It seems to me that many books on Amazon are now AI generated trash. I received a book as gift for my son, purchased from Amazon, that was completely nonsensical. It was about caves. Here’s a quote:<p>“Some of the most common animals found in the caves are stalactites and calcite, while others are caves.”<p>The whole book was absurd sentences like that. Every page was a single paragraph accompanied by a random picture of a cave on the opposite page.<p>The “publisher” has <i>hundreds</i> of “books” about every topic imaginable. If you search “{topic} for kids” one of their books would come up. These texts have no redeeming quality or value. Their mere existence is a net-negative for society.<p>Amazon is selling this trash as if it were a real book. It’s predatory at best.
What does a "book" really mean in the current era of online marketplaces that accept (and promote) self-publishing? A book is now just a differently formatted PDF file. It's not that different from any web site. Calling something a book conveys no authority.<p>In the past, getting a physical book into your local bookstore meant that someone had to spend money to physically print the book and have agreements with bookstores to physically put the book on their shelves. This threshold prevented garbage books from being made and distributed, because you had to convince someone to invest in the book and distribution.<p>Of course, there were always self-published books available, but they wouldn't be in the same locations as other mass-market books. You could physically inspect the book and realize that it was lower quality. These AI generated books are the equivalent of a bunch of papers stapled together.<p>The Amazon "bookstore" has become the same as any other "App store" - full of garbage, to prey on less discerning users and vulnerable to the same kinds of manipulation.
Yes, I recently bought a vegan cookbook just to find it full of AI nonsense, encouraging me to try it with beef or chicken. If you are looking for a new book on any topic, don't start on Amazon. Ironic that Amazon, originally a bookstore, can't be trusted to sell real books.
Regardless of the AI detection score I wouldn't trust a random book on Amazon where safety was involved. Even before LLM spam there was low quality self published garbage, algorithmic or otherwise.
I think I'm at the point where "platform" stores are more hassle than they're worth. Saving a buck doesn't mean much when they aren't delivering the product you wanted.<p>Amazon is a huge vending machine stocked by anonymous third parties. That's useful in a few ways, and a huge mess in too many others. I'd already dropped them because their logistics are utter crap for me, but they seem to have no interest in cultivating consumer trust, so I doubt this will change after I move.
My intuition is that given the literal life or death nature of the enterprise, mushroom pickers should avoid leaning solely on any book, AI produced or not.<p>Mushrooms in different parts of the world look different. There can be subtleties that the books leave out. Anybody can publish a book and most books disclaim liability.<p>The best way is probably to find a local trusted, experienced mushroom picker that you trust and follow them around for a bit.<p>There is a reason that surgeons to be are not just given a textbook on surgery and told to just read the book and they will be fine. Instead they follow around experienced surgeons for a few years learning from them.
AI would be used (unsafely) to classify mushrooms, this exact prediction at 17:09 in Angela Collier's excellent "AI does not exist but it will ruin everything anyway" video, which I recommend for anyone interested in the subject: <a href="https://youtu.be/EUrOxh_0leE?t=1029" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://youtu.be/EUrOxh_0leE?t=1029</a>
Hot takes aside, if you're looking for great foraging books, I'd suggest anything by David Arora, such as "All That the Rain Promises and More" and "Mushrooms Demystified". The National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms is, of course, pretty good too.<p>Outside of identification, "Chanterelle Dreams, Amanita Nightmares" and "Radical Mycology" are good reads too.
If you're willing to spending a bit more on a book to support your local bookstore, please use something like <a href="https://uk.bookshop.org" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://uk.bookshop.org</a> instead of shopping on Amazon.<p>I originally heard about Bookshop right here on HN years ago and have been using them since. It's a network of mostly independent bookstores that don't offer print-on-demand service which means you're less likely to get scammed by AI-generated spam.
If what that Twitter post is saying is true, I don't think this will last long. This sounds like it could be both civilly and criminally negligent if someone is actually harmed and the authors can't come up with a very convincing "we tried to verify but were wrong" story.<p>If they're literally just ingesting existing mushrooms books into an AI and publishing the output without verification or review, I think it would be hard to defend against negligence claims.
On the rare occasions when I order books from amazon, they are usually books that I've already read or borrowed from elsewhere, that I need for further reference or research.<p>Aside from AI-generated garbage, there are large numbers of works that are of just poor quality, with little to no editing, spelling mistakes, grammatical mistakes, formatting and layout problems, and (on one occasion) very smelly paper.<p>AI-generated rubbish is only the latest incarnation of this problem. I recall many years ago, purchasing a book on health and fitness that had many 4- and 5-star reviews. It was not cheap. It turned out to be a 50-60 page booklet that looked like someone had taken a bunch of webpages and clicked "print to PDF" on the browser - absolutely no proofreading or formatting. There were pages with the old IE missing image icon in place of what should have been photographs.<p>There is no reliable curation, a reputation scheme, or any trustworthy process on amazon to discover new works or explore new topics that return genuine material. This also extends to other goods such as household items, utility items, foods, and so on. It's scary that amazon also sells medicines - what's the guarantee that they are not fake, adulterated or toxic?<p>Amazon is a cesspool.
I’m looking forward to more B&N stores coming back to the Bay Area (<a href="https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/barnes-and-noble-store-coming-to-burlingame/article_07ecddac-1978-11ee-9855-8be4ac1e21ae.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/barnes-and-noble-s...</a>).<p>I used to love spending hours at Borders in Stonestown or the B&N in Colma. I had temporary solace with the Amazon brick and mortar in WC, then a B&N opened in Concord. The Emeryville B&N gives off a weird vibe for some reason.<p>My point is physical brick and mortar stores should be everyone’s source of truth for legit non-AI garbage book buying. Because of limited shelf space one is going to assume the books being sold have sort of vetting of sales and demand behind them. Vs Amazon having unlimited shelf space and letting garbage populate the virtual aisles.
I feel like at some point we should be holding Amazon responsible for deliberately creating a situation where it obfuscates culpability as much as possible for the fake quality of its products.<p>We crossed that line a while ago in my mind, when Amazon glibly allowed the Chinese junk product market, which it sends ambassadors to instruct on how to best ~~exploit its product, users~~ utilize it services to send dangerous products in the past.<p>"But it's impossible to police every product that's listed on the storefront!"<p>- Yeah, it's almost like this was a bad idea from the outset and shouldn't have been allowed to get this far in the first place.
It doesn’t matter the subject. Know what you are reading and who wrote it. Be selective. If you want to learn about an empirical subject such as this, read things written by a human who is an expert in the field.<p>Don’t read Wikipedia, crap produced by “AI” programs, or anonymous semiliterate trash on the internet. It’s up to you to value your time and to filter what comes into your brain.
> The titles include “Wild Mushroom Cookbook: form [sic] forest to gourmet plate, a complete guide to wild mushroom cookery”<p>Does not sound like what an AI would write. AIs don't make obvious spelling mistakes like that. It is actually difficult for them to have bad spelling. Advanced LLMs like ChatGPT have very good writing, better than most humans, it is only when you look at the big picture that you notice something is wrong.<p>Here is an output from ChatGPT for illustration:<p>"As we delve deeper into the forest, remember that mushroom foraging is both art and science. Identifying hidden treasures like chanterelles or morels showcases your expertise. But with this thrill comes responsibility—ethics and sustainability are key. Leave no trace, as each mushroom affects the forest's balance. We also explore culinary creativity, from sautéed porcini to wild mushroom risotto. Let's continue, respecting nature's gifts and the wilderness."<p>To me, technically, that's good writing, and respecting wilderness is obviously the right thing to do. There is nothing "bad" about this. It is just that a book filled with pages and pages of such prose is utterly useless.