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The safest job from AI may be writing

muratbuffalo.blogspot.com

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Re: The safest job from AI may be writing

#121

Post by dragandj »

debugnik wrote: post #99
TFNA wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have worked in the publishing industry, translation and editing (got out to a more dependable career just in time), and what is astonishing is how even "load-bearing" text is not safe from the cost-cutting pressures. That is, even some respectable publishers for the last several years will publish a book one is expected to pay good money for, with minimal editing and proofreading compared to the old days, and if it…

I've got some heavy reader friends and they keep complaining that many of Spains's fantasy book translations are ridiculously bad and blatantly machine translated now: Senseless terms that require looking up the original to understand, e.g. "fall" translated as in falling when it meant autumn; proper nouns, including character names, sometimes translated sometimes not; and many sentences that mix up the grammatical g…

They DO vote with their wallets, though. They're still buying that crap, don't they?

Re: The safest job from AI may be writing

#122

Post by HNDevsSuck »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #117
jedberg wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious if you've tried Claude. Subjectively, I've always preferred Claude's writing over ChatGPT and Gemini.

Claude was really far ahead of GPT in writing from 2-4, but the later models have started to get an overly distinctive style, wheras these days GPT tends to be coherent but fairly concise and dry.

[flagged]

Re: The safest job from AI may be writing

#123

Post by hparadiz »

matherial wrote: post #120

I strongly disagree, for reasons that are different from what's discussed in the thread. It doesn't matter if LLMs can't hold a candle to some of the finest human writing. What matters is that before you become a world-renowned writer, you need to pay your bills, often for a long time. And that's what LLMs take away. All the mundane literature-adjacent works: journalism, translations, technical writing / corporate co…

I find myself writing more than ever. In fact I must. I have to explain in no uncertain terms what I mean. Though I often find myself in very complex technical straits where words are not enough. There's something liberating about writing a wall of text and knowing that at least something will give you feedback. It won't be annoyed. It won't be tired. It won't say "tldr?" back at you. I don't know if that will convert into a novel for me. But it must for someone.

Re: The safest job from AI may be writing

#124

Post by hparadiz »

hodgehog11 wrote: post #106
unleaded wrote: post #59

A lot of the replies are insisting AI will get better at writing with more development but I don't see it. Even if you have a mathematically perfect writing AI you still run into the same problems you would have if you handed off your writing task to someone on fiverr or something. It can't magically know what you want to say, it only has the information you gave it. A prompt complex enough where it won't get any wro…

I also believe this. Post-training LLMs with vague metrics can only be achieved with RLHF, which is not impossible, but extremely costly and difficult. Instead, companies will opt for RLVR, focusing on math and programming tasks. This pushes objectives away from writing quality; often far away. That is why older models, in my view, actually read better than newer ones. It's by design.

You can brute force it by making it try random stuff then judge itself on it. You don't have to always use an LLM's output. Sometimes you can use that plus other things to add flavor. An LLM is actually really good at judging if something is good or bad. It just has a really hard time coming up with new things. But if you had unlimited compute you can throw in some rng and whimsy and get something resembling what humans do.

Re: The safest job from AI may be writing

#125

Post by ilamont »

mrweasel wrote: post #34
curuinor wrote: post #2

Workaday copywriting is dead (was moribund, now has been shot in the head). Prestige literary writing is zero-sum and therefore eternal, in the same way that equities trading (not formation and not business-building) is zero-sum and therefore the actual success of LLM has not given anyone a signal advantage anywhere there, because everyone else has LLM too.

Copywriting struggles with the issue that businesses know they need it, but they don't value it. It's absolutely shocking to see how poorly companies, and governments, communicate and no amount of AI/LLM usage will change it. For decades it's been neglected and relegated to "cover my ass"- writing. The majority of AI deployment in businesses could have been avoided, if more attention had been placed on good communica…

> It's absolutely shocking to see how poorly companies, and governments, communicate and no amount of AI/LLM usage will change it.

Thank you for saying the first part. It truly boggles the mind to see how badly most organizations communicate, even those with professional staff tasked with communications.

Regarding the second part: AI/LLM usage will lead to improvements for some people/organizations, if only for the simple reason that it removes barriers to communications. All of a sudden city hall or a third-tier supplier can quickly update their websites in multiple languages, process email communications more quickly, and empower staff who weren't good writers.

Re: The safest job from AI may be writing

#126

Post by insane_dreamer »

I disagree, and not because I think AI can write as good as a good writer does, but because in 90%+ of the cases, _companies won't care_.

I did translation as a side job for about 20 years (helped me keep my language skills sharp, and some side income was welcome). I was good at it. But translation was one of the first professions to fall to AI (even before LLMs but especially since), and I saw increasingly that companies were willing to accept the clearly lower-quality work if it meant saving money. A couple of years ago I stopped doing any translation work altogether.

Sure, whoever is hired to translate Murakami's latest novel will be a human, a good writer first and foremost. But that translation work is a tiny fraction of the overall translation work contracted by companies.

The same thing is going to happen with writing. It won't disappear, but demand will drop by >80%.

Re: The safest job from AI may be writing

#127

Post by johnnyanmac »

matherial wrote: post #120

I strongly disagree, for reasons that are different from what's discussed in the thread. It doesn't matter if LLMs can't hold a candle to some of the finest human writing. What matters is that before you become a world-renowned writer, you need to pay your bills, often for a long time. And that's what LLMs take away. All the mundane literature-adjacent works: journalism, translations, technical writing / corporate co…

Yeah, the arts in general in this age are reverting back to

1) the privilege of the rich and secure who can do it despite the lack of financials.

2) the ultra passionate who spend every waking moment outside of their day job engaging in the craft. Often to the detriment to their health and social obligations.

You shouldn't need to go all in on a skill just for a chance to maybe one day earn money from it.

Re: The safest job from AI may be writing

#128

Post by jmpeax »

unleaded wrote: post #59

A lot of the replies are insisting AI will get better at writing with more development but I don't see it. Even if you have a mathematically perfect writing AI you still run into the same problems you would have if you handed off your writing task to someone on fiverr or something. It can't magically know what you want to say, it only has the information you gave it. A prompt complex enough where it won't get any wro…

> A prompt complex enough where it won't get any wrong ideas has to contain as much information as the output would have.. so just write it.

This is only if the output is fully compressed. Writing is not just about encoding the writer's ideas but also about how the reader will ingest those ideas. The writer needs to consider when to put in rests in between complex ideas to help the reader flow through the text. This suggests the LLM could be prompted by a dense complex idea to be presented with the boilerplate needed for the human mind read smoothly and without unnecessary effort.

Re: The safest job from AI may be writing

#129

Post by deepwoods »

matherial wrote: post #120

I strongly disagree, for reasons that are different from what's discussed in the thread. It doesn't matter if LLMs can't hold a candle to some of the finest human writing. What matters is that before you become a world-renowned writer, you need to pay your bills, often for a long time. And that's what LLMs take away. All the mundane literature-adjacent works: journalism, translations, technical writing / corporate co…

I generally agree, but don't discount the impact of platforms like Patreon and Substack. Obviously, many authors of the past had patrons, but this was generally based on status and connections - and that's to say nothing of people who can support a writing career based off inherited wealth. But there is little historical precedent for an avenue for creatives to support themselves (or at least meaningfully supplement their income, potentially leading to less non-creative work hours and thus more time to hone the craft) using a decentralized base of support.

Re: The safest job from AI may be writing

#130

Post by fpoling »

dragandj wrote: post #121
debugnik wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got some heavy reader friends and they keep complaining that many of Spains's fantasy book translations are ridiculously bad and blatantly machine translated now: Senseless terms that require looking up the original to understand, e.g. "fall" translated as in falling when it meant autumn; proper nouns, including character names, sometimes translated sometimes not; and many sentences that mix up the grammatical g…

They DO vote with their wallets, though. They're still buying that crap, don't they?

Unfortunately the answer is no. Reading or just owning a book by a certain author can be a matter of fashion or prestige. That allows for really bad work still be published.
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