Hey Orwell look, someone finally implemented the newspeak you loved so much in 1984 !
How is the first sentence hard? Is the next generation really that dense?
Cognitive disabilities are a thing. Accommodating for them would be a good thing.
Not that that’s the intended purpose of that AI, probably, but if it can simplify the form without twisting the content*, it could be a great tool to make complex works more approachable. It’s not necessarily a question of “can they understand it” as much as “can they be arsed to read it”. I know plenty of people that just straight up didn’t read one of the books relevant for our finals and just skirted through with guides laying out the things you were supposed to know. The book wasn’t necessarily impossible to understand, but so tedious to dig into they just couldn’t muster the motivation.
I don’t know how many books worth reading for their point remain unread by people who didn’t find the wrapping around that point appealing. Simplification may help them, even if it butchers the artful use of language others enjoy.
*The issue I’m concerned about is that the content may be inadvertently twisted in the process of being parsed and rephrased by an AI with no actual sense for the semantics. Who would notice? Would you have someone proof-read it? What about repeat queries of the same book? Would you assemble a library of simplified books?
At that point you might as well make manually supervised “translations” into simpler language that take care to preserve the point, can be written once and revised when language shifts. You’d still get the benefits, but also be less dependent on an AI doing a good job.
"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”
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.
On first thought this seems like its such a weird usecase for AI. However, I don’t actually think its completely useless, turning more complex books into children’s books while maintaining their lessons and ideas is pretty interesting. And that is something that LLMs can realistically also achieve, not just hype bullshit. Getting grade schoolers to read Nietzsche and them actually understanding something, is a very fun thought to me. I don’t think this will have any impact on the reading comprehension of teenagers or above. Those that can’t handle the original text, aren’t going to read the simplified one. But getting young children acquainted with “grown up” books and their topics and ideas could be a good thing. When its not just about the rabbit in the mushroom house etc. It might even encourage the parent to (re)read the book with the child together, one the original and one the simplified version. Also useful for illiterate persons learning to read, as reading children’s books can be uncomfortable for an adult.
turning more complex books into children’s books while maintaining their lessons and ideas is
pretty interestingimpossibleFtfy
Why? That would only be the case if the original works already were the pinnacle of text quality and information density, which is quite a stretch.
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.
