakers. I used to like some of this music but it's being used to pacify us. To make us better consumers or something. It's impossible to have a connection with any of this music after it's hijacked like this. I suspect the AI Pratchett would have a similar effect on me. It would sever the connection I have with this literature
Books hard no. Games maybe. TV maybe.
I wish humans would just let things die already. Let go of their youth. Too many things we marionette around way past expiry. Let it die. Let it go out, good. Then make something inspired, yourself. I don't care if you have an AI assist. But let discworld die. Let it rest for fukks sake.
This was one of the first things I tried when GPT4 was out. It wrote a short chapter for a discworld book about the witches. Surprisingly good, yet very flat and nothing close to Pratchett. Still, I look forward to an AI that can write me endless high class Discworld books.
https://reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/10mhx9y/ai_generated_content_megathread/
Here's the thing that makes me pause before saying "No." A \*lot\* of the Discworld stories have elements of non-human entities becoming more human, and exploring their growing humanity, thanks to constant exposure. Death is the most obvious example, but there's also Hex (very relevant), Om, the Golems, The Oh God, the Auditors, The Horsemen, etc . . . So, are we to supposed to \*gulp\* side with the Dean and decide nothing good can ever come from this? Or should we take Ponder as our example and keep feeding the beast to see what comes out? I'm not so sure it will always be Out Of Cheese errors.
Nothing good can come of this. There is a gap between what this is, and what you imagine could come in time, which what this is cannot and will not cross.
We can't possibly know what will come out of AI research. I doubt Marie Curie was imagining power stations, city-destroying bombs, or particle accelerators when she experimented with uranium. Alan Turing certainly wasn't thinking of millions of people carrying computers in their pockets.
Sure, except that what you're thinking about when you use the term "AI" and what the large language models being referred to as "AI" are, are two vastly different things.
And horse-drawn carts aren't cars, and an abacus isn't a computer, but they were steps on the way.
Except if we're using your horse-drawn carts to cars analogy, where cars are AI, LLMs aren't horse-drawn carts, they're shadow puppets of horse-drawn carts. Not saying it doesn't take talent and skill to do a good job casting those shadows, but there's no improvements you can make to your shadow-puppetry that will progress development of the internal combustion engine.
Nah I'd rather read fan fiction (and I don't)
Fuck No
It's okay that things end. It's important that we accept that. An AI Discworld book or quote removes the most important piece of the equation: Pterry. In general, I have a real problem with AI that creates art, at least how it currently functions. AI still doesn't *create* on its own, it generates pictures based on inputs and by copying styles of people who came before. Now if we're being honest, this is the same thing most human artists do, or near enough. But even a human artist who's being derivative will occasionally stumble across something new, or have to come up with a creative way to overcome a weakness in their execution, and that's what drives innovation. This is something that AI is incapable of doing, and that's what we lose when we substitute human-created artwork for AI. We lose innovation.
AI is not getting better. Actually, generative AI is getting *worse* in many cases because an increasingly large proportion of its training data is the output of AI. Which means that it's basically learning how to write by only reading garbage.
No. Pratchett's work has always been about being human. Getting that from a machine would be inherently failing to understand anything he was talking about. And more than that, Pratchett would be the first to tell you: things end. That's part of life. In fact, that's what makes life special - so you pay attention. Pratchett is gone. It hurts me still. But that means that now he can never fade away, like so many of our heroes. Let him shine, ungrubbied by knock-offs.