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Your intellectual fly is open when you use an LLM to author a post (2025)

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Re: Your intellectual fly is open when you use an LLM to author a post (2025)

#71

Post by CrimsonRain »

Brendinooo wrote: post #43

I'm not morally/philosophically opposed to someone generating text with AI. I just don't want to read something that isn't really "owned" by the person creating it (that is, the writer knows what he is sending me and endorses all of its contents), and because I can't discern that from people I don't know, I tend to view it with suspicion by default.

This is perfectly valid position to have. I also feel the same way.

Unless I'm directly interacting with the LLM, someone should endorse the content.

Re: Your intellectual fly is open when you use an LLM to author a post (2025)

#72

Post by timcobb »

strenholme wrote: post #41
timcobb wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So does Fair Use in the states?

Actually, it’s because, as per Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co. , facts cannot be copyrighted. This legal trick only works for rewriting an article reporting on a factual event—since the events are uncopyrightable facts, the only part of the article which can be copyrighted is the stylistic writing. Let me quote from a recent legal opinion on AI summaries ( The New York Times Company v. Microso…

But I meant, isn't saving articles for personal record a legitimate use of Fair Use? Do you really need to paraphrase them first?

Re: Your intellectual fly is open when you use an LLM to author a post (2025)

#73

Post by jgrahamc »

mtabini wrote: post #69
jgrahamc wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take a different stance on your final point. I think people should absolutely not use AI tools for functional communication as a crutch because they struggle with writing clearly. They need to learn to write clearly. I believe there's a direct connection between clear thought and clear words.

I think it's good to be pragmatic about these things. To me, it's similar to wondering whether we insist that doctors learn to write well, or we just give them a computer so that the pharmacist doesn't have to play philologist with their scripts. The vast majority of communication is routine, and can probably be improved with automated tools. Now, I also see the counterargument that, in the doctor example, the comput…

My worry is that if people can't express clearly, in writing, what it is they want to say then an LLM won't help them much. I've seen LLMs get the wrong end of the stick over and over and produce a huge chunk of text that's certainly readable and says something. It's just not clear that the something is the thing the person originally really wanted to say.

If you can write clearly enough to express your idea to an LLM, then perhaps you should just send that to the person you're writing to.

Re: Your intellectual fly is open when you use an LLM to author a post (2025)

#74

Post by jampekka »

jeremyjh wrote: post #62

These are all important points and I love the analogy. But there is an even bigger issue with having LLMs write for you: Writing is thinking. Thinking and deciding. There have been many times when I start out writing something substantial - could be an email, a blog post, a software design document, anything - when my own views substantially changed during the writing process. Writing forces you to serialize your tho…

> Writing is thinking. Thinking and deciding. There have been many times when I start out writing something substantial - could be an email, a blog post, a software design document, anything - when my own views substantially changed during the writing process. Writing forces you to serialize your thoughts - and you can't always trust the gestalt.

I don't disagree, but I think it's often not appreciated how much there's other work to writing too.

The biggest one is that you have to communicate non-interactively to an unknown audience. Having to (literally) put it in someone else's assumed terms does help giving different perspectives into the matter, but doesn't necessarily help one's own thinking that much. Instead you have to do some of the reader's thinking for them.

You also have to spend time on textual matters like grammar and style and a lot of "unspoken rules", which aren't really about linearizing your thinking about the contents.

Not all writing is thinking and not all thinking is writing.

Re: Your intellectual fly is open when you use an LLM to author a post (2025)

#75

Post by wavemode »

CrimsonRain wrote: post #68

LLMs write better than most journalists. It also writes better than majority people in the world when it comes to English as majority are really bad in writing. And of course, LLMs write as you prompt. Personally, I'm happy to read broken English from non English people or good English from English people. But I'd rather read LLM writing than read typical long form perfect English journalist crap.

> LLMs write better than most journalists

In my personal experience I strongly disagree. Curious what publications you read wherein this is the case.

Re: Your intellectual fly is open when you use an LLM to author a post (2025)

#76

Post by jampekka »

CrimsonRain wrote: post #68

LLMs write better than most journalists. It also writes better than majority people in the world when it comes to English as majority are really bad in writing. And of course, LLMs write as you prompt. Personally, I'm happy to read broken English from non English people or good English from English people. But I'd rather read LLM writing than read typical long form perfect English journalist crap.

> LLMs write better than most journalists.

I used to think this, but now that I've been trying to use them to help with writing, it turns out they are not necessarily that great on the deeper level. The grammar and the surface style are impeccable, but they often struggle with continuity and carrying on a point or an argument.

Re: Your intellectual fly is open when you use an LLM to author a post (2025)

#77

Post by fn-mote »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #63
IshKebab wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If LLMs get better at writing—which I think is extremely likely—will you switch positions and say that now using LLMs without disclosure is A-OK? I would say it is certainly significantly more ok. There are two reasons reading AI-generated text sucks now: 1. It's usually low value and not trustworth - I could have just asked the AI myself. 2. The prose style is horrible to read. If we eliminate the second reason th…

> 1. It's usually low value and not trustworth - I could have just asked the AI myself. You have no way of knowing what the input to the writing was. You're making the erroneous assumption that the person posting the article was a mouthbreathing spammer who used the prompt "write me an article on subject XYZ, make no mistakes!" and you could have supplied the same prompt.

Alternative uses for reading:

1. Facts and processes. I just want to know something. I do not care if some Nerds for Nginx article is AI written.

2. Opinions and experiences. I want to know a human is writing because emotionally engaging with an AI isn’t building a stronger society - it’s increasing isolation.

3. In another front, I feel like the value of an AI story cannot be greater than the value of the inputs. If you wrote a two paragraph prompt and an LLM produced a 10 page story, the truth is, it’s only worth two paragraphs. That’s just a feeling, but as of now I don’t think the LLMs have any additional life experiences to draw on to increase the value of their storytelling. (I understand this is debatable, but still- what they offer is available to everyone for now; it is a baseline.)

Re: Your intellectual fly is open when you use an LLM to author a post (2025)

#78

Post by jan_m_savage »

Much like our voices, DNA, odor, and personalities are unique, so is our writing style. When I read a wholly-human writing, I get a sense of what kind of a human I'm dealing with. Using LLMs will distort this signal, so readers worth their salt will easily skip the piece, because we don't want to acquire LLM-like writing 'style' (reading affects writing).

As soon as I sense Slop, I'm done, this person refused to think when writing, why should I waste my time reading it then?

Re: Your intellectual fly is open when you use an LLM to author a post (2025)

#79

Post by jjice »

embedding-shape wrote: post #3

What baffles me, isn't just that people don't see the low quality writing themselves, but that they must also be able to identify other's shit "LLM writings" right? And realize how what they put out sounds exactly the same? Or did people completely stop reading what they've "wrote" before hitting that magical submit button?

It blows my mind. A customer of ours, whom I respect the technical opinion of, drops fully unedited Claude posts on LinkedIn now. I don't get how he thinks they read like anything but slop.

Re: Your intellectual fly is open when you use an LLM to author a post (2025)

#80

Post by strenholme »

timcobb wrote: post #72
strenholme wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, it’s because, as per Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co. , facts cannot be copyrighted. This legal trick only works for rewriting an article reporting on a factual event—since the events are uncopyrightable facts, the only part of the article which can be copyrighted is the stylistic writing. Let me quote from a recent legal opinion on AI summaries ( The New York Times Company v. Microso…

But I meant, isn't saving articles for personal record a legitimate use of Fair Use? Do you really need to paraphrase them first?

Copyright only covers distribution, but I distribute the AI summaries on my blog. With paywalled articles and the usual archives having serious reliability issues, it allows readers of my blog to get context about articles I comment on.

Here’s an example: https://samboy.github.io/blog/entries/2026-08-28.html

The links are AI summaries, which, in turn, link to the original articles, but, in some cases, the original articles are paywalled. For the ones which aren’t paywalled, having a local summary prevents link rot.

Fair use covers quoting someone to comment on them. For example, in New Era Publications International, ApS v. Henry Holt and Co., it was ruled that quoting Hubbard saying “The trouble with China is, there are too many Chinks here.” was fair use, since the book in question was commenting on Hubbard’s personality, and could only reasonably do so by directly quoting him.

From that decision:

>>> these brief quotations from unpublished copyrighted work display a compelling fair use purpose. [...] These quotations are in mockery, to show Hubbard's bigotry, bias and coarse lack of taste. This is not an instance of the biographer/critic free riding on the creative talent of the subject. <<<

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