I think you're right here. I'm forgetting about "entertainment".
This will never replace my visits to HN because it's not efficient. Unless it uses neurolink to beam the information into my mind, that's always going to be the case. It fails in that way.
However, let's consider a podcast. You get 5 people that are entertaining, knowledgeable about technology, well spoken, and have differing opinions, and get them to spend 30 minutes talking about the top HN posts. It's slow, they would most likely not even discuss my favourite posts, but yet, I would consider listening. Is it possible to replicate that with AI? Could AI digest the content and all of the comments, and turn it into an entertaining and educational discussion and debate between a few different AI voices?
I think it's possible, and it changes the idea from being an inefficient method of summarizing content, to a form of entertainment. That could be the right direction to go with this kind of project. However, even if AI perfectly replicates a great podcast, how would I feel listening to it? I think this question applies to most AI content. How important is the human process in the content we consume? Do people only care about the end result, or do they want read a book written by a person, view photos taken by a person, listen to songs performed by a person, and listen to a podcast by real people?
This isn't what I had in mind, but now that you've suggested it I would absolutely listen to this. In fact, I'm convinced having read it that this is where we're going good or bad (I can see a lot of YouTube gurus suggesting this as the new get-rich-quick scheme for "creators"). A high quality version of this would absolutely work though if that can be achieved.
I was thinking more in terms of the way you can get morning news briefs on a nest hub. The AI summarising the top posts on HN would have value to me as something to listen to in the morning not because I expect a really interesting debate, but mostly just to get a quick update on what the buzz is on HN on a given day so I can decide if I want to pick up the thread from any of those topics when my day starts at the desk.
I wonder if the person executing the scheme would still be referred to as a "creator" in this case: they're creating a creator, and it's not so useful to have the same label for multiple layers (factory factories all the way down?). I could see possibly "engineer" (taken from "prompt engineer") or other technical terms being used instead of art terms.
This will never replace my visits to HN because it's not efficient. Unless it uses neurolink to beam the information into my mind, that's always going to be the case. It fails in that way.
However, let's consider a podcast. You get 5 people that are entertaining, knowledgeable about technology, well spoken, and have differing opinions, and get them to spend 30 minutes talking about the top HN posts. It's slow, they would most likely not even discuss my favourite posts, but yet, I would consider listening. Is it possible to replicate that with AI? Could AI digest the content and all of the comments, and turn it into an entertaining and educational discussion and debate between a few different AI voices?
I think it's possible, and it changes the idea from being an inefficient method of summarizing content, to a form of entertainment. That could be the right direction to go with this kind of project. However, even if AI perfectly replicates a great podcast, how would I feel listening to it? I think this question applies to most AI content. How important is the human process in the content we consume? Do people only care about the end result, or do they want read a book written by a person, view photos taken by a person, listen to songs performed by a person, and listen to a podcast by real people?