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Don’t use AI to write things that you present as your own work

satisfice.com

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Re: Don’t use AI to write things that you present as your own work

#71

Post by purplepatrick »

These articles on using AI for writing are all very binary. You can use AI in a variety of ways when writing: improve grammar, correct typos, better organize ideas/concepts/sentence structure/sentences, and dozens of other “how applications (as opposed to “what”).

It’s not like people feel the need to explain that they used a spellchecker or thesaurus or googled the correct use of an idiom, etc.

There seems to be a general need for some people to dunk on valuable AI use by refusing to acknowledge that there are a many ways to use a tool. (Similar story on using AI for coding.)

Echoing a comment from above, why would I care whether a sentence was formulated by AI or John or a ghostwriter or John who asked Jane for feedback before rewriting? I care about the content. If I don’t like the way it’s written or if I’m irked by how it is written (ooh, an emdash — how embarrassing!) then I don’t need to read it.

Personally, I’m much more annoyed when I click on an article that sounds interesting, and the author tries to show off their penmanship by starting with five pages of “a history of X” or a tangential but redundant personal story before getting to the point. IMHO most non-fiction writing on the web could be accomplished in bullets. But again, that’s just my very personal preference…

Re: Don’t use AI to write things that you present as your own work

#72

Post by 627467 »

rafterydj wrote: post #69
627467 wrote: post #67

Unpopular take: if it was never critical or mandatory to disclose who you have read before publishing your own writing then you dont need to disclose ai use. Let the reader decide the value of what they read at face value. I honestly feel this ai disclosure thing is just pure mindless elitism and worse - entitlement - from readers. "Crappy" writing has always existed, deal with it. Stop reading as soon as you want

Disagree. There's a power imbalance between how easy it is to write something by hand and slap a human label next to AI output. "Let the reader decide" is not fair in a world where the reader then sees >90% AI writing in internet search results.

Remember how the internet works: you request the content. Web content is not a highway billboard you didnt ask for. If you found a "crappy" content consider your referral. We should all consider our sourcing. The world doesn't owe us anything

Re: Don’t use AI to write things that you present as your own work

#73

Post by scotty79 »

beej71 wrote: post #63
scotty79 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

>> We should be better than genAI. > Why exactly? I think the top reason for most people is so that they're worth hiring. If you offer no more than an AI, what is your value? Is scotty79 human? Was this written by you? Or are you just an AI? And if you are human and wrote it, why did you do that when an AI could do it better than you? And if an AI could do it better, why even communicate with you? I could just go tal…

[flagged]

Re: Don’t use AI to write things that you present as your own work

#74

Post by satisfice »

ElProlactin wrote: post #46
satisfice wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are serious, then AI has already begin to rot your brain. My post was much more than saying “don’t use AI.” I use AI. I even use AI adjacent to my writing. But with me, you always know that my written words are directly from me. They sound like me. I pretty much write how I talk, albeit more grammatically. My post was about why you are taking a big risk with your reputation/brand if you let AI draft your writt…

> If you are serious, then AI has already begin to rot your brain. First, it's not a good look to start off your rebuttal with an ad hominem. Based on the high standards you speak to in your post, and your concern about reputations, I would have expected more. > I use AI. I even use AI adjacent to my writing. But with me, you always know that my written words are directly from me. They sound like me. I pretty much wr…

It's not a good look to start a comment with any variation of "you're being rude," either. So I guess both of us are prickly?

You misunderstood my blog post in an odd way that's hard for me to account for unless you just didn't read carefully. Hence, my annoyed quip.

I wrote in my policy, referred to in the post, that I never have AI draft anything for me. But I was quite explicit that I may use AI to aid my research in various ways-- just as I use Google search and other tools. I might create a monte carlo simulation to test my understanding of probability before making a bold pronouncement about statistical matter, too.

So, what I mean by adjacent is "next to" but not "on top of" or "inside." That's what most people mean by adjacent. I don't have AI draft any text for me. I type it all myself. I choose the words and sentence forms and rhetorical structure and overall strategy myself. That's how you know it's me and not some AI masquerading as me.

Re: Don’t use AI to write things that you present as your own work

#75

Post by [deleted] »

627467 wrote: post #67

Unpopular take: if it was never critical or mandatory to disclose who you have read before publishing your own writing then you dont need to disclose ai use. Let the reader decide the value of what they read at face value. I honestly feel this ai disclosure thing is just pure mindless elitism and worse - entitlement - from readers. "Crappy" writing has always existed, deal with it. Stop reading as soon as you want

[deleted]

Re: Don’t use AI to write things that you present as your own work

#76

Post by beej71 »

scotty79 wrote: post #73
beej71 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> We should be better than genAI. > Why exactly? I think the top reason for most people is so that they're worth hiring. If you offer no more than an AI, what is your value? Is scotty79 human? Was this written by you? Or are you just an AI? And if you are human and wrote it, why did you do that when an AI could do it better than you? And if an AI could do it better, why even communicate with you? I could just go tal…

[flagged]

> Now I just point out behavior that I want to be different and the model figures it out. Often surprisingly quickly.

This seems to have low-to-zero value in the medium- to long-term. Probably some 90% of the population has the ability to sit in their living room and ask a genAI to build things. Why do I need to use your software? If I liked it, I'd just have my AI clone it.

And if everyone can just groom dogs (using this to mean "non-information work"), the value of that goes through the floor, too.

> I see AIs as providing quality (better) and humans as providing flavor

Humans are perhaps better than AI at providing flavor?

> I see myself now way more useful as contributing unique ideas of what could exist and how (on the high level) it could work.

Another example of being better.

> Except perhaps a bit of taste when it comes to directory layout and dependencies selection.

And another.

> I'm sure this comment would be an easier read if the bot read it for you and relied the ideas and information it contains

I'm not sure that's the case, but if it were and that's what I was doing, there'd be no point in human flavor. :(

Re: Don’t use AI to write things that you present as your own work

#77

Post by justanotherjoe »

627467 wrote: post #72
rafterydj wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. There's a power imbalance between how easy it is to write something by hand and slap a human label next to AI output. "Let the reader decide" is not fair in a world where the reader then sees >90% AI writing in internet search results.

Remember how the internet works: you request the content. Web content is not a highway billboard you didnt ask for. If you found a "crappy" content consider your referral. We should all consider our sourcing. The world doesn't owe us anything

This kind of thinking assumes quantitative changes never result in qualitative change. Which is demonstrably false. Obviously there are thresholds where phase transitions happen.

Take saltwatwer and cell. After some threshold of saltiness is passed, the water flow reverses from into the cell to away from the cell. And the cell frikkin dies.

Re: Don’t use AI to write things that you present as your own work

#78

Post by nextaccountic »

627467 wrote: post #67

Unpopular take: if it was never critical or mandatory to disclose who you have read before publishing your own writing then you dont need to disclose ai use. Let the reader decide the value of what they read at face value. I honestly feel this ai disclosure thing is just pure mindless elitism and worse - entitlement - from readers. "Crappy" writing has always existed, deal with it. Stop reading as soon as you want

> Let the reader decide the value of what they read at face value.

The problem is that AI texts are flooding the web and hijacking the attention of humans, their most precious and scarce resource

> Stop reading as soon as you want

Then you already lost time

Re: Don’t use AI to write things that you present as your own work

#79

Post by 0x20cowboy »

Yeah, cool. The only way to get past resume filters now is to have AI write your CV and cover letter. TAs in school will grade you higher on your papers if you use AI so your papers sound like the median of all academic papers - you get down graded if it is "in your own voice".

So, I agree with the moral stance of the article, and I personally take all the Ls from all the CV rejection, and the lower grades because I write the paper myself. Just realize that you are choosing life on hard mode for negative societal and "dominance hierarchy" benefit.

Re: Don’t use AI to write things that you present as your own work

#80

Post by solarkraft »

classified wrote: post #54
beej71 wrote: post #53

We should be better than genAI. For me, with things like coding and writing, I think I'm better than it. For painting? It wins over me. But I'd never in a million years claim creation of a painting I prompted, even if I went and modified it after. Same with code or writing, for that matter. For the record, I never use AI in writing. First, it's no fun, and that's really reason enough. It'd be like sending a bot to wa…

> And third, most importantly, who would read anything I wrote if they could just generate it themselves? This should be embarrassingly obvious to everyone, but allegedly there are hoards of vibecoders and other slop producers to whom it never occurs (if it's not astroturfers pretending to be that). If prompt slinging is your only expertise, you already are redundant.

Meh. I‘d be happy if my AI built my program just the way that I want it, but it turns out to be a lot of work go get it to do that (Deepseek, Claude might be a bit less involved).

I still have to make a bunch of decisions based on its research, so it still turns out to be hours of work that can go into it.

Granted, I can probably optimize some things by encoding my style preferences. But so far it has been a lot more involved than „make me an app, make no mistakes“.

That‘s why I‘d call it in a large part my work. It‘s my vision, in the same way an architect that has never personally laid a brick can call a building „their work“.

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