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ndriscoll | on: Start Doing Graph Theory
Well, if we're going to have the conversation: so what if it were AI? Shouldn't the question be around correctness and good pedagogy? Shouldn't the question always be about vouching for those things? If it's actually done well (e.g. they were able to generate better illustrations than they otherwise could've), why exactly should someone think twice?

The author put his name and reputation to it. If it's excellent work, it's excellent work. If it's slop, it's slop.

BHSPitMonkey | parent | next
> The author put his name and reputation to it.

For at least the past 5 years, Amazon.com has been completely flooded with throwaway brand names churned out from random sequences of characters selling white-labelled products. The ones that do poorly get discarded and replaced, and the ones that find traction get to climb the rankings.

Do you think the same doesn't apply to "authors" of books, social media posts, and even academic papers in 2026? It doesn't matter if someone's staked their reputation unless their reputation is already widely known and trusted to begin with.

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thaumasiotes | root | parent
> For at least the past 5 years, Amazon.com has been completely flooded with throwaway brand names churned out from random sequences of characters selling white-labelled products.

The last time I looked into someone's complaint on HN about Chinese companies setting themselves up on Amazon with nonsense data and no way to contact them nor any theoretical method of holding them to account for misbehavior, I went to the product link the complaining comment provided and discovered that it was offered by a company whose registered place of business (listed on Amazon!) was obviously the poor owner's personal home address.

gortok | parent | next
I answered this question elsewhere in this thread; here’s a link to it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50273553
ndriscoll | root | parent
That doesn't really answer anything though. There are tons of human cranks out there too who are perfectly willing to spend tons of time on their "theories." Humans make errors too. If you don't have a way to evaluate the source material or some endorsement from someone you have a reason to trust, then AI doesn't change that. If you do have an endorsement (e.g. Terence Tao says some AI book is extremely well done, or puts out his own book that he openly used AI to write), then why would you discard it because AI?
nicf | parent | next
I'm not the OP, but I can give my answer to this question, or at least one of my answers.

This book is presented as being written by a human. (In this case, a human I happen to know, which would add another dimension to my complaint, so let's imagine that weren't the case.) Maybe someday we'll live in a world where sticking a person's name at the top of a book doesn't carry the implication that they wrote the words in the book. That would make me sad for other reasons, but in any event, we don't live in that world right now, so for now, if you put a person's name on your book, you are claiming that that person wrote the book. If that's not true, you are lying, and like most people, I don't like being lied to.

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soulofmischief | parent
Human expertise and appeal to authority have long been a proxy for correctness and soundness in a body of work.

It's not a perfect proxy, but I'm usually going to trust a domain expert over the confident idiot who constantly lies to me, hides and downplays mistakes, and flits around opposing positions like a drunken moth.

At this time, if I see a text is AI generated, I have to assume it is unsound and possibly even nefarious. There is way too much information assailing my daily life that I have no other rational choice.