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.
Turn HARD books into EASY books by learning what words mean!
Wow it’s like they’re actively trying to make people dumber and not even hiding it anymore
language evolving doesn’t make people dumber
It does if that “evolution” consists of removing large or complex words simply because they’re “too hard”
They aren’t removed because they’re too hard, they’re removed because they’re inconvenient. They are removed when there is a more succinct and/or better understood alternative, for example “evolution” doesn’t have a good alternative to replace it. Memorizing relatively obscure words isn’t intellectual, and as simple building blocks as possible can often better communicate more complex ideas. There’s a reason C is better liked than C++
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.
I’m proud of my demon spawn
She’s a tech savvy electrical engineer who spends her working hours mucking about with semiconductors.
When she’s not at work, which seems to be pretty much all day every day, she’s out on remote hiking trails with primitive camping gear.
From this old man’s perspective, she’s living the ideal balanced life.
Fuck it downvote me for having the wrong opinion but I am okay with this existing. Looking at the full feature list it has additional vocabulary learning tools and the reading level is scalable which might make this a hugely helpful tool for new or very young language learners.
CliffsNotes already exists, yes, but summaries are different from paraphrasing, and it is very hit or miss with the accuracy of its summaries which usually have terrible grammar and writing quality anyway, making it awful for most English learners’ applications.
Don’t like it? Don’t download it.
I don’t have a problem with simplified versions of texts – archaic language, ornamented prose, and obsolete cultural references shouldn’t stand in the way of someone having access to the ideas contained in great literature. But I like it when people do the simplifying–like “Reader’s Digest” versions, or Cliff’s Notes, or whatever. It’s a skilled profession that already doesn’t get the credit it deserves, and I worry AI will eclipse human work with voluminous inferior results.
I am with you. Again though as I mentioned the CliffsNotes tend to he very poor in quality, so I feel this tool can act as a supplement to aid in the user’s education if free or low cost tools are all they can afford. :)
Yeah, the amount of ableism (and classism, racism) in the post and comments is fucking gross.
AI is a tool.
Are capitalists using it for evil? Sure.
Is this specifically an evil use?
Only if your goal is to exclude people who you see as lesser than yourself from accessing information you have the privilege to freely access.
Personally having the knowledge and ability to read books in general, but in what is often outdated (or not even someone’s first) language, unaided, doesn’t mean everyone does (or that everyone ever will be, even in whatever “perfect” world they like to imagine where people with different needs don’t exist), and making literature more accessible will only ever be a positive thing (again, unless someone’s goal is to exclude people they see as lesser than them, which evidently many do, in which case, rallying against accessibility aids is right on brand).
People need to get off their high horses and start aiming their anger where it belongs (how about the billionaire owned governments that ensure the population is poorly educated to make us all, yourselves included as is clearly evident here, easier to manipulate, or that exclude those of us with different needs and learning styles and classifies us as “burdens”, or the billionaires making billions more from commodifying freely available information), not join hands with oppressors and stomp anyone they consider bellow them.
This is a textbook strawman argument. The foundational premise of this argument is that the only reason someone could have for opposing a tool like this is because of a desire to exclude others from accessing specific works that they believe hold a specific degree of cultural capital, and, as such, anyone who makes an argument against this technology must, therefore, automatically hold this position.
Which is not the case. One argument against this technology is that it at best mangles and at worst destroys the underlying meaning and significance of a work of literature. Your argument seems to consider the form of language of a work of literature as window dressing to it - something with far less meaning or significance than its summarizable content. But for many works of literature, it’s not. Some things are written to be difficult. Some things are written to be accessible purely to adults with a complex grasp of the language. Some thing are meant to challenge a reader. That’s why every year in school you’re assigned slightly harder books - because learning is a process of continually being challenged. And this is a tool that actively seeks to negate that. If you’re learning English and you want to read a famously difficult English novel, why reduce its complexity to the point where you’re not even reading the actual novel instead of just reading a version translated into your native language? Or get two copies, one in English and one in your native language, side by side and compare the language in each? A good translation by a skilled translator can preserve most, if not all, of the artistic value of the original, as opposed to this, where a huge chunk of the underlying artistic value of the work itself has been drained from it like blood from a slaughtered animal.
As such, the issue is not “wanting to keep the work out of the hands of ESL learners or children.” It’s about not wanting the underlying work diminished.
I would also argue that this is a tool ripe for exploitation in the worst ways possible, as “simplification” is a stone’s throw from censorship. Some group doesn’t like the inclusion of LGBT characters in a famous book? Use this AI tool to programmatically erase any mention of them. Some group doesn’t like that a book is critical of capitalism? Suddenly, large parts read like a parable straight from the mouth of Supply-Side Jesus. I know, let’s cut out all mention of race in Huckleberry Finn. Now it’s just a fun story about a kid and his…“friend”…traveling down the Mississippi! And if you were reading a novel in this way for the first time, you probably wouldn’t have any idea that this wasn’t what the author themselves had written and that you were reading a warped, ideologically twisted homunculus of the original.
