that's funny, i know where this story is set (i grew up there) - or at least, the place Claude was basing things off of
some inconsistencies that stuck out/i found interesting:
- HWY 29 doesnt run through marshfield, its about 15 miles north.
- not a lot of people grow cabbage in central wisconsin ;)
- no corrugated sheet metal buildings like in the first image around there
- i dont think theres a county road K near Marshfield - not in Marathon county at least
fwiw i think this story is neat, but wrong about farmers and their outlooks - agriculture is probably one of the most data-driven industries out there, there are not many family farmers left (the kinds of farmers depicted in this story), it is largely industrial scale at this point.
All that said, as a fictional experiment its pretty cool!
I think it serves even better as a metaphor for software engineering's future than as a forecast for the future of farming. As you suggest, farmers already had to make the "transition" over the course of the 20th century. A farmer from 1926 wouldn't recognize his counterpart today. They would have nothing to talk about. Software people, though, are still twentieth-century programmers at heart, who are just starting to feel their way through the Kubler-Ross process.
Really a great story, and to the extent it was AI-written, well... even greater.
I will say this is one of the few pieces of prose I've read that was AI generated that didn't immediately jump out as it (a couple of inconsistencies eventually grabbed me enough to come to the comments and see your post details which mention it - I'd clicked through from the HN homepage), so your polishing definitely worked! Quite a neat little story
I think this passes the sniff test only if you're not too familiar with this neighborhood of the training set. Not that the writing is bad but it's just derivative. I listen to stuff like "Lost Scifi" podcast almost daily for example, but there are many similar ones which are focused on reading classic stuff from the golden-age zines because it's all public domain.
The premise/structure/flavor of TFA is an almost pitch-perfect imitation of that kind of voice, to the point that I immediately flagged it as probably generated. I actually think a modern person would have some difficulty even in consciously mimicking it. There's an "aw shucks" yokel-thrown-into-the-future aspect to it.. if you have some Amazing Stories from the 1920s on your shelf then you kind of know what I mean.
Can't speak for them but FWIW it does not sound like OP is necessarily aware of the genre at all. They asked Claude to explain something via fiction, and then perhaps Claude made the "creative decision" based simply on the availability of the material.
Your polishing work made a difference! The prose is like every other work of science fiction I've read.
It's written like this is a dystopia but billing $180/45 minutes in rural low cost of living area sounds awesome. And the choreographer billing "more than a truck" for three weeks? The dream!
I don't oppose reading AI generated content in principle, but because it's free to generate, I always am less likely to read super long prose that is AI generated. So the question is whether someone has taken the time to keep it as long as necessary but not longer. Or if there are ways to make it easier for me to commit to the experience, with a sort of TLDR
This sort of article really needs at least a vague clue as to what it is about.
It's a long article and from skimming I see chat of farming, software, GPS. I can't tell whether this is worth investing time to read if I can't even tell what it may be about
ai photos and em dashes/directional inverted commas (so probably AI writing), sorry to be rude but i dont see the point of reading this when i could prompt an AI to generate the story myself if you shared the prompts? im not trying to be crass here, if someone could share why they think this is worth reading id be all ears. after being warned across the net to not be snarky about AI i really must iterate that snarkiness is not my intention here, im genuinely curious.
that's funny, i know where this story is set (i grew up there) - or at least, the place Claude was basing things off of
some inconsistencies that stuck out/i found interesting:
- HWY 29 doesnt run through marshfield, its about 15 miles north.
- not a lot of people grow cabbage in central wisconsin ;)
- no corrugated sheet metal buildings like in the first image around there
- i dont think theres a county road K near Marshfield - not in Marathon county at least
fwiw i think this story is neat, but wrong about farmers and their outlooks - agriculture is probably one of the most data-driven industries out there, there are not many family farmers left (the kinds of farmers depicted in this story), it is largely industrial scale at this point.
All that said, as a fictional experiment its pretty cool!
I think it serves even better as a metaphor for software engineering's future than as a forecast for the future of farming. As you suggest, farmers already had to make the "transition" over the course of the 20th century. A farmer from 1926 wouldn't recognize his counterpart today. They would have nothing to talk about. Software people, though, are still twentieth-century programmers at heart, who are just starting to feel their way through the Kubler-Ross process.
Really a great story, and to the extent it was AI-written, well... even greater.
Kubler-Ross process -> "A model outlining emotional responses to terminal diagnosis or loss: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance"
Exactly. Not all the stages occur in order, or at all, but you can see the general progression play out any day, all day on here.
I'm happily surprised (frankly amazed TBH) that the submitter didn't get bawled out by people flagging the post and accusing him of posting slop.
I will say this is one of the few pieces of prose I've read that was AI generated that didn't immediately jump out as it (a couple of inconsistencies eventually grabbed me enough to come to the comments and see your post details which mention it - I'd clicked through from the HN homepage), so your polishing definitely worked! Quite a neat little story
I think this passes the sniff test only if you're not too familiar with this neighborhood of the training set. Not that the writing is bad but it's just derivative. I listen to stuff like "Lost Scifi" podcast almost daily for example, but there are many similar ones which are focused on reading classic stuff from the golden-age zines because it's all public domain.
The premise/structure/flavor of TFA is an almost pitch-perfect imitation of that kind of voice, to the point that I immediately flagged it as probably generated. I actually think a modern person would have some difficulty even in consciously mimicking it. There's an "aw shucks" yokel-thrown-into-the-future aspect to it.. if you have some Amazing Stories from the 1920s on your shelf then you kind of know what I mean.
It is a pitch perfect interpretation and I assumed that's what OP was going for. Manna (2010) read very similarly.
Can't speak for them but FWIW it does not sound like OP is necessarily aware of the genre at all. They asked Claude to explain something via fiction, and then perhaps Claude made the "creative decision" based simply on the availability of the material.
Did this story disappear then re-appear?
Your polishing work made a difference! The prose is like every other work of science fiction I've read.
It's written like this is a dystopia but billing $180/45 minutes in rural low cost of living area sounds awesome. And the choreographer billing "more than a truck" for three weeks? The dream!
Huh, I got cottage core, not dystopia!
The story didn't mention what had happened to inflation in the meantime. A dozen eggs costs $32.
I don't oppose reading AI generated content in principle, but because it's free to generate, I always am less likely to read super long prose that is AI generated. So the question is whether someone has taken the time to keep it as long as necessary but not longer. Or if there are ways to make it easier for me to commit to the experience, with a sort of TLDR
This sort of article really needs at least a vague clue as to what it is about.
It's a long article and from skimming I see chat of farming, software, GPS. I can't tell whether this is worth investing time to read if I can't even tell what it may be about
It's speculative fiction.
It's worth reading. It's about AI.
There are always bugs in software. The question is do you have enough eyes on the data to spot them or do they linger for years.
ai photos and em dashes/directional inverted commas (so probably AI writing), sorry to be rude but i dont see the point of reading this when i could prompt an AI to generate the story myself if you shared the prompts? im not trying to be crass here, if someone could share why they think this is worth reading id be all ears. after being warned across the net to not be snarky about AI i really must iterate that snarkiness is not my intention here, im genuinely curious.