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The End of an Era

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Re: The End of an Era

#11

Post by boriskourt »

pyth0 wrote: post #9
bkieffer wrote: post #5

Is the AI that writes "about as well as humans" in the room with us right now?

Did you stop reading at the em-dash? > Artificial Intelligence is writing about as well as humans — at least well enough to cause confusion and speculation No matter your opinion on AI writing, this is just a fact.

"But then I have to remind myself that I don’t sound like AI, it sounds like me. I’ve been em-dashing and comma-splicing up a motherfucking storm these past two decades. It was fun then, and it’s fun now."

From the source.

Re: The End of an Era

#12

Post by mwigdahl »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #7
inigyou wrote: post #4

LLMs are writing as well as humans for people who think writing words is the goal. Printing presses also write words better than humans. LLMs are solving the problem one layer higher than printing presses, but still several layers down from the top. Note that LLMs aren't useless, since they have other strengths which can make them equal or better than humans in certain applications. For instance, they can tirelessly…

Huh that is an interesting metaphor. A next higher layer printing press?

I don't buy it, although I agree with GP's larger point about other strengths.

Printing presses are about exact duplication of writing. The internet is a higher layer printing press. LLMs substitute for (some of) the human effort of producing the text that a printing press or the internet can then replicate.

Re: The End of an Era

#13

Post by voidfunc »

f311a wrote: post #10

This is a well-known author, but how come he thinks AI is better at writing? AI writing makes me vomit. Also, I think he's too enthusiastic about the future of readers. In my opinion, reading books will be a very rare hobby pretty soon. The decline started more than 10 years ago.

AI makes you vomit because most uses of it are hamfisted attempts at doing a thing.

People are going to eventually figure out how to polish and refine the usage and outputs so you cant even tell it is AI.

This is already becoming increasingly true for code and software. The next step is writing and then media.

Re: The End of an Era

#15

Post by mathisfun123 »

pyth0 wrote: post #9
bkieffer wrote: post #5

Is the AI that writes "about as well as humans" in the room with us right now?

Did you stop reading at the em-dash? > Artificial Intelligence is writing about as well as humans — at least well enough to cause confusion and speculation No matter your opinion on AI writing, this is just a fact.

since when is "confusion and speculation" an indicator of quality/goodness? if I ran around naked in traffic it would also cause confusion and speculation.

Re: The End of an Era

#16

Post by andy99 »

AI writing is not good. Seeing this post, and another comment on here earlier today to the effect of “we’ve solved prose”, I’m genuinely really confused. I don’t want to be insulting, even if the first place my mind runs is basically people must not read very much or think very hard about what they read. I can’t imagine a world where anyone ingests a material amount of AI writing and things it’s even “acceptable”. But so many people seem completely blind to it. I’m actually horrified by the idea of a world where people are just slinging empty slop back and forth at each other. Probably many of us have already experienced it at work.

So what am I missing? What’s the most charitable explanation for how anyone can think LLMs are good at writing?

Re: The End of an Era

#18

Post by ramesh31 »

f311a wrote: post #10

This is a well-known author, but how come he thinks AI is better at writing? AI writing makes me vomit. Also, I think he's too enthusiastic about the future of readers. In my opinion, reading books will be a very rare hobby pretty soon. The decline started more than 10 years ago.

>"This is a well-known author, but how come he thinks AI is better at writing? AI writing makes me vomit."

Most of all writing makes me want to vomit. It's not impossible to write well with AI, but it's the same argument as vibe-coded slop vs. a senior engineer using the tools carefully. I'd be inclined to accept the expert's opinion here.

Re: The End of an Era

#19

Post by whazor »

Two of my favorite (sci-)fi writers both use crazy big Excel files that almost crash their computers when loading. For research but also keeping track of story loops.

I can imagine something like ChatGPT Work with markdown/python/CSV's can do quite some magic for such writers.

Re: The End of an Era

#20

Post by [deleted] »

f311a wrote: post #10

This is a well-known author, but how come he thinks AI is better at writing? AI writing makes me vomit. Also, I think he's too enthusiastic about the future of readers. In my opinion, reading books will be a very rare hobby pretty soon. The decline started more than 10 years ago.

[deleted]
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