A relevant satirical post I stumbled on today much about the same subject: https://medium.com/@Justwritet/stop-competing-with-the-machi...
Writing with LLM is not a shame
61–70 of 155 posts
Re: Writing with LLM is not a shame
#62Of course, there’s no shame in using tools that are available to us. We’re a tool-using species. We’re just a bunch of stupid monkeys without tools. A lot of what we do is about using tools to free up time to do more interesting things than doing things the tools already do better than us. Like it or not, people are using LLMs a lot. The output isn’t universally good. It depends on what you ask for and how you critic…
If the tool does the task for you, then you didnt do the task. I don't keep my food cold, my refrigerator does. I just turned it on. This doesn't matter unless I am for some reason pretending I myself am keeping my food cold somehow, and then that becomes a lie.
When a tool blurs the line between who performed the task, and you take full credit despite being assisted, that is deceitful.
Spell checking helps us all pretend we're better spellers than we are, but we've decided as a society that correct spelling is more important than proving one's knowledge of spelling.
But if you're purportedly a writer, and you're using a tool that writes for you, then I will absolutely discount your writing ability. Maybe one day we will decide that the output is more important than the connection to the person who generated it, but to me, that day has not arrived.
Re: Writing with LLM is not a shame
#63I 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…
This approach is how I prefer to use it too. I write, it gives feedback, I revise based on which parts I thought it was right about. If I don't want to read raw LLM output, why would I make anyone else do it?
Re: Writing with LLM is not a shame
#64If you don't have time to write it I'm not going to make time to read it.
Exactly. LLM garbage is a straight up insult.
1. They deliberately chose to not take a few minutes to communicate with you, but expect something of you.
2. The hard part of writing is organizing thoughts into something coherent, not typing something out. If you don't understand something enough to write it in the first place, the LLM can't magically read your mind and understand what you want to say for you.
Re: Writing with LLM is not a shame
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
So do you always put in the ALT+ incantation to get an emdash or copy&paste? I feel the emdash is a tell because you have to go out of your way to use it on a computer keyboard. Something anyone other than the most dedicated punctuation geeks won't do for a random message on the internet. Things are different for typeset books.
On Windows, I use autohotkey and have a bunch of keyboard shortcuts for producing characters that I use fairly often but are difficult to type.
My keyboard has no keypad so I’m not sure there’s another way.
Re: Writing with LLM is not a shame
#66Of course, there’s no shame in using tools that are available to us. We’re a tool-using species. We’re just a bunch of stupid monkeys without tools. A lot of what we do is about using tools to free up time to do more interesting things than doing things the tools already do better than us. Like it or not, people are using LLMs a lot. The output isn’t universally good. It depends on what you ask for and how you critic…
If the tool does the task for you, then you didnt do the task. I don't keep my food cold, my refrigerator does. I just turned it on. This doesn't matter unless I am for some reason pretending I myself am keeping my food cold somehow, and then that becomes a lie. When a tool blurs the line between who performed the task, and you take full credit despite being assisted, that is deceitful. Spell checking helps us all pr…
When does a woodworker cease to be one? When he uses a handsaw? A circular saw? A sawmill?
> When a tool blurs the line between who performed the task
Who saws the wood? He who operates the tool, or the tool performing its function? What is the value of agency in a business that, supposedly, sells product? Code authorship isn't like writing, is it? Should it be?
Or is the distinction not in the product, but in the practice? Is the difference in woodworking vs lumber processing?
Or is it about expectation? e.g. when we no longer expect a product to be made by hand due to strong automation in the industry, we prepend terms such as "hand-made" or "artisanal". Are we currently still in the expectation phase of "software is written by hand"?
I have no dog in this race, really. I like writing software, and I like exploring technology. But I'm very confused and have a lot of questions that I have trouble answering. Your comment resonated though, and I'm still curious about how to interpret it all.
Re: Writing with LLM is not a shame
#67I 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).
Very few people do anything creative after the age of thirty-five. The reason is that very few people do anything creative before the age of thirty-five.
Re: Writing with LLM is not a shame
#68[flagged]
Re: Writing with LLM is not a shame
#69I 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…
> Expecting people to read unverified machine output is rude. Quite. Its the attention economy, you've demanded people's attention, and then you shove crap that even you didn't spend time reading in their face. Even if you're using it as an editor... you know that editors vary in quality, right? You wouldn't accept a random editor just because they're cheap or free. Prose has a lot in it, not just syntax, spelling an…
> You wouldn't accept a random editor just because they're cheap or free.
If the alternative is no editor then yeah i would. Most of what i write receives no checks by anyone other than me. A very small percentage of my output gets a second set of eyes. And it is usually a coworker or a friend (depending on the context of what is being written.) Their qualification is usually that they were available and amenable.
> Unless you yourself don't care about your craft.
This is a tad bit elitist. I care about my craft and would love if a competent, and insightfull editor would go over every piece of writing i put out for others to read. It would cost too much, and would be to hard to arrange. I just simply can’t afford it. On the other hand I can afford to send my writings through an LLM, and improve it here and there occasionaly. Not because i don’t care about my craft, but precisely because I do.