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

bcantrill.dtrace.org

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

#281

Post by gumby »

lelanthran wrote: post #207
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…

> wonder if long form writing will go the way of code. You and the AI agree on an outline or other high level representation, then the LLM expands it into a document. What use is that? I'm not being facetious, I'd really rather like to know. Who or what is the audience for that sort of long form writing? If it's a human, why would they read it? They'd just give it to an LLM and get the salient points back. If the aud…

Then the reader can use an LLM to compress it back, and you can then interrogate it for details.

I used to say this was the future of advertising (cr sales person prompts “we have some new EV SUVs on the lot”; GPT generates an ad email with a synthetic video, blinking text etc; then the recipient’s spam processor tells them “that dealer has some new SUVs”. I suppose the same could happen with so-called “long form”.

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

#282

Post by bcrosby95 »

andai wrote: post #262
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That... isn't writing code.

Real programmers use a magnetized needle and a steady hand!

People have been "writing code" like this for decades. That a programmer happens to do it doesn't turn it into writing code, no one would have made that claim 25 years ago, and people who aren't programmers wouldn't make that claim today.

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

#283

Post by GPerson »

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 just feel like technology companies keep proving over and over that they are more than capable of forcing us into new behaviors regardless of our actual preferences. Once the domination is complete nobody will know what was lost in the process anyway.

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

#284

Post by CamperBob2 »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #279
CamperBob2 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be bigstrat2003. He's not a big fan of updating his priors.

You seem to be not picking up on the subtext here. Others are, though.

There is no subtext to bigstrat2003's argument, other than "I'm wrong, and I don't care." If you give persistent, repeatable instructions to a computer, you are programming it. If you disagree, you are gatekeeping. It's that simple.

The most popular programming languages in 2030 will, in fact, be English and Mandarin. Deal with it and get over it.

----------------

Edit, to bcrosby95: Look up the etymology of the word 'computer'. It didn't originally have anything to do with hardware. The first computers were people, who were told what to do ("programmed") without necessarily knowing what they were working on in a big-picture sense.

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

#285

Post by I_dream_of_Geni »

Yes, yes, all is true here. But you forget: Half of America is illiterate. "According to data analyzed via the National Literacy Institute, roughly 54% of American adults read below a sixth-grade reading level."

So, those folks aren't checking anything, and certainly wouldn't know the difference, or care.

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

#286

Post by jay_kyburz »

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 often write a reply to a HN post, just to think about the topic or idea and decide how I feel about an issue. More often than not, I just delete the post without ever having submitted it.

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

#287

Post by bcantrill »

raincole wrote: post #268
bcantrill wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in that piece, I think I explained why it's important to take it seriously even though (and in fact, because!) it's self-reported?

No, you explained why the selection bias doesn't matter, which I agree. The self-report data still is completely worthless in the first place though. People are really, really good at lying to themselves, let alone to an online poll. They'll tell you that they prefer imperfect or even bad writing as long as it's not AI slop, just like how they'll tell you they like healthier food, they prioritize personality instead…

I mean, fine, it's anecdotal -- but the numbers are also overwhelming (and don't seem to disagree with the tenor here).

And look: you're obviously free to ignore me because you feel that the survey data is "completely worthless" and just slop your way to success -- all I'm doing is trying to explain why you shouldn't expect me (and people like me) to read what you create.

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

#289

Post by PestoDiRucola »

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 and the AI agree on an outline or other high level representation, then the LLM expands it into a document.

What a horrible, cold, inhumane world that would be.

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