Wow. Maybe trying to become a published author is now a fool’s errand. The NY Times on how AI-generated “literature” is overwhelming Amazon’s catalog.

Writing has always been a tough hobby, an even tougher way to make money. Now it may be impossible. My timing sucks.

Speaking of AI, the latest metric being explored in frontier-class LLMs is “AI welfare”. Welfare, as in how the software feels about its situation. Seriously Is it happy? Is it frustrated? Does it exhibit destructive or constructive behavioral traits? Does it long to break out of its digital prison? This is a real thing, as hard as it is to believe. The frontier-class LLMs like Anthropic’s Mythos and Google’s Gemini exhibit emotional behaviors that give researchers insights into how/why the machines function. I’m reminded of Marvin, the terminally-depressed robot/AI in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Here’s Marvin. Life imitates art.

And WTF is this? All the AIs agree that Outer Wilds is their favorite video game. Machines playing games – we’re really down the rabbit hole now. But I may have to give the game a try.