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I do not want AI to "polish" me

thebloggess.com

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Re: I do not want AI to "polish" me

#151

I've only recently started using AI, and have discovered my use or rejection of it is predicated on my feelings for the task. This argument of "authenticity" really resonates. I'm a manager, so when I'm sending emails to a customer or talking with one of my reports, I care deeply - so you might get some overwrought florid prose, but it's my overwrought florid prose. On the other hand, I have to lead a weekly meeting…

I was thinking about the authenticity of my writing earlier this week and wondering why I have no problem accepting code from an AI and committing it, but I find the idea of passing off an AI's writing as my own feels not just wrong, but immoral on the level of purposeful plagiarism. I feel a distinct difference, but I'm not particular clear why. I'm okay with sharing AI writing, but only when I've clearly communicated it was written by AI.

Probably related to why I can copy a piece of code from elsewhere (with sufficient work to verify it does what I expect and only what I expect) but I don't copy a quote and use it as my own. My words are my words. My code doesn't have the same guarantee.

Re: I do not want AI to "polish" me

#152
post #53

> It’s like my whole computer is a toddler screaming “LET ME DO IT!” every time I try to create something. Every autocorrect or auto suggestion ever has felt like this to me, but the volume has been turned up to 11. The otherwise drab Adobe Reader is covered with colorful sparkly buttons and popups suggesting I need not even read the document because it can give me “insights.” First, no you may not ready my proprieta…

Somehow I don’t have this problem with notepad.exe or vim or pandoc or imagemagic or textedit.app or resolve or blender. Maybe it isn’t the tech industry, and just consumer-facing apps.

Notepad is attempting to fix spelling without asking.

Re: I do not want AI to "polish" me

#153
post #31

> It’s like my whole computer is a toddler screaming “LET ME DO IT!” every time I try to create something. Every autocorrect or auto suggestion ever has felt like this to me, but the volume has been turned up to 11. The otherwise drab Adobe Reader is covered with colorful sparkly buttons and popups suggesting I need not even read the document because it can give me “insights.” First, no you may not ready my proprieta…

> no you may not ready my proprietary document, nor do I suspect most people using this particular software - I only have it for digital signatures - have permission to share IP with a third party. This is a massive liability that almost everybody seems to be ignoring. My employer has a ban on using AI on IP until this is properly resolved, because we actually care about it leaking. Maybe an Information Commissioner…

A blanket ban on ai seems like shooting yourself in the foot. What about local models, on prem, or using private azure instances?

Re: I do not want AI to "polish" me

#154
The AI polish feels like it was written by someone with only an elementary schooler's understanding of how to write a letter.

Even in stuffy institutions like banks and insurance companies, corporate email style is very straightforward and, idk, undecorated? You learn pretty quick that people only skim emails and every word beyond your core message creates opportunity for your core message to be skipped over. NOBODY is writing salutations or 'i hope this finds you well' or whatever other garbage chatgpt thinks the first paragraph should be.

When I read historical items on lettersofnote I find that even super old business messages are pretty streamlined and only have some crunch because some runner has to physically find the dude you are writing to.

Re: I do not want AI to "polish" me

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience women are not statistically hyper selective. The less selective women are just out of the dating pool faster than the hyper selective ones. A lot of the women I know are happy to marry a man who grooms himself, respects basic boundaries, and has income. A lot of religious women in particular are socially pressured to drop the "respects boundaries" category also.

I think this is mainly a problem with dating apps - I have seen what you're talking about myself when the pair meets "naturally" or are set up by mutual friends. People are far more forgiving in real life than they are online. But part of the problem here is that the dating apps are like junk food: easy, satisfying, but ultimately unhealthy. And unfortunately because of this ease a lot of people reach for them instea…

The female perspective is slightly different here. Like I said, the less selective women have already been out of the dating pool a long time. Additionally, women on dating apps experience additional pressure to be selective because men who are dangerous/abusive/predators stay in the dating pool longer. This is explicitly unfair to normal men, but normal men are also out of the dating pool faster on a statistical level. This means that a dating pool selects for more and more picky women, and more and more dangerous men thereby validating the selectivity of the existing women.

[This is not to say that there are not dangerous/abusive/predatory women. There certainly are. But one of the greatest causes of death of pregnant women is the father of the child-to-be murdering her, and one of the greatest causes of death of recently single women is their now-ex murdering her. There is no similar reciprocation i.e. one of the leading causes of death of fathers-to-be is not the mother-to-be murdering him. Maybe financial ruin in child support, but explicitly not death.]

Re: I do not want AI to "polish" me

#156
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole AI discussion reminds me of David Graeber's "bullshit jobs" book. If the content doesn't matter, why not have an AI generate something polite and meaningless? Why not save effort managing your inbox full of meaningless emails by having the AI summarize them? It might lose some of the details, but they didn't matter. And so more and more of the white collar world gets replaced by AI .. until it actually disr…

It amuses me how everyone always thinks someone else has the "bullshit job."

natural consequence of jobs optimising for productivity but actually abstracting all power to some mythical C suite job.

Re: I do not want AI to "polish" me

#157
post #2

You have an individual and unique way of speaking and writing? We're going to have to polish that out with the slop machine, citizen.

I use Grammarly to check for errors I make during writing more serious stuff (English is not my native language), but any suggestion it sends in my way changes the tone of the text so much that it sounds like it's written by a PR agency with a fake, forced attitude; sounding bland and colorless. So no, thank you. Correct my textbook punctuation mistakes, and leave my wordy and "not positive enough" sentences to me.

I'm getting increasingly irritated by Grammarly's attempts to boringify my writing. I've even considered doing away with it entirely, even if it means I have to do my own spell-checking.

Re: I do not want AI to "polish" me

#158

AI creep is like a leaky sewage pipe oozing gray water into everything you'd want to keep it out of. Disabling it is increasingly difficult on every app.

Nadella and the board approved billions of dollars in spending for AI. It's going to be in every single thing whether you want it or not. Otherwise, there will be a shareholder lawsuit.

Re: I do not want AI to "polish" me

#159

> It’s like my whole computer is a toddler screaming “LET ME DO IT!” every time I try to create something. Every autocorrect or auto suggestion ever has felt like this to me, but the volume has been turned up to 11. The otherwise drab Adobe Reader is covered with colorful sparkly buttons and popups suggesting I need not even read the document because it can give me “insights.” First, no you may not ready my proprieta…

After a recent Show HN, I got an email from someone saying that they'd set up a page for my 'product' on their product showcase startup site. I followed the link and saw my open-source project pitched as ChatGPT slop. It felt like a violation because it wasn't just an aggregated link, but a rewrite of my readme with an associated 'pitch'.

Re: I do not want AI to "polish" me

#160

Obviously the AI version is bland and terrible, but arguably more importantly it has also completely changed the meaning of the message. The AI version: - apologizes - implies the recipient was "promised" this email as a "response" to something - blames a hectic schedule - invites questions None of this was in or was even implied in the original. This is not a "polished" version, it's just a straight-up different ema…

The AI has some ... "ideas" ... of its own on what workplace relationships apparently need to be like.

Have you read the papers on how they optimize these LLMs for demeanor?

AI exists in a Matrix where toxic positivity is enforced with electric shocks.

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