Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bcantrill.dtrace.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 458 posts

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

#181

Post by brabel »

trhaynes wrote: post #178
prisonguard wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You and the AI agree, but how about you and the team who will eventually read and do code review. Cognitive burden increases marginally with AI assisted coding. This is why we haven't seen big projects(think browsers and browser engines) spawning in the past year.

Indeed. I'm curious what the security team has to say about that approach, for example.

If you get an AI to review the code especially for security, it does a very good job st finding issues. Better than any human reviewers I have worked with, and getting better. As someone who works in security , I feel much less worried about security bugs on code reviewed by a AI for security issues, be it written by AI or human.

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

#182

Post by patrickmay »

softwaredoug wrote: post #152

It’s never been easier to differentiate yourself as a writer. You just write with some personality. People don’t want writing that doesn’t look average, but looks novel. I despair much less for human writers than a did maybe a year ago.

Upvoted for optimism. Plus, I think I agree with you most days of the week. Some time must, of course, be set aside for existential despair.

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

#183

Post by patrickmay »

softwaredoug wrote: post #161
embedding-shape wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just write with some personality I think that's the first time someone claims that "write with some personality" is some easy thing you just learn somehow. There are authors out there, even ones that make a living on their writing, who still haven't learned to "write with some personality". What exactly does that mean and how concretely can people actually do this in practice? A few "tips and tricks" might be more…

Some things that help me. 1. Be vulnerable and share your mistakes. Avoid a triumphalist “everything works” PoV 2. Write about your actual lived personal experiences. 3. Try to have a sense of humor 4. Have an informed opinion or PoV - strong opinions held weakly. 5. Be casual. Don’t treat a blog like it’s a research paper.

Nice list. I'd add: Have an audience in mind, even if it's future you, and write directly to them.

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

#184

Post by jeremyjh »

bcherny wrote: post #166
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 work at Anthropic) I agree. I use an LLM to write my code, but I do all of my writing by hand, since it helps me think. It reminds me of the transition over the last year from AI-assisted coding to AI doing all the coding. At first the code output wasn't good enough, and humans read and iterated on the code all day, so the details of the source code mattered. Now, the code is largely high quality and it meets a la…

You are just talking about the output though. If you only think at a "higher level" you aren't doing the actual thinking. Its the same with code. The output may be good enough, but over time you lose touch with the details to the extent that you can no longer serve a useful steering function for the organization. Before coding agents I'd seen this with many humans when they get promoted passed the point where they work with code directly and can't figure out how to add value there.

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

#185

Post by brabel »

arctic-true wrote: post #179
bcherny wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I work at Anthropic) I agree. I use an LLM to write my code, but I do all of my writing by hand, since it helps me think. It reminds me of the transition over the last year from AI-assisted coding to AI doing all the coding. At first the code output wasn't good enough, and humans read and iterated on the code all day, so the details of the source code mattered. Now, the code is largely high quality and it meets a la…

I suspect some amount of long form writing will go the way of code - long form writing for the purpose of consumption by other AIs. Writing as a means of exchanging qualitative information, with no regard for how the reader will feel about it (beyond understanding what the words mean). Not everything can be distilled into data, but this doesn’t mean it is beyond the reach of LLMs. On the other hand, long form writing…

What makes you think it will take a long time? AI seems capable of imitating any writing style if prompted to do so already, and I think it will get better on this quickly since the AI writing style is a main focus of AI labs right now. I can see no reason at all to believe this is a matter of years still, more like a few months.

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

#186

Post by max__dev »

altmanaltman wrote: post #121
Dumblydorr wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All writing is thinking when done by a human, you’re literally distilling your thoughts into words. You can’t write without thought. And not all thinking is writing is a clear truism, there’s no point to even stating that. Writing helps us think about the world, it’s a pivotal intellectual technology.

I have been thinking over this comment for a while now. I think yes, you are correct that thought is involved in writing but I don't think it is possible to claim "all writing is thinking when done by a human". Like what type of thinking are you claiming here? Because one can copy a text and write it down and that involves thinking in the sense that anything we do involves thinking fundamentally. But that thinking is…

You wrote "apt apt apt apt apt apt" to prove a very specific point no? Absolutely requires reasoning and understanding the problem to go there. And good luck getting an LLM to do that.

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

#187

Post by jcims »

We hired a new guy at work that's leading a specific platform initiative.

In person he's very articulate, able to communicate abstract thoughts clearly, states clear goals and how he's learning about the business to develop a plan.

But dear lord everything he writes in email and slack reads like it's copy paste from chatgpt. It's unnerving.

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

#188

Post by joe_the_user »

I wouldn't ever use an LLM for my own writing. But I'd use, after edits, for letters to bureaucrats, landlords and other types I'm forced to deal with.

The thing is, the author may care about Linkedin but the relationship that many people have with linkedin is as a place they have to be. "Hmm, I need a blog to enhance my career but writing, urg. I know just the thing...". Which is to say, it's not strange Linkedin is going to be filled with crap. None of my actual friends on Facebook post crap 'cause there's no incentive.

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

#189

Post by sersi »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #180
bcherny wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I work at Anthropic) I agree. I use an LLM to write my code, but I do all of my writing by hand, since it helps me think. It reminds me of the transition over the last year from AI-assisted coding to AI doing all the coding. At first the code output wasn't good enough, and humans read and iterated on the code all day, so the details of the source code mattered. Now, the code is largely high quality and it meets a la…

You claim writing is thinking, but imply writing code isn't thinking. My opinion of LLM design review isn't that high - it seems to miss design tweaks that could vastly simplify corner cases. But if your code isn't written for human consumption maybe it doesn't matter. I'm still directly responsible for what I commit, so I can't just offload it to Claude.

That's something I struggle with, I try to get LLMs to output code I don't care much about and focus on the parts I do and it kind of works but the problem is that reading code written by the LLM is even worth than reading LLM generating text. It's nauseating and you still have to read what the LLM did if you want to really work on the parts that matter.

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

#190

Post by patrickmay »

Hasz wrote: post #61

LLMs are not defacto bad at writing and are not defacto distinguishable from human writers. Lots of people are just lazy, never customize anything, and tell chatgpt to make them a post about x to be a "thought leader". Most are even lazier and blatantly rip off some else for their own means. However, it is perfectly possible to have an LLM imitate an existing corpus of writing (yours or someone else) and with a good…

If you're going to put that level of effort in, just write the thing yourself. It will be a comparable level of effort and you'll learn something doing it. Your readers will also appreciate hearing your real voice.
Post reply on HN