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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)

#111

Post by jeremyjh »

btrettel wrote: post #91
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…

I've thought exactly that "writing is thinking" before as a reason to not let a LLM write for me. Then again, I've seen a counterargument [1] by someone who clearly heavily uses LLMs for writing (going by both their LLMy writing style and their own admission). The person I'm citing describes a process where they get a LLM to write something, they check over it and provide feedback to the LLM, the LLM rewrites, and th…

I've tried doing it that way, and thought it was even acceptable for the reasons you said. I did learn a lot through that process and clarified my ideas. But later I rewrote the whole thing from scratch and then had the LLM review it. It made some good suggestions but no substantial changes. The difference was night and day. That final product had my voice, and I understood it better. LLMs are powerful tools and can improve quite a lot of the writing process, but using them to do all the writing leaves a lot on table along with your fly open.

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

#112

Post by [deleted] »

strenholme wrote: post #80
timcobb wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ar…

[deleted]

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

#113

Post by hi_im_greg_h »

jgrahamc wrote: post #73
mtabini wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 LL…

This. If you cant communicate your ideas properly to a human who has infinitely more awareness of the scenario/business/world/etc.

How are you going to prompt effectively and not allow the LLM to infer a bunch of nonsense?

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

#114

Post by jeremyjh »

agile-gift0262 wrote: post #82
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…

I completely agree. And I'd say that at least in my case, it applies to both writing prose and code

Agreed, but a lot of code doesn't need to be understood. Knowing which is which is the art right now.

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

#115

Post by victorbjorklund »

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…

On the other hand there is so much things that don’t require hard thinking. An example is I got an email the other day from a supplier asking if they can turn off their old email. It didn’t require ”thinking”. All I had to communicate was ”turn off graphql but don’t touch restapi”. Instead of sending off such a short and maybe unclear reply I had AI type up a concise and clear reply with exactly what can be turned off and what must be left on. Could I have done it on myself? Sure but would require more work than just a quick prompt and copy paste.

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

#117

Post by whateveracct »

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 also implicitly has your review baked in. hand written code is "reviewed by construction", if you will.

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

#118

Post by CrimsonRain »

jampekka wrote: post #76
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.

With current LLMs, the continuity/carrying/context management is _your_ task. When AGI is achieved etc...

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

#119

Post by 27183 »

stronglikedan wrote: post #97
dynm wrote: post #14

I'm a bit skeptical of arguments of the form, "You should not use LLMs without disclosure because LLMs at bad at writing." My reasoning is: 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? Surely some people are willing to bite that bullet and say yes. But for most people, my guess is that the answer will remain no. Thus,…

I don't think anyone needs to disclose the tools they used to write something. Nobody ever disclosed Word's grammar suggestions or spelling corrections, or the fact that they used some autocomplete tool to produce code, so we should they now need to start disclosing this tool. Besides, in it's current state, it discloses itself to anyone paying attention. I do think people own the output they produce regardless of th…

I don't really care about the tool per se, but if I'm reading some LLM output you give me its utility is awfully limited if you don't also supply the prompt. That's what I'd like to see normalized:

  Do not give me LLM output unless you also give me the full prompt text.
Without the prompt I cannot discern what you were trying to do, because the LLM output is basically devoid of any coherent voice. Whether it's code, prose, or pictures don't bother sending it to me unless you also include the prompt text.

[edit] I suspect the fact that people are often reticent to share their prompts says quite a lot about how and why they're using an LLM.

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

#120

Post by rahuldracula »

I don't agree. Good writing and good ideas are entirely different things. Just read all the beautifully written, inaccurate stuff by the NYT or the Guardian.

Also, non-native English speakers have to use LLMs to share their views so that they are not judged on their writing.

This post is also a good example; it's well written, and I enjoyed it. The idea could have been expressed simply as: "People can smell LLMs in your writing, it makes you look disingenous"

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