I actually find Gmail a better editor/grammar check then LLMs. It makes isolated simplifications/corrections that imo have minimal style impact and just focus on clarifying phrasing.
I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era
81–90 of 262 posts
Re: I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era
#82What does it say about me that when I run my writing through one of those "detect if AI" tools I seldom see a value of less than 70% confidence that the writing was AI generated?
Re: I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era
#83I want to emphasize a thought you expressed: > "..but maybe it's a good thing that most of us don't allow this technology to reframe our thoughts." No, you're not the only one experiencing this: I too had the same concerns as you: with every new thought, every new creation, I had to ask the AI's opinion, as if I were no longer able to judge, to decide, without consulting the AI (...just to be safe, you never know...)…
depending how hard the "the brain is a muscle" saying applies, there is no way using LLMs/chatbot systems/AI is not going to deteriorate your brain immensely.
If your body is in good shape, stopping exercise won't make you deteriorate that quickly. What I wonder is, will people get in good shape in the first place.
What I mean is as someone with lots of experience, I don't care about me not learning about the basics anymore as much as someone in their 20s and 30s maybe should.
Re: I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era
#84Are grammatical errors and typos fashionable now? Reading this post it seems the anti-thesis in the LLM era is not to edit at all, but rather write down a stream of consciousness to make it "personal".
I've started letting some run on sentences remain because it feels closer to how humans think and usually write. Letting typos go seems silly though.
Re: I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era
#85Not joking, buy and read books. Old books are only written by people. (and the help of an editor)
Or read magazines and newspapers from reputable publications. My grammar and writing have improved tremendously from reading quality magazine articles, e.g. stuff from The Atlantic or The NY Book Review or whatever.
Both magazines and books are valid forms of information consumption and books are not the only way to improve your writing, reading, and understanding of the world.
Re: I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era
#86AI for editing is garbage. Chat to it to get ideas maybe, but in its current incarnation it’s just going to degrade anything you filter through it.
Re: I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era
#87What does it say about me that when I run my writing through one of those "detect if AI" tools I seldom see a value of less than 70% confidence that the writing was AI generated?
It probably means that your writing stylistically is close to the vector-space average of "good" writing, which is what AI produces.
FWIW, your comment history here does not look like AI at all to me, and I think I have a very (maybe too?) high sensitivity to AI slop.
Re: I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era
#88What does it say about me that when I run my writing through one of those "detect if AI" tools I seldom see a value of less than 70% confidence that the writing was AI generated?
try it with something published before 2022. do you still get the same results?
I really doubt those tools are good for anything
Re: I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not that simple. LLMs were trained on lots of writing, and the "LLM voice" resembles in many ways good English prose, or at least effective public communications voice. For years, even before LLMs, there have been trends of varied popularity to, for lack of a better word, regress - intentionally omitting capitalization, punctuation, or other important details which convey meaning. I rejected those, and likewise…
> "LLM voice" resembles in many ways good English prose, or at least effective public communications voice. It does not resembles that. It is usually grammatically correct writing, but it is also pretty ineffective writing bad writing with good gramar.
One of the most common criticisms is the use of the emdash. This is a classic bit of English prose that is not problematic except as a stereotype used to dismiss writing for form rather than for content.
Let's grab a few books off the shelf (literally).
Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has four emdashes on the very first page:
> It is also the story of a book, a book called THGTTG - not an Earth book, never...
Isaac Asimov's classic The Last Question: three emdashes on the first page (as printed in The Complete Stories, Volume I)
> ...they knew what lay behind the cold, clicking, flashing face -- miles and miles of face -- of that giant computer.
Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves: Three emdashes on page 1
> Much like its subject, The Navidson Record itself is also uneasily contained -- whether by category or lection.
Robert Caro, Master of the Senate: Five emdashes on page one
> Its drab tan damask walls...were unrelieved by even a single touch of color -- no painting, no mural -- or, seemingly, by any other ornament
Other pages 1s:
* Murakami - 1Q84: 1
* Murray/Cox - Apollo: 1
* Meadows - Thinking in Systems: 1
* Dostoyevsky - The Brothers Karamazov (Pevear/Volokhonsky translation): 4
* Caro - The Power Broker: 5
* Hofstadter - Godel, Escher, Bach - 3
Honestly, when I started this post I expected to have to dig deeper than page 1. The emdash is an important part of English-language literature and I reject the claim that we should ignore all writing that contains it.
Re: I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era
#90What does it say about me that when I run my writing through one of those "detect if AI" tools I seldom see a value of less than 70% confidence that the writing was AI generated?
I know this is a spicy take, but it probably just means you're more eloquent in your writing than most netizens...
And that's not really a hard bar to clear if you look at how people write comments online (including places like GitHub).
Anyone that uses punctuation, and capitalises words, probably automatically gets past the 70% confidence line.