Live data from Hacker News

I do not want AI to "polish" me

thebloggess.com

161–170 of 276 posts

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

#161
post #22

I get the frustration, but I think there’s a hidden assumption in this discussion: that everyone can write well in English. Only about 5% of the world’s population are native English speakers, but more than twice that number use it daily. For many, AI rewriting isn’t about losing personal style—it’s about making sure they can communicate clearly in a language that isn’t their first. It’s fair to dislike how AI flatte…

How are you supposed to communicate clearly if you are relying on an AI to communicate for you? How could you even tell if it properly communicates your ideas if you couldnt communicate them properly in the first place?

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

#162

> 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…

Thing is, we've been here before in a much more limited way; people _hated_ it when Microsoft's demonic paperclip did this in Office. "It looks like you're writing a letter". _Hated_ it.

It is unclear what the industry thinks has changed, that people will now welcome "It looks like you're [whatever]".

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

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 le…

> men who are dangerous/abusive/predators stay in the dating pool longer

Not only this but they can use these apps to find their victims faster and easier than ever before.

> This is explicitly unfair to normal men

I think it's also unfair to women that they have to pick up the extra work that was done by the "community" before. And a loss for social cohesion too.

I am wondering though how someone who just ended a relationship could deal with this scenario? As a male you arguably look like one of the abusers because you're older and looking for a partner and as a female you're seen as less attractive. At the same time you're probably also more picky because of the break-up. Seems like they're the most shit-out-of-luck here regardless of what's between their legs.

I also wonder if this will push us towards being with our "high-school sweethearts" for longer than we would otherwise?

> Maybe financial ruin in child support, but explicitly not death.

Yeah absolutely, I'm personally not aware of the exact numbers for this but I wouldn't be shocked if you're right. Also I'd include things like false accusations, or getting her brothers/father to "take care of" the ex. Also we need to account for things like baby entrapment.

Also men tend to express their aggression physically whereas women tend to express it through reputation destruction. This also partially explains where we are today: women are afraid of male physical repercussions, men are afraid of female societal repercussions. Interestingly, it also mimics a lot of the rhetoric you see about "all males being bad" since it's a form of reputation destruction - whereas the male "comebacks" tend to focus on physical acts of violence that they "could do but won't".

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

#164

There is no way in hell anyone who knows me would get that email and not think I’d been abducted This person cares about not putting up a fake identity. That's pretty cool, but social media has exposed that a large number of people are perfectly fine presenting an illusion. People will have no shame passing off well written things as an output of their talent and hard work. Digital makeup has no bounds.

indeed!

At a high level I see convergence of styles, topics, behaviors to a generic form, both in "AI" and social media. Which to me suggest that the "AI" solutions are doing exactly what we would do ourselves, just faster.

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

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

A lot of people who want to replace most human interactions with LLMs assume that there is some objective set of cultural values true in all contexts, and that it is good and easy to encode these as axioms into an AI.

And those objective set of cultural values are, apparently... a sort of parody of 90s corporate culture, a sort of polite version of Michael Scott. Like, no-one ever _actually_ wrote like LLMs tend to write; it reads as a parody of a now slightly obsolete corporate-speak.

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

#166
post #39

AI takes the personality out of written communication, and swaps it with a bland corporate persona. I want to know that I am working with actual human beings. It reassures me to know that if something goes wrong, I can appeal to those human beings, and not to soulless corporate automatons working off of a flowchart.

I feel like this is what corporate wants. A single way of speaking. A single way of thinking. Round off all the sharp edges and smooth out all the wrinkles. Humanity filtered through a sycophantic psychotic AI tuned to perfection by psychopaths who want to change humanity into their image. "The idea of a Soul, Free Will -- these are Over!" - Technocracy explained by Prof Yuval Harari https://youtu.be/NV0CtZga7qM

Double-plus-good.

(People tend to forget it, and it's only seen in passing, but the Ministry of Truth has machines for writing terrible books in the novel!)

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

#167
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 wouldn't say the author's style is unique or individual in any way. Every single tumblr blog sounds like that. You could easily create a "make edgy" function that would feed your formal writings and turn them into that kind of prose. Is it better or worth than "polish"? There's no substantial difference. The "polish" version sure sounds less exhausting than the original.

It's personal. "Unique" and "individual" might not be the best words to describe it, but it's clearly a style they've intentionally adopted. They appear to have been quite successful for it to!

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

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 le…

> men who are dangerous/abusive/predators stay in the dating pool longer Not only this but they can use these apps to find their victims faster and easier than ever before. > This is explicitly unfair to normal men I think it's also unfair to women that they have to pick up the extra work that was done by the "community" before. And a loss for social cohesion too. I am wondering though how someone who just ended a re…

> I think it's also unfair to women that they have to pick up the extra work that was done by the "community" before. And a loss for social cohesion too.

I would argue the community explicitly did not do the work of ousting predators. We are only in this generation or so no longer allowed to rape women if we're married to them. It is still legal for adults to marry children, not in an 18-to-17 way but a 38-to-15 way. Child marriages are overwhelmingly older-male-younger-female.

As for being with high-school sweethearts, that imo is also less and less likely, because more adults are forced to travel for employment (e.g. landing a job in a big city and moving).

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

#169

I simply do not understand the end game of these sorts of features. Presumably, the idea is to make the other person think you've written the email yourself, and you're a "better"/more corporate/more professional writer than you actually are. But once everyone starts using this kind of transformer, so nobody assumes that anyone else is actually writing the content they're sending out -- what's the point?! Who benefit…

> Who benefits?

The vendor's share price. This is nothing to do with the _users_; it is about cramming 'AI' into as many press releases as possible because it gives the markets the warm fuzzies. No-one wants to use this, and that's really beside the point; for the time being it makes stock price go up.

Presumably in a year or so there'll be a new fad, and most LLM-based 'features' will go the way of Clippy.

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

#170

> 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…

Thing is, we've been here before in a much more limited way; people _hated_ it when Microsoft's demonic paperclip did this in Office. "It looks like you're writing a letter". _Hated_ it. It is unclear what the industry thinks has changed, that people will now welcome "It looks like you're [whatever]".

It's a design that's in companies' best interests. You can have a computer that's a "friend." One that you trust but ultimately has a mind of its own. This contrasts with a computer that's merely a tool, that serves you exclusvely at your pleasure and has zero agency of its own.

Which approach gives companies more control over users? Which one allows companies to sell that access to the highest bidder?

Post reply on HN