An audiobook is a good idea and I’ll look into it, though I don’t expect it to be done any time soon (i.e. it would at least take several months, I think).
Also, Tobias, if you want to make a super simple audiobook version of the book, I recommend using Amazon Polly. It’ll probably cost under $100 and take less than 10 hours and increase the number of people who read your book by a lot. I know a ton of people who only read with their ears or who are more than 10x likely to read something if there’s an audio version. Even I only found out about this book because I listened to the article on the Nonlinear Library (sorry for the shameless but relevant plug 😛)
Finally, congrats on the book! So far I’m loving it. Thank you for writing it. I think s-risks deserve more attention in the EA movement and think this book will help move the needle.
Drive folder with some scripts and other resources; may add more later!
(Will try to clean the thumbnail of my name and Spreaker logo, but don’t want to wait to share! )
...
Not certain and might take a couple days, but should be pretty easy (though not instantaneous) to basically make readouts in any English accent the new IOS can handle (‘British full version.m4a’ in the Drive folder is a sample, but has pronunciation issues due to weird text encoding)
Just listened to it! The pleasant and thoughtful narration by Adrian Nelson felt perfect for the book. I might even recommend the audiobook version over the text version to people who might otherwise find it distressing to think about s-risks. :)
You might consider creating a text-to-speech version by using e.g. Amazon Polly. Whilst imperfect, it is listenable and might be useful to people. Here is a sample generated with the British English Arthur Male voice.
Small thing: British voices sound more credible, which is good, but at the trade-off of being harder to listen to at high speeds, which is my strong preference.
There are probably not a lot of people who are listening to it at high enough speeds that the trade-off is worth it, but that is the trade-off to consider.
Also, my research for the Nonlinear Library found that on average people prefer listening to male voices, for what it’s worth. I didn’t research it hard or for long and don’t think it matters a ton either way, but just to share what I found.
I’ll just throw out the possibility of copy and pasting the whole thing (with anywhere from zero to a lot of formatting/editing) into an EA Forum post, which (I assume?) would trigger the Nonlinear Library system to turn it into audio. This would also get it into the feeds of people who only consume the forum via podcast app.
Thanks!
An audiobook is a good idea and I’ll look into it, though I don’t expect it to be done any time soon (i.e. it would at least take several months, I think).
Audiobook version: [new] Aaron made an awesome audiobook version here.
[Original] It’s easy to turn it into an audiobook version with Evie or Natural Reader for anybody who likes to read with their ears instead of their eyes. Full guide I wrote up on how to turn everything into audio here
Also, Tobias, if you want to make a super simple audiobook version of the book, I recommend using Amazon Polly. It’ll probably cost under $100 and take less than 10 hours and increase the number of people who read your book by a lot. I know a ton of people who only read with their ears or who are more than 10x likely to read something if there’s an audio version. Even I only found out about this book because I listened to the article on the Nonlinear Library (sorry for the shameless but relevant plug 😛)
Finally, congrats on the book! So far I’m loving it. Thank you for writing it. I think s-risks deserve more attention in the EA movement and think this book will help move the needle.
I’m working on getting this to be read in a high quality voice, but for anyone else who wants to try/do it better, here’s a txt with what I think the voice should actually read (like no reading out page numbers and stuff like that): https://drive.google.com/file/d/155pb6tMkE-rSmrizi1jbzPKTMSmYJRDX/view?usp=drivesdk
Not 100% certain it’s correct though, likely a missing word or two
Update: provisional text to speech audio (Siri reading that text file haha) now linked the top of the post!
Should be up on all the main podcast apps soon, but until then, you can listen on Spreaker at https://bit.ly/3UmQS85
Youtube (w/ accurate subtitles, embedded below)
Apple Podcasts:
Spotify
RSS feed url: https://www.spreaker.com/show/5706170/episodes/feed
Drive folder with some scripts and other resources; may add more later!
(Will try to clean the thumbnail of my name and Spreaker logo, but don’t want to wait to share! )
...
Not certain and might take a couple days, but should be pretty easy (though not instantaneous) to basically make readouts in any English accent the new IOS can handle (‘British full version.m4a’ in the Drive folder is a sample, but has pronunciation issues due to weird text encoding)
We’ve now put together a new and improved audio version, which can be found here.
Just listened to it! The pleasant and thoughtful narration by Adrian Nelson felt perfect for the book. I might even recommend the audiobook version over the text version to people who might otherwise find it distressing to think about s-risks. :)
You might consider creating a text-to-speech version by using e.g. Amazon Polly. Whilst imperfect, it is listenable and might be useful to people. Here is a sample generated with the British English Arthur Male voice.
Yes, Amazon Polly is great!
Small thing: British voices sound more credible, which is good, but at the trade-off of being harder to listen to at high speeds, which is my strong preference.
There are probably not a lot of people who are listening to it at high enough speeds that the trade-off is worth it, but that is the trade-off to consider.
Also, my research for the Nonlinear Library found that on average people prefer listening to male voices, for what it’s worth. I didn’t research it hard or for long and don’t think it matters a ton either way, but just to share what I found.
I’ll just throw out the possibility of copy and pasting the whole thing (with anywhere from zero to a lot of formatting/editing) into an EA Forum post, which (I assume?) would trigger the Nonlinear Library system to turn it into audio. This would also get it into the feeds of people who only consume the forum via podcast app.