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If writing is thinking then what happens if AI is doing the writing and reading?

hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com

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Re: If writing is thinking then what happens if AI is doing the writing and reading?

#111

Post by p_v_doom »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #77
muratsu wrote: post #9

In my experience people don't read these large documents because they are not personalized/relevant. When you're writing to a large audience, you naturally assume people know the least amount possible about the subject and start from there. In a corporate setting this comes off as irrelevant or boring. I'm sure rebranding initiatives like One Microsoft, Copilot, or Office 365 makes things simpler for executives but e…

Reading long form text is a big commitment in time. In a business context that's simply not appropriate. I always joke about documentation as write only content. It's the type of thing you are asked to write that then doesn't get used or read. I've more than once gotten the question whether I could produce a diagram or some sort of documentation only to realize later that after the thumbs up I got on delivery, nobody…

Its also not just business text. People dont read period. Sometimes they dont even watch. Sometimes I feel that reading the docs is a super power. Reading an article, watching the occasional talk? Its enough to take over the world... or get to a point where you can exactly predict what is going to happen, know how to fix it, but dont have the power to do it, so you are doomed to watch as it all crumbles down yet again, just like you foretold last time, and the time before that and the one before that...

Re: If writing is thinking then what happens if AI is doing the writing and reading?

#112

Post by skydhash »

p_v_doom wrote: post #110
Swizec wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Bifurcation: Maybe a subset of knowledge workers continue to write and read and therefore drive the decisions of the business. The remainder just do what the LLM says and eventually get automated away. This already happens. Being the person who writes the doc [for what we wanna do next] gives it ridiculous leverage and sway in the business. Everyone else is immediately put in the position of feedbacking instead…

> Being the person who writes the doc If only people read them. Everyone is so pressured by made up goals, fake deadlines and horrible communication, that nobody ever wants to read more than a bullet point or two.

I think GP is talking about the docs at source of the action, not the reports that came after.

Re: If writing is thinking then what happens if AI is doing the writing and reading?

#113

Post by audinobs »

mayukh wrote: post #56

I use AI a ton for writing emails and other corporate stuff, I have no problems there, it structures and presents them well enough and quickly that it saves me a ton of time. Where I am conflicted is creative writing -- its something I have been interested in but never pursued...and now I am able to pursue it with AI's help. There is a degree of embarrassment when confiding to folks, that yes a piece was AI assisted.…

I spend hours a day on emails and I don't get this.

Whatever email I send would just be the prompt, otherwise the LLM is just adding words that don't need to be there without reading my mind.

Re: If writing is thinking then what happens if AI is doing the writing and reading?

#114

Post by gchamonlive »

MoltenMan wrote: post #97
gchamonlive wrote: post #59

I think it's the type of thing that the mere awareness of it counts a lot to counterweight the problem. It's like when you are growing up and a certain type of behaviour that would work for socializing when you're 14 years old suddenly doesn't work anymore when you are 21. You learn about it when someone you trust brings you attention to it and suddenly you have the opportunity to reflect and change your behaviour. T…

> I think it's the type of thing that the mere awareness of it counts a lot to counterweight the problem. I'm unfortunately not too optimistic about this. There are plenty of things that are bad for you that everyone is aware of: not exercising, eating junk food, spending all day online, etc. But so many people do these things anyways; the human mind is incredible at cheating itself to make things easier on itself, a…

Great point. I think it's different from AI because there isn't a large industry that spends lots of resources on advertising like the sugar industry does to deliberately make people consume it more even though it's bad for them. There is a large industry behind AI, one of the greatest, it's just that for now it's different than these other more traditional industries when it comes to advertising.

And I think we need to fight these kinds of bad incentives in society, but at the end of the day if you don't want to exercise nobody can make you. If you want to delegate all your work to AI, nobody can stop you.

I'm more concerned about those that understand the problem, want to change but feel overwhelmed.

Re: If writing is thinking then what happens if AI is doing the writing and reading?

#115

Post by gchamonlive »

edg5000 wrote: post #93
gchamonlive wrote: post #59

I think it's the type of thing that the mere awareness of it counts a lot to counterweight the problem. It's like when you are growing up and a certain type of behaviour that would work for socializing when you're 14 years old suddenly doesn't work anymore when you are 21. You learn about it when someone you trust brings you attention to it and suddenly you have the opportunity to reflect and change your behaviour. T…

In what industries do you see this amphetamine use and what region? From TV I know maybe some bankers do it. Personally I really need my cafeine, but never heard about people taking amphetamime for work. Outside of work is another thing though.

Undergrads, doctors, lawyers... All these fields that people end up working over 60 hours a week, most of it requiring mental concentration.

Re: If writing is thinking then what happens if AI is doing the writing and reading?

#116

Post by the_af »

Herring wrote: post #78
the_af wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> everyone else loved it Most people are very bad readers, too. For example, most of my coworkers don't read books at all, and the few that do, only read tech or work-related books. (Note that most don't even read that).

That doesn't matter. It's like code syntax highlighting -- A good tool benefits everyone. You can pride yourself on doing it the hard way, like reading monochromatic code, but the world has already moved on. FWIW I think there's a kernel of truth when you worry about reading skills, but 1) that's a longer trend involving all kinds of political and cultural issues, and 2) right now I'm happy with any improvement to te…

> That doesn't matter. It's like code syntax highlighting -- A good tool benefits everyone.

I obviously disagree: it does matter.

"Most" people love your AI-assisted writing because they have no taste; or rather, they are not good at reading. Yes, one must become good at reading, it must be exercized. Reading and writing -- use it or lose it; the brain is a metaphorical "muscle".

> I'm happy with any improvement to technical communication

If you mean business emails, corporate communications, even teamwork related things, I agree. That's mostly boilerplate writing anyway, and everyone understands it's the "junk food" of writing and reading, so why not automate it? Like the person you replied to said, very aptly:

> So if your goal is just to put more bad writing into the world for commercial reasons, then there's some utility in it for sure.

If you instead mean creative writing -- as I thought you were also claiming -- I strongly disagree.

Re: If writing is thinking then what happens if AI is doing the writing and reading?

#117

Post by hshdhdhj4444 »

bugbuddy wrote: post #74
didericis wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4. Degradation: Humans with specialized knowledge lose their specialized knowledge due to over reliance on AI, and AI degrades over time due to the lack of new human data and AI contaminated data sets.

5. Society collapses in an Idiocratic fashion.

Even if AI isn’t sentient and/or thinking, if AI can functionally emulate everything humans can do, I think that will raise significant existential questions about our future.

Re: If writing is thinking then what happens if AI is doing the writing and reading?

#118

Post by wvenable »

intended wrote: post #85
wvenable wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 4 pages of latex with informative diagrams, flow charts, color-coding, tables, etc. What tool are you using for this? I too have used LLM to do writing that, frankly, I wouldn't have done without it. Often I don't even take what it says but it helps to get the ideas out in written form and then I can edit it to sound more like how I want to sound.

Production became easier - But your consumer changed as well.

When I wasn't producing anything, I didn't have any consumers. But it's a fair point; I think a lot of effort needs to go in to not sound like an AI. I hate low-effort AI content in videos, text, etc. It still takes effort but I find it much less effort than sitting at an empty page.

Re: If writing is thinking then what happens if AI is doing the writing and reading?

#119

Post by Nasrudith »

wlesieutre wrote: post #20
gleenn wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am firmly a believer very few people read anything. They don't read long things as much as they don't even read short ones. One of the things I always thought was funny was having Product Managers see there were problems with UI, then I would get tickets to add text near the problems. It always crackme up because if users didn't even barely read the button they were clicking they why would they read a paragraph nea…

In school they were really big on the 5-paragraph persuasive essay format. I guess because it teaches you to think through an argument and present it to someone. In practice, I find that if I don't format something as a bulleted/numbered list, nobody is going to look at it.

The funny thing was that in school they taught us not to read the standardized tests but to scan and skim them. Which would fit well into a satire of standardized testing.

Re: If writing is thinking then what happens if AI is doing the writing and reading?

#120

Post by Nasrudith »

voidhorse wrote: post #76
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #73

Fun fact: Socrates thought writing would lead to forgetfulness. https://newlearningonline.com/literacies/chapter-1/socrates-...

And he was right. Poets and bard used to memorize entire epics . Writing changed this not by augmenting their abilities, but by changing expectations: it became acceptable to read form a written record, rather than from memory. My memory gets exercised a lot less frequently than it would need to without writing. But memory is also not thinking. It is a component in thinking, but it is not thinking itself. Discourse,…

The thing is that we know because of writing that human memory is actually pretty awful and downright malleable. Even without attempts to tweak or optimize it, those epics would mutate over time and nobody would notice without a written reference.
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