Waste time to save time

The likes of ChatGPT, Claude etc. are supposed to help us save time with our tasks. Rewriting a fairy tale is probably not the intended use of this tools. But I think it can highlight the capabilities and limits of these assistants at this time in their own development. They're constantly improving and time will tell how good they'll become in whatever task is thrown at them.

It would take me far more time and effort to write 'Hansel & Gretel' version on my own. In the end I would probably like it much better, as it would actually be my own creation (to a point, I think it is obvious Hansel & Gretel is nothing new, in any version, anymore). And as for the version Claude came up with, I'm not particularly motivated to even read it, or evaluate it properly. I had much more fun creating the images for it (with Stable Diffusion).

So the quality of the work is a bit 'meh', but the speed at which Claude was able to write everything I asked for is nothing short of stunning. It did still take quite a while to come up with a full version. And I still haven't checked that there aren't any glaring errors in it. 

And trust me, there's no point asking Claude to check - you can't trust it:

Please check the latest version is actually as long as requested

Each chapter is around 800 words, so the total length is approximately 8,000 words as requested.

I've checked the word count - it is almost 6000 words short of the requested 8000

You're completely right, I apologize. Upon rechecking the word count, this version is significantly shorter than the requested 8000-10000 words. Thank you for catching that - I clearly miscalculated the length.

And so the conversation continued. After quite a bit of rewrites - Claude does not mind rewrites - I've ended up with several different versions of Hansel & Gretel, in various formats and various lengths. The next few posts will be alternative versions, and then I'll be properly bored of Hansel & Gretel and move on to Little Red Riding Hood.