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I'd rather read the prompt

claytonwramsey.com

1–10 of 880 posts

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#2
We offloaded our memory to Google and then our writing to LLMs.

There's too much information in the World for it to matter, I think is the underlying reason.

As an example, most enterprise communication nears the levels of noise in its content.

So, why not let a machine generate this noise, instead?

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#4
I like the author's take: it isn't a value judgement on the individual using ChatGPT (or Gemini or whichever LLM you like this week), it's that the thought that went into making the prompt is, inevitably, more interesting/original/human than the output the LLM generates afterwards.

In my experiments with LLMs for writing code, I find that the code is objectively garbage if my prompt is garbage. If I don't know what I want, if I don't have any ideas, and I don't have a structure or plan, that's the sort of code I get out.

I'd love to hear any counterpoints from folks who have used LLMs lately to get academic or creative writing done, as I haven't tried using any models lately for anything beyond helping me punch through boilerplate/scaffolding on personal programming projects.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#5
> I say this because I believe that your original thoughts are far more interesting, meaningful, and valuable than whatever a large language model can transform them into.

Really? The example used was for a school test. Is there really much original thought in the answer? Do you really want to read the students original thought?

I think the answer is no in this case. The point of the test is to assess whether the student has learned the topic or not. It isn’t meant to share actual creative thoughts.

Of course, using AI to write the answer is contrary to the actual purpose, too, but it isn’t because you want to hear the students creativity, but because it is failing to serve its purpose as a demonstration of knowledge.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#6
I used to teach, years before LLMs, and got lots of copy-pasted crap submitted. I always marked it zero, never mentioning plagiarism (which would require some university administration) and just commenting that I asked for X and instead got some pasted together nonsense.

As long as LLM output is what it is, there is little threat of it actually being competitive on assignments. If students are attentive enough to paraphrase it into their own voice I'd call it a win; if they just submit the crap that some data labeling outsourcer has RLHF'd into a LLM, I'd just mark it zero.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#7

We offloaded our memory to Google and then our writing to LLMs. There's too much information in the World for it to matter, I think is the underlying reason. As an example, most enterprise communication nears the levels of noise in its content. So, why not let a machine generate this noise, instead?

I hear you. But in this case, it seems like the author was mostly referencing academic uses of LLMs for either writing assignments or reviewing (academic) papers. Enterprise communications have their own carefully set requirements, but often they aren't meant to be instructive to the person writing them (assignments) or enhancing an existing corpus of knowledge (academic papers, optimistically).

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#8
I fully support the author’s point but it’s hard to argue with the economics and hurdles around obtaining degrees. Most people do view obtaining a degree as just a hurdle to getting a decent job, that’s just the economics of it. And unfortunately the employers these days are encouraging this kind of copy/paste work. Look at how Meta and Google claim the majority of the new code written there is AI created?

The world will be consumed by AI.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#10
I don’t know anything about the subject area, so I don’t know if this captures enough to get a good grade. But I’m curious if anyone could tell whether the last answer were AI generated if I copied and pasted. These are the iterations I go through when writing long requirement documents/assessments/statements of work (consulting).

Yes I know the subject area for which I write assessments and know if what is generated is factually correct. If I’m not sure, I ask for web references using the web search tool.

https://chatgpt.com/share/6817c46d-0728-8010-a83d-609fe547c1...

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