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AI makes you boring

marginalia.nu

11–20 of 397 posts

Re: AI makes you boring

#11
AI writing will make people who write worse than average, better writers. It'll also make people who write better than average, worse writers. Know where you stand, and have the taste to use wisely.

EDIT: also, just like creating AGENT.md files to help AI write code your way for your projects, etc. If you're going to be doing much writing, you should have your own prompt that can help with your voice and style. Don't be lazy, just because you're leaning on LLMs.

Re: AI makes you boring

#12
post #2

I've seen a few people use ai to rewrite things, and the change from their writing style to a more "polished" generic LLM style feels very strange. A great averaging and evening out of future writing seems like a bad outcome to me.

Yeah, if anything it might make sense to do the opposite. Use LLMs to do research, ruthlessly verify everything, validate references and help you guide you in some structure, but then actually write your own words manually with your little fingers and using your brain.

Re: AI makes you boring

#13
post #3

That may be, but it's also exposing a lot of gatekeeping; the implication that what was interesting about a "Show HN" post was that someone had the technical competence to put something together, regardless of how intrinsically interesting that thing is; it wasn't the idea that was interesting, it was, well, the hazing ritual of having to bloody your forehead of getting it to work. AI for actual prose writing, no que…

Most ideas aren't interesting. Implementations are interesting. I don't care if you worked hard on your implementation or not, but I do care if it solves the problem in a novel or especially efficient way. These are not the hallmarks of AI solutions.

Re: AI makes you boring

#14
post #9
post #2

I've seen a few people use ai to rewrite things, and the change from their writing style to a more "polished" generic LLM style feels very strange. A great averaging and evening out of future writing seems like a bad outcome to me.

I sometimes go in the opposite direction - generate LLM output and then rewrite it in my own words The LLM helps me gather/scaffold my thoughts, but then I express them in my own voice

that's a perfect use, imhno, of AI-assisted writing. Someone (er-something) to help you bounce ideas, and organize....

Re: AI makes you boring

#16
post #8

The more interesting question is whether AI use causes the shallowness, or whether shallow people simply reach for AI more readily because deep engagement was never their thing to begin with.

More interesting question than what? And also, say you have an answer to that question, what insight do you have now that you didn't have before?

Re: AI makes you boring

#17
If you spent 3 hours on a show HN before, people most likely wouldn't appreciate it, as it's honestly not much to show. The fact that you now can have a more polished product in the same timeframe thanks to AI doesn't really change that. It just changes the baseline for what's expected. This goes for other things as well, like writings or art. If you normally spent 2 hours on a blog post, and you now can do it in 5 minutes, that most likely means it's a boring post to read. Spend 2 hours still, just with the help of AI it should now be better.

Re: AI makes you boring

#18
post #2

I've seen a few people use ai to rewrite things, and the change from their writing style to a more "polished" generic LLM style feels very strange. A great averaging and evening out of future writing seems like a bad outcome to me.

I have an opinion of people that have opinions on AI

Re: AI makes you boring

#19
post #2

I've seen a few people use ai to rewrite things, and the change from their writing style to a more "polished" generic LLM style feels very strange. A great averaging and evening out of future writing seems like a bad outcome to me.

It's not them, it's you.
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