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Writing with LLM is not a shame

reflexions.florianernotte.be

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Re: Writing with LLM is not a shame

#11

Post by dep_b »

Just got a few recommendations by my colleagues on LinkedIn that were clearly written by an LLM, the long emdash was even present. But then again, the message was tuned to specific things I did. Also they were from Eastern Europe, so I imagine they just fixed their input.

If you call yourself a writer, having tell tale LLM signs is bad. But for people who's work doesn't involve having a personal voice in written language, it might help them getting them to express things in a better way than before.

Re: Writing with LLM is not a shame

#12

Post by latexr »

> One argument to not disclaim it: people do not disclaim if they Photoshop a picture after publishing it and we are surrounded by a lot of edited pictures.

That is both a false equivalence and a form of whataboutism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

It is a poor argument in general, and a sure-fire way to increase shittiness in the world: “Well, everyone else is doing this wrong thing, so I can too”. No. Whenever you mention the status quo as an excuse to justify your own behaviour, you should look inward and reflect on your actions. Do you really believe what you’re doing is the right thing? If it is, fine; but if it is not, either don’t mention it or (ideally) do something about it.

> why don’t we see people mentioning they used specific tools to proofread before AI apparition?

Whenever I see this argument, I have a hard time believe it is made in good faith. Can you truly not see the difference between using a tool to fix mistakes in your work or to do the work for you?

> It feels like an obligation we have to respect in a way.

This was obvious from the beginning of the post. Throughout I never got the feeling you were struggling with the question intrinsically, for yourself, but always in a sense of how others would judge your actions. You quote opinion after opinion and it felt you were in search of absolution—not truth—for something you had already decided you did not want to do.

Re: Writing with LLM is not a shame

#13

Post by lewdwig »

mentalgear wrote: post #5

It's good for what all other LLMs are good for: semantic search, where the output can be generated texts to help you. But never get wrapped into the illusion that there is actual causal thinking. The thinking is still your responsibility, LLMs are just newer discovery/browsing engines.

There are nascent signs of emergent world models in current LLMs, the problem is that they decohere very quickly due to them lacking any kind of hierarchical long term memory.

A lot of what is structurally important the model knows about your code gets lost whenever the context gets compressed.

Solving this problem will mark the next big leap in agentic coding I think.

Re: Writing with LLM is not a shame

#14

Post by ekianjo »

nicbou wrote: post #3

I think it's fair to use AI as an editor, to get feedback about how your ideas are packaged. It's also fair to use it as a clever dictionary, to find the right expressions, or to use correct grammar and spelling. (This post could really use a round of corrections.) But in the end, the message and the reasoning should be yours, and any facts that come from the LLM should be verified. Expecting people to read unverifie…

> message and the reasoning should be yours,

I think we havent realized yet that most of us don't really have original thoughts. Even in creative industries the amount of plagiarism (or so called inspiration) is at all times high (and that's before LLMs were available).

Re: Writing with LLM is not a shame

#15

Post by latexr »

dep_b wrote: post #11

Just got a few recommendations by my colleagues on LinkedIn that were clearly written by an LLM, the long emdash was even present. But then again, the message was tuned to specific things I did. Also they were from Eastern Europe, so I imagine they just fixed their input. If you call yourself a writer, having tell tale LLM signs is bad. But for people who's work doesn't involve having a personal voice in written lang…

> clearly written by an LLM, the long emdash was even present.

Can we please stop propagating this accusation? Alright, sure, maybe LLMs overuse the em-dash, but it is a valid topographical mark which was in use way before LLMs and is even auto-inserted by default by popular software on popular operating systems—it is never sufficient on its own to identify LLM use (and yes, I just used it—multiple times—on purpose on 100% human-written text).

Sincerily,

Someone who enjoys and would like to be able to continue to use correct punctuation, but doesn’t judge those who don’t.

Re: Writing with LLM is not a shame

#17

Post by lewdwig »

torium wrote: post #10
lewdwig wrote: post #7

I use Claude Code almost daily now, and I think I’d rather cut off my own arm than go without it, but I don’t delude myself into thinking that current gen tools don’t have significant limitations and that it is my job to manage those limitations. So just like any other tool really. I have discovered this week that Claude is really good at redteaming code (and specs, and ADRs, and test plans), much better than most hu…

Would you share with us what kind of job you do? I keep seeing people saying how amazing it is to code with these things, and I keep failing at it. I suspect that they're better at some kinds of codebases than others.

Devops/SRE/Platform Engineering

Downside: lots of Python, and Python indentation causes havoc with a lot of agentic coding tools. RooCode in particular seems to mangle diffs all the time, irrespective of model.

Re: Writing with LLM is not a shame

#18

Post by flornt »

latexr wrote: post #12

> One argument to not disclaim it: people do not disclaim if they Photoshop a picture after publishing it and we are surrounded by a lot of edited pictures. That is both a false equivalence and a form of whataboutism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism It is a poor argument in general, and a sure-fire way to increase shittiness in the world: “Well, everyone else…

Thanks. Really appreciate your comments. It opens some perspectives I haven't considered and gives more things to think about regarding this. I'll digest it and update the content based on your observations!

Re: Writing with LLM is not a shame

#20

Post by lewdwig »

ekianjo wrote: post #14
nicbou wrote: post #3

I think it's fair to use AI as an editor, to get feedback about how your ideas are packaged. It's also fair to use it as a clever dictionary, to find the right expressions, or to use correct grammar and spelling. (This post could really use a round of corrections.) But in the end, the message and the reasoning should be yours, and any facts that come from the LLM should be verified. Expecting people to read unverifie…

> message and the reasoning should be yours, I think we havent realized yet that most of us don't really have original thoughts. Even in creative industries the amount of plagiarism (or so called inspiration) is at all times high (and that's before LLMs were available).

With code, I’m much more interested in it being correct and good rather than creative or novel. I see it is my job to be the arbiter of taste because the models are equally happy to create code I’d consider excellent and terrible on command.
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