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

I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era

lesswrong.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 262 posts

Re: I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era

#171

Post by dpark »

ollysb wrote: post #159
boca_honey wrote: post #119

>I just wrote what my brain is instructing to type (might not reread it before posting) Why would I put effort into reading something that had no effort put in by the author? This guy needs an editor, AI or otherwise.

While I can get behind the sentiment I hope bad writing doesn't become the standard for anti AI. A simple grammar check would have greatly improved this post.

AI has plenty of training data on poor writing. If people start looking for bad grammar and typos to identify human articles, generative AI is certainly capable of spitting out prose that looks poorly edited.

I kind of hope the anti-AI-writing stuff passes and we can focus on what makes writing good or bad again instead of “this is clearly AI” posted in response to every blog. I actually don’t care if it’s AI but I do care if it’s worth reading and pleasant to read.

Re: I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era

#172

Post by margalabargala »

elbasti wrote: post #149
boca_honey wrote: post #119

>I just wrote what my brain is instructing to type (might not reread it before posting) Why would I put effort into reading something that had no effort put in by the author? This guy needs an editor, AI or otherwise.

There are some people that believe that writing is an act of creative expression. In other words, that writing is primarily about the act (and as such, it's a quite selfish activity). Editing destroys the expressive act and must be avoided. These people's writing is usually incoherent and they are very proud of it. If you've ever read a bad new-age self-help book you've probably encountered writing like this. Good wr…

I 'm sure you consider your opinion to be correct, but there is something to writing being an act of creative expression. It's fine for it to be a selfish activity. Diaries are this way, for example, and the negativity you point at other people's hobbies is unfortunate.

There's something to the idea that if the writer is writing with the intention of publishing it, that should be edited. But if you're writing for yourself, and happen to simply keep your writings somewhere public, some other person's desire for you to edit more is a measurement of that other person's feeling of entitlement.

I have about as much desire to read some publisher's edited version of Anne Frank's diary as you appear to have to read the original.

Re: I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era

#173

Post by kristjansson »

alex43578 wrote: post #167
kristjansson wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The relative value of those things are shifting. As the cost of polished LLM drivel falls to zero, some might prefer even the most unedited, off-the-cuff human writing to the slop.

What if the reality is that both are worthless? LLM slop is of no value, but human slop doesn’t gain value because fingers typed it.

I mean there's lots of room at the bottom. but part of the reason LLM slop seems to me so objectionable is its sameness; it's obviously drawn from the same thin manifold of the language. A human articulating their own thoughts, however those may be rendered on the page, at least realizes their own idiosyncratic region of the language. Writing one's own thoughts in one's own words declares the existence of one's own language, consonant with but distinct from all the others. Asserting one's individual voice and style, even if the content is worthless and the aesthetics objectionable maintains diversity in face of the LLM monoculture. We lament the lost apples, even the bitter ones; we don't ask the birds to each justify their differences.

Re: I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era

#174

Post by sixhobbits »

solomonb wrote: post #81

I actually find Gmail a better editor/grammar check then LLMs. It makes isolated simplifications/corrections that imo have minimal style impact and just focus on clarifying phrasing.

Yeah Gmail got crazy good in the last 3 months, pretty sure it's LLM driven too but it went from 90s MS Word to better than Grammarly recently IMO

Re: I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era

#175

Post by time0ut »

I certainly miss the pre-AI reading era.

So much content is just straight copy/pasted from the LLM now. Articles, blog posts, linked in posts, reddit comments, etc. Even just using the LLM for 'editing' tends to shift the voice to an obvious LLM voice when used naively. It is getting worse too. Last week a co-worker sent me a screenshot of Claude for me to review their "work", which was just whatever Claude made up.

Usually, if something is very obviously unfiltered LLM output, I just stop reading.

I do use LLMs for writing myself. They are useful, but are poor authors.

Re: I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era

#176

Post by narcindin »

kohllision wrote: post #165
jhhh wrote: post #145

I miss the text only reading era. This is a blog and should not need to have JavaScript enabled to render text to a page. I would rather not have to be annoyed by flavor of the month duplicate scroll bars, cookie banners, newsletter pop-ups 5 seconds in, scroll to the top pop-ups, idle overlays, highlight helper bars that break copy paste, etc. This blog didn't have all of those but had some. I'm sure the metrics loo…

I appreciate the sentiment, but this remark is far too common here. It does not address the content of the post and could apply to any submission from LessWrong. The author of the post has made none of those technical choices.

Funny, I assumed it was a subtle critique of how change always elicits haters. Though now I realize it was an honest non-sequiter to complain about his pet issue?

Honestly not sure anymore.

Re: I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era

#177

Post by malwrar »

> And for people who successfully taken back their creative writing skills, how did you do it?

“AI is one possible reference for my actual writing”. Generate info and perspectives, but only ever write stuff yourself. Something about this for me forces me to stay in my own “”writing voice”, at least personally, for the various places I use AI tech in. I think of the tech as a chess engine; they are better than any human player but I use them to help me gain perspective rather than cheat. Otherwise, why bother playing chess?

Re: I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era

#178

Post by globular-toast »

This writing is terrible. I can't read it. But are people really unable to write without wanting to put it into an LLM? I haven't done a single piece of natural language writing with an LLM. The thought has never even crossed my mind. Why would I? Surely to give the LLM context of whatever I want to write about would amount to, you know, writing it down? Just write that "prompt" in your blog and send it. No need for LLMs.

Re: I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era

#179

Post by pizzly »

piker wrote: post #86

AI for editing is garbage. Chat to it to get ideas maybe, but in its current incarnation it’s just going to degrade anything you filter through it.

AI for editing is good and have many useful cases. The part where it fails is that the tone/style of the writing gets overtaken and reads like all other AI edited writing. But the quality of the edit is good, its just not in your style. When everyone sounds the same then there is no uniqueness. But using it edit legal letters, software documentation etc are very good use cases, using it to explain your ideas in a blog not so much.

Re: I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era

#180

Post by simianwords »

mandolingual wrote: post #157
simianwords wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely think it is. It will be glorious. We will focus more on content than on just aesthetic as people try to signal that they are not llm

Flaw become aesthetic all time. People faked butt bandage follow Sun King fashion. Ugly as sin, still aesthetic.

lol
Post reply on HN