Writes and Write-Nots

I follow Paul's argument about the consequences of the churning of low quality output by AI, but I think there's a second order effect that's more concerning. The ability to judge other people's knowledge of a subject area will become exceedingly rare and priceless.

Unlike younger generations, who are growing up surrounded by AI-generated content, many of us older folks have had the experience of engaging directly with people and evaluating their competence. We developed a knack for quickly determining someone's skill level through just a few minutes of face-to-face conversation—a skill that was essential for navigating various life situations.

Now that anyone can use AI to generate seemingly competent text, videos, and more, and as in-person interactions decline, the conditions that once allowed us to gauge competence are fading. I worry that in the future, no one—including AI trained on our outputs—will be adept at making these assessments.

Those of us who take time to carefully compose arguments and revise them, as Paul suggests, will have a better handle on this, so that's a helpful consideration.

I worry strongly about a future like that in Ideocracy[1], where nobody has a clue bout actually judge competence, and instead goes with the best sound bites.

The one path out that I can see, and it's unlikely, is to teach the skill of explicitly tracking history, and reviewing how well someone predicted the future, over time.

The explicit generation and curation of a reputation is part of that priceless nexus that they'll all be seeking in future generations, and yet it'll pale in comparison with the ability to size someone up in a few minutes of interaction.

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/

The people who like to write will still write no matter how many chatGPTs are there. New people will start writing because it enjoys them and because curiosity.

But there are a lot of others which never liked to write, they do not need this for their job and why should not use this GPT as a tool like the promised land of AI / robots.

Same will happen with cooking: people who like to cook will cook traditionally even after our incoming household robots will be able to.

Yes. The argument is that writing is different and I don't think the analogy holds. Calculators are not tools for mathematical thinking or communication. Writing is a form of processing thoughts and communication.

The "people are mostly fine" is true. People were mostly fine at the time when only the elites could write, but the society will not be the same. We are moving towards those old times.

Maybe you deal with intellectual elite from the best schools and haven't noticed[1], but adult literacy even among college educated has been on a downward trend for some time and we can see some results. Normal interactions in the corporate world are more difficult. People in middle-level management can't explain and articulate things as well as they used to. There is more communication, but it's not as efficient. One well-written report in every two weeks used to be enough. You need to be on a Zoom call 2-3 hours weekly for the same thing.

Mediocre or low quality writing is mentally taxing to read. If what you read is grammatically correct AI-slob it really kills all interest in reading and communicating in writing.

[1] Only about 10% of adults have PIAAC adult literacy level 4 or 5.

The point was that it was difficult to get into such a position without having learnt to write. I doubt that people in such positions, having already learnt to write, just start dictating to staff and having them completely rewrite it. They would still use those writing skills to communicate with the staff and directly with other correspondents.

Sorry, while I have a lot of the Graham essays, hopefully all them, now also including this one, here I nearly fully disagree with Graham:

(1) Due to computer-based word processing and spelling and grammar correction, writing, and good writing, are much easier now than before personal computers (PC). Indeed, a quip is that the typewriters killed off the ink pens, and the PCs killed off the typewriters; writing got easier and likely better, not less common. People got a lot more practice.

(2) Email, Internet blog posts, and other communications generate more writing. Can we find some data on total US email volume and compare that with old USPS mail volume, letters to the editor of newspapers, etc.?

(3) Now there is a lot of competition for good writing: At Hacker News, bad writing, especially from bad thinking, gets down voted. On Web sites using Disqus, part of getting voted up is clear, short, maybe just one sentence, maybe sarcastic, clever, and humorous, say, succinct, on the point, and maybe fun, and that means in some respects better writing. Maybe Disqus could tell us how Internet blog post writing volume has increased? A lot?

(4) For the media, via the Internet and Web sites, that is now much cheaper to produce than old newspapers, magazines, TV news, and I'd guess that the total of media as writing or as oral reading of what was written is much greater than before. For the future, I anticipate many more words per day, i.e., more writing. Uh, the writing at Hacker News has been going down, up, or staying the same? There is Facebook, X, Reddit, Wikipedia. There are sites for narrow interests. Sounds like a lot more writing.

(5) People have smart phones with them nearly all the time; net, that can mean more communications, and writing is less intrusive on the receiver than in-person voice. From good STEM field communications or just mature socialization, to avoid being misunderstood or offensive, good writing is important.

(6) Sure, now some Google searches result in AI answers, and for some simple questions the AI answers can be a little okay. But, I don't take the AI answers seriously, and the old Google search facility works fine and, also, of high importance, gives the URLs for the search results.

(7) Looking back at my writing, from personal letters to academics, on-line political discussions, etc., I see no way AI could help -- the AI writing is worse, not better.

(8) Since supposedly Taylor Swift is now worth $1.6 billion, there can be increased interest in guitar playing and the claim that such music is based almost entirely on the four chords I, IV, V, and VI. So, my niece wanted to know, and I wrote her an essay, 6,200 words with several YouTube URLs with pictures and sound. For some music with a lot of chords included URL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZsqnHhyub0

Sorry, but for my niece I found nothing nearly as good as what I wrote and believe that AI would be a poor substitute.

(9) The world is changing, especially related to writing, at likely a uniquely high rate, and no AI training data can report today what is new tomorrow and needs good writing.