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The revolt of the reader

bcantrill.dtrace.org

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Re: The revolt of the reader

#261

Post by bfbf »

rmunn wrote: post #203
bfbf wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But people who are bad at maths are unlikely to be writing about maths. A crude example might be if you search for “2+2=” in the training data, you’re much more likely to find “4” as the next character. Obviously llms are far more complex than this, but I think this proves the point. The fact you had to add the “recent” qualifier there highlights that llms in general were bad and had to be provided with corrective ta…

> And they still can’t count the R’s in strawberry! Really? I do not have the time to survey the modern LLMs to see if your assertion is correct, but if it is then I'm surprised; I would have thought that that one would have shown up so often in their training data that they would be able to answer that question, even if they would then be unable to (for example) count the R's in raspberry, or in some other word wher…

I mean a very quick check in ChatGPT got it wrong today, yeah! I’m not sure what model I was using, but it proves the point!

Re: The revolt of the reader

#262

Post by everybodyknows »

mrob wrote: post #134
sltkr wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Orwell's entire essay (Politics and the English Language) is well worth reading if you haven't before: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel... (I'm guessing Zinsser's comments are from "On Writing Well", which you can also find online even though it is still under copyright.) It's a bit of a pet peeve when people include quotes on a blog post without linking or otherwise references their sourc…

But Orwell's rule 4 should be ignored: >iv. Never use the passive where you can use the active. Orwell himself routinely ignores it, even in the first sentence of the essay: >Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. The second clause could be rewritten in active voice by cha…

There's a rather simple reason this is so: A thought is typically most powerfully expressed in a sentence that puts the most surprising or notable word last, immediately before the period. Ideally, without any qualifying adjective/adverb.

And "... a wife." really turns on the ears, no?

So advice to prefer active voice is not wrong -- but the skilled writer adds other values into the balance.

Re: The revolt of the reader

#263

Post by smitty1e »

watwut wrote: post #132
smitty1e wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could use AI to come up with a draft, and to critique ahead of posting. The chief grief appears to be phoning in the whole process.

If you need AI for the draft, then it does not need to be written at all. You dont have a thing to say, you just have requirement to produce a lot of words. And in that case, no one needs to read it ai or not.

I don't disagree. The goal was to temper my own Luddism.

Re: The revolt of the reader

#264

Post by amemi »

kierangill wrote: post #65

My revolt is against the cognitive stress of reading generated text. A trope typically indicates I’m in for an uphill read. I recently read this William Zinsser quote that inspired a nickname for this: Clotted Claude [1]. > Nobody has made the point better than George Orwell in his translation into modern bureaucratic fuzz of this famous verse from Ecclesiastes: > > I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is…

Personally, I think Orwell's version is a lot easier to read. I read the Ecclesiastes verse several times and can't really get it: "time and chance happens to everyone"? Okay?

While phrases like "contemporary phenomena" and "tendency to be commensurate" are a bit over-the-top, summarily the picture is conveyed much more clearly imo: Luck plays a factor, no matter how good you are.

I don't see how "nor yet favor to men of skill" is more natural or clearer, at least to the modern reader.

Re: The revolt of the reader

#265

Post by apparent »

Seems like it's a cat and mouse game that won't end anytime soon. LLMs are constantly getting better at writing, so at some point people won't be able to tell reliably tell the difference anymore. I wouldn't laude Pangram so highly at this point, since we're not at the final round yet.

Re: The revolt of the reader

#266

Post by scruple »

nkurz wrote: post #51

Hi Bryan, I liked your piece, and agree with almost all of it, but I'm surprised by your faith in the accuracy of Pangram at detecting AI writing. Is your faith based on testing it with lots of writing of known origins, or are you just saying that it reaches the same conclusion that you do as a talented human? In particular, I wondered if you have tried running all of your own writings through it to verify that it th…

I just typed 233 words into Pangram, I'm trying to synthesize an idea from Aristotle to an experience I am having at work. It's not an original thought, specifically, but the application to this thing at work does appear to be novel. I'm still trying to work out my thoughts. Anyway it concluded that it's 100% AI. Even with a couple of random typos and missing grammar that I added. Smells like horse shit to me. I also don't like the idea that I have to shove a corpus of text into this thing to get it to process that it's incorrect. That expectation is wrong headed and places the burden on the wrong entity.

Re: The revolt of the reader

#267

Post by AnimalMuppet »

apparent wrote: post #265

Seems like it's a cat and mouse game that won't end anytime soon. LLMs are constantly getting better at writing, so at some point people won't be able to tell reliably tell the difference anymore. I wouldn't laude Pangram so highly at this point, since we're not at the final round yet.

I'm not absolutely opposed to AI in principle. If it writes things worth reading, I'm not opposed to reading them.

The problem is when it writes things that have the appearance of making sense but actually don't, when it writes what could be better put in 10% of the words, when it writes with no coherent logic. I don't have the time or the mental energy to wade through that on the faint chance that there might be a gem in there somewhere. But I have the same objection to human writers who do the same things.

Write something worth reading. I don't have time for it otherwise.

Re: The revolt of the reader

#268

Post by pibaker »

caidan wrote: post #239
esjeon wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Orwell did a great job there actually. Despite its bizarre look, the sentence is evocative and eloquent. It does make me get a clear mental image from the very first word. It leaves little room for roaming and guessing, as it firmly nails elements one by one, and, by the time I reach the end of the sentence, I get the full meaning almost immediately. This sentence is not randomly written; this is crafted with…

My god, to read this thread is to gaze into the abyss.

Fire and brimstone upon San Francisco.

Re: The revolt of the reader

#269

Post by alan-crowe »

somat wrote: post #145
masswerk wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In contemporary YouTube-script wording: > The Ecclasiast looked under the sun, but there was something he didn't understand. Something that wasn't right. Something that was not as it was supposed to be. And here is what the Ecclesiast didn't understand. Here is what nobody understood. Not then. Not in the years that followed. Not now. It was not the swift who won the race. Not the strong who won the battle. Not the w…

Very depressing, and I believe it. I am a bit of a luddite in this domain and have so far managed to resist the lure of using the generator to expand my thoughts, and I still catch myself writing "it's not just an X it's a Y" and other generator type tells. If it infecting my patterns it is totally entering the wider subconscious as "How to write" (Sighs)

The question is: how did your test reader respond to the version without the "It's not just an X, it's a Y." ? Perhaps the discussion went:

Test Reader: I got confused when you started talking about X as though it were a Y.

Author: But it is a Y. I should flag that up, where I introduce it.

Alternatively, the test reader comments

The villains monologue wasn't unhinged enough. He says that making himself universal dictator is democratic because he gives people what they secretly desire. I feel he would express himself with more empty rhetoric.

Author: Agreed. I'll add "It's not just democratic, it's not just super-democratic, it's ultra-democratic!!!"

Test Reader: Scary!

The error lies in using "It's not just an X it's a Y." for emphasis rather than to ward off a likely misreading.

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