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Comment by mrweasel

7 hours ago

To me that seems like we're mistaken in mixing fiction and non-fiction in AI training data. The "a revolutionary titan of industry" makes sense if you where reading a novel where something like 90% of a book is describing the people, locations, objects and circumstances. The author of a novel would want to use exaggeration and more colourful words to underscore a uniquely important person, but "this week in trains" would probably de-emphasize the person and focus on the train-coupler.

fiction is part of our shared language and culture. we communicate by making analogies, and our stories, especially our old ones, provide a rich basis to draw upon. neither a person nor an llm can be fluent users of human language without spending time learning from both fiction and non-fiction.