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It's insulting to read AI-generated blog posts

blog.pabloecortez.com

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Re: It's insulting to read AI-generated blog posts

#181

Post by yxhuvud »

rcarmo wrote: post #67

I don't get all this complaining, TBH. I have been blogging for over 25 years (20+ on the same site), been using em dashes ever since I switched to a Mac (and because the Markdown parser I use converts double dashes to it, which I quite like when I'm banging out text in vim), and have made it a point of running long-form posts through an LLM asking it to critique my text for readability because I have a tendency for…

The problem is that a lot of people use it for a whole lot more than just polish. The LLM voice in a text get quite jarring very quickly.

Re: It's insulting to read AI-generated blog posts

#182

Post by paulpauper »

furyofantares wrote: post #89
alyxya wrote: post #54

I personally don’t think I care if a blog post is AI generated or not. The only thing that matters to me is the content. I use ChatGPT to learn about a variety of different things, so if someone came up with an interesting set of prompts and follow ups and shared a summary of the research ChatGPT did, it could be meaningful content to me. > No, don't use it to fix your grammar, or for translations, or for whatever el…

People are putting out blog posts and readmes constantly that they obviously couldn't even be bothered to read themselves, and they're making it to the top of HN routinely. Often the author had something interesting to share and the LLM has erased it and inserted so much garbage you can't tell what's real and what's not, and even among what's real, you can't tell what parts the author cares about and which parts they…

Quality , human-made content is seldom rewarded anymore. Difficulty has gone up. The bar for quality is too high, so an alternative strategy is to use LLMs for a more lottery approach to content: produce as much LLM-assisted content as possible in the hope something goes viral. Given that it's effectivity free to produce LLM writing, eventually something will work if enough content is produced.

I cannot blame people for using software as a crutch when human-based writing has become too hard and seldom rewarded anymore unless you are super-talented, which statistically the vast majority of people are not.

Re: It's insulting to read AI-generated blog posts

#183

Post by AlexandrB »

alyxya wrote: post #54

I personally don’t think I care if a blog post is AI generated or not. The only thing that matters to me is the content. I use ChatGPT to learn about a variety of different things, so if someone came up with an interesting set of prompts and follow ups and shared a summary of the research ChatGPT did, it could be meaningful content to me. > No, don't use it to fix your grammar, or for translations, or for whatever el…

If you want this, why would you want the LLM output and not just the prompts? The prompts are faster to read and as models evolve you can get "better" blog posts out of them.

It's like being okay with reading the entirety of generated ASM after someone compiles C++.

Re: It's insulting to read AI-generated blog posts

#185

Post by bicolao »

jvanderbot wrote: post #143
latexr wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes no sense, and it’s absurd anyone thinks it does. If the AI PR were any good, it wouldn’t need review. And if it does need review, why would the AI be trustworthy if it did a poor job the first time? This is like reviewing your own PRs, it completely defeats the purpose. And no, using different models doesn’t fix the issue. That’s just adding several layers of stupid on top of each other and praying that so…

I get your point, but reviewing your own PRs is a very good idea. As insulting as it is to submit an AI-generated PR without any effort at review while expecting a human to look it over, it is nearly as insulting to not just open the view the reviewer will have and take a look. I do this all the time and very often discover little things that I didn't see while tunneled into the code itself.

> I get your point, but reviewing your own PRs is a very good idea.

Yes. You just have to be in a different mindset. I look for cases that I haven't handled (and corner cases in general). I can try to summarize what the code does and see if it actually meets the goal, if there's any downsides. If the solution in the end turns out too complicated to describe, it may be time to step back and think again. If the code can run in many different configurations (or platforms), review time is when I start to see if I accidentally break anything.

Re: It's insulting to read AI-generated blog posts

#187

Post by latexr »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #153
latexr wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would be more human to handwrite your blog post instead. “Blog” stands for “web log”. If it’s on the web, it’s digital, there was never a period when blogs were hand written. > The use of tools to help with writing and communication should make it easier to convey your thoughts If you’re using an LLM to spit out text for you, they’re not your thoughts, you’re not the one writing, and you’re not doing a good job…

> there was never a period when blogs were hand written. I’ve seen exactly that. In one case, it was JPEG scans of handwriting, but most of the time, it’s a cursive font (which may obviate “handwritten”). I can’t remember which famous author it was, that always submitted their manuscripts as cursive writing on yellow legal pads. Must have been thrilling to edit.

Isolated instances do not a period define. We can always find some example of someone who did something, but the point is it didn’t start like that.

For example, there was never a period when movies were made by creating frames as oil paintings and photographing them. A couple of movies were made like that, but that was never the norm or a necessity or the intended process.

Re: It's insulting to read AI-generated blog posts

#188

Post by ianbicking »

j4yav wrote: post #19
dewey wrote: post #16

> No, don't use it to fix your grammar, or for translations I think that's the best use case and it's not AI related as spell-checkers and translation integrations exist forever, now they are just better. Especially for non-native speakers that work in a globalized market. Why wouldn't they use the tool in their toolbox?

Because it doesn’t just fix your grammar, it makes you sound suspiciously like spam.

It does however work just fine if you ask it for grammar help or whatever, then apply those edits. And for pretty much the rest of the content too: if you have the AI generate feedback, ideas, edits, etc., and then apply them yourself to the text, the result avoids these pitfalls and the author is doing the work that the reader expects and deserves.

Re: It's insulting to read AI-generated blog posts

#189

Post by paulpauper »

signorovitch wrote: post #122
alyxya wrote: post #54

I personally don’t think I care if a blog post is AI generated or not. The only thing that matters to me is the content. I use ChatGPT to learn about a variety of different things, so if someone came up with an interesting set of prompts and follow ups and shared a summary of the research ChatGPT did, it could be meaningful content to me. > No, don't use it to fix your grammar, or for translations, or for whatever el…

I tend to agree, though not in all cases. If I’m reading because I want to learn something, I don’t care how the material was generated. As long as it’s correct and intuitive, and LLMs have gotten pretty good at that, it’s valuable to me. It’s always fun when a human takes the time to make something educational and creative, or has a pleasant style, or a sense of humor; but I’m not reading the blog post for that. Wha…

AI- assisted or generated content tends to have an annoying wordiness or bloat to it, but only astute readers will pick up on it.

But it can make for tiresome reading. Like, a 2000 word post can be compressed to 700 or something had a human editor pruned it.

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