Konjer
Learning and science
book question answering
SHOW HN2023
261points
173comments
#187of 3,109 in 2023
Top 7%of 2023 by points
How HN took it
MixedNo clear lean
18 positive, 40 neutral or asking, 3 mixed, 28 critical, out of 89 comments about the project. Thread score -0.06.
Idea: 13 for, 5 againstExecution: 0 for, 12 againstPerformance: 0 for, 8 againstDesign: 1 for, 0 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Novel, useful use of GPT-3 for reading
From 4 comments
Interesting. This is, perhaps, the most novel and innovative use of a GPT model I have encountered so far. It feels like you have invented a new product category. Maybe…
56friends on HNFunnily enough, asking Common Sense Investing "why are ETF's bad" yields an honest answer. Not that gpt could lie but I found that book unable to find faults at all! This is a…
notesinthefield on HNGreat job! Really enjoyed asking questions about Hitchcock. When technology is there, it can be integrated with a speech engine so that we could get the answers in his own voice.
hnand on HNThat is a very cool use of GPT-3!
blooalien on HN
Slick, well executed launch
From 2 comments
Congratulations on the launch -- this looks super slick and well executed. I commend your approach on avoiding religious texts, or really any domain that has numerous doctrinal…
otoburb on HNCongrats on the launch. Once I submit a question I can see the answer but the question is gone. I think it'd be nice to keep the question around in the UI (or a log of questions?)
princesse on HN
Objections
Answers sometimes drift from book content or hallucinate
From 4 comments
You can see some of the usual GPT consistency problems. I chose Alan Moore's Writing for Comics and asked it how I should start best when writing a comic. It suggested first…
xg15 on HNvery cool, there are some discrepancies where it veers off into a more general context, it would be good if it could be made more consistent to the work ...
nathias on HNThis was interesting, but for the Stephen King On Writing Book, when I asked it what Chapter 5 was about, I got a different answer each time.
hithereagain on HNI asked the same question and it gives the same answer for every book. What's the point?
DoryMinh on HN
Copyright and legality of using book content
From 4 comments
This is really interesting and neat, and also is, I think, a use of GPT-3 that seems, unfortunately, almost optimized for losing a USA copyright claim by the owners of the…
jrochkind1 on HNVery interesting project. Nice work! I'm curious if you have copyright concerns since GPT-3 may presumably quote portions of the book back to you in some instances. I still don't…
ericra on HNWhat's the legality of this? Redistributing content for paid books for sale? Edit: can this data be sold?
moneywoes on HNThis is really interesting, and idea that I have been considering building for a while. I think this is better than anything I could've whipped up in that time. I'm interested in…
jameswlepage on HN
Service often at capacity or erroring under load
From 2 comments
How do you get a chance to use the chat? For me it’s constantly “at capacity”
eecc on HNDid you get the HN hug of death? I've tried asking it some questions about Atomic Habits, but I just get an infinite spinner after submitting a message and a HTTP 500 response.
macbem on HN
Requests
Support fiction books
From 2 comments
I wonder why the books are all non-fiction. I could imagine it would be entertaining to chat with large works of fiction.
_justinfunk on HNVery interesting project. Nice work! I'm curious if you have copyright concerns since GPT-3 may presumably quote portions of the book back to you in some instances. I still don't…
ericra on HN
Allow real back-and-forth chat rather than single questions
From 1 comment
Great concept! I was a bit disappointed that I couldn't actually chat with the books (like ChatGPT), but rather only ask isolated single questions. Is this on your roadmap?
afro88 on HN
Keep submitted questions visible in the UI
From 1 comment
Congrats on the launch. Once I submit a question I can see the answer but the question is gone. I think it'd be nice to keep the question around in the UI (or a log of questions?)
princesse on HN
Questions
How the book text is loaded and processed for GPT-3
From 3 comments
How are you getting the book text into gpt3?
TomatoTomato on HNHow does this work? I thought there was some kind of limit in the size of the prompt and the API calls.
Kiro on HNHow do you "turn books into chatbots with GPT-3", as in, what is the process you performed to find the usability you desire?
pyinstallwoes on HN
Whether the model is fine-tuned or uses prompting
From 2 comments
Is this a general prompt on top of GPT or is this a fine tuned model? Since all these books are well known and popular it could be a GPT prompt... "I want you to act as if you're…
graiz on HNCould you share your ML architecture? Curious if you did it via fine-tuning or other tricks. It is amazing.
low_tech_punk on HN
Alternatives named
ChatGPT
From 2 comments
Yeah you can just do that with ChatGPT. In fact ChatGPT is able to summarize books you don't have for you; Try it with Atomic Habits for example.
personjerry on HNI have asked the Stephen King's book: "What happened during the very first millisecond after the Big Bang". Then I have asked plain ChatGPT the same question. And similar…
egorfine on HN
Perplexity.AI
From 1 comment
I have discussed extensively with it about Vonnegut's entire intertexuality. I have learned so many incredible things. The neatest prompt I have crafted is this: "What would the…
ProllyInfamous on HN