The people who use AI to write for them don't even read the stuff they don't write.

[odd@mstdn.social]

@AlSweigart i just imagined the betrayal I'd feel if I went out of my way to buy a physical textbook, start reading it expecting to learning something that was written there by a fellow human being who was as excited to write all this...

...only to learn nothing I've read meant anything. It was all hallucinations. I'd be so angry and disappointed.

[alterelefant@mastodontech.de]

@AlSweigart
Text not worth writing are texts not worth reading.

[cczona@hachyderm.io]

@AlSweigart so no one researched it, no one wrote it, no one copyedited it, and no one reviewed it. Let me guess: $50?

[ighostrider@mastodon.social]

@AlSweigart Bring back hooman proofreading I say! I used to proofread and typeset scientific papers and textbooks, we would get charged a whole £1 per mistake that we had missed, including even for one lowly comma. One company we worked for moved to China and India and paid the workers there next to nothing. We gave up as freelancers soon after this. Took me years to come to terms with the fact that everything I bought or touched had text with glaring mistakes! Now, however I don't give a fuck

[crazyeddie@mastodon.social]

@lipow @AlSweigart
That's a textbook.

For a school.

So there you go.

There's your why.

[lipow@norden.social]

@crazyeddie Applies all the same - text books for schools should be developed and written with care - otherwise its best to ignore them ... @AlSweigart

[nerpulus@mastodon.online]

@AlSweigart I once found an article on the front page of a printed newspaper that began "scroll down for an interactive map"

[mthie@fedi.mthie.com]

@AlSweigart Now there’s only ONE rule: Don’t buy books written after 2021.

[fedithom@social.saarland]

@AlSweigart That seems oddly par for the course.

[gildilinie@beige.party]

@AlSweigart that's right

[miss_rodent@girlcock.club]

@AlSweigart ... And somehow, a lot of the software industry is convinced they're special and different and will actually read it and understand it and not miss stuff like this...

[ninestonesclose@mastodon.social]

@AlSweigart refund required as well as name and shame.

[nini@oldbytes.space]

@AlSweigart You expect too much attention to detail from people willing to let the LLM slop out something, they've already yelled "Claude, take the wheel" and proofing what they copypasted is beyond their concern.

[kaesekuchen@social.anoxinon.de]

@AlSweigart
Please name title and author.

[nini@oldbytes.space]

@mthie @AlSweigart Which is a good principle as long as the non-fiction book you're buying isn't subject to changing anytime soon so that excludes most science books, some mathematical books and quite a lot of computing books. STEM kids are going to be fucked by this.

[harib_murshidi@mastodon.social]

@albertcardona @AlSweigart This textbook is probably from #india (I am going by the names and phone numbers provided in the table)

I have seen similar things happening in #pakistan where a top #english #newspaper the daily DAWN published something in the newspaper where the report carried the AI generated text I haven't seen something like this here in textbooks but I can expect this happening here as well !

PS. Most school textbooks have this kind of cringy typesetting here in

[oggie@woof.group]

@AlSweigart
This is going to get so funny when they hard pivot to explicit advertisements in these things.

[notthatkindofdoctor@mastodon.social]

@AlSweigart
Does that book have a copyright? Because it shouldn't.

[ophis@brain.worm.pink]

@AlSweigart i can't imagine any of them bothering to read that

like i don't even read what i actually writes

[caiocgo@mastodon.social]

@liquor_american @AlSweigart Yes, please... People need to be warned and avoid buying stuff like this.