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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

#231

Post by the_af »

photonthug wrote: post #210
nbardy wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know you can AI review the PR too, don't be such a curmudgeon. I have PR's at work I and coworkers fully AI generated and fully AI review. And

> fully AI generated and fully AI review This reminds me of an awesome bit by Žižek where he describes an ultra-modern approach to dating. She brings the vibrator, he brings the synthetic sleeve, and after all the buzzing begins and the simulacra are getting on well, the humans sigh in relief. Now that this is out of the way they can just have a tea and a chat. It's clearly ridiculous, yet at the point where papers o…

> It's clearly ridiculous, yet at the point where papers or PRs are written by robots, reviewed by robots, for eventual usage/consumption/summary by yet more robots, it becomes very relevant. At some point one must ask, what is it all for, and should we maybe just skip some of these steps or revisit some assumptions about what we're trying to accomplish

I've been thinking this for a while, despairing, and amazed that not everyone is worried/surprised about this like me.

Who are we building all this stuff for, exactly?

Some technophiles are arguing this will free us to... do what exactly? Art, work, leisure, sex, analysis, argument, etc will be done for us. So we can do what exactly? Go extinct?

"With AI I can finally write the book I always wanted, but lacked the time and talent to write!". Ok, and who will read it? Everybody will be busy AI-writing other books in their favorite fantasy world, tailored specifically to them, and it's not like a human wrote it anyway so nobody's feelings should be hurt if nobody reads your stuff.

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

#232

Post by chipotle_coyote »

ryanmerket wrote: post #198
thatjoeoverthr wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even letting the LLM “clean it up” puts its voice on your text. In general, you don’t want its voice. The associations are LinkedIn, warnings from HR and affiliate marketing hustles. It’s the modern equivalent of “talking like a used car salesman”. Not everyone will catch it but do think twice.

It's really not hard to say "make it in my voice" especially if it's an LLM with extensive memory of your writing.

You can say anything to an LLM, but it’s not going to actually write in your voice. When I was writing a very long blog post about “creative writing” from AIs, I researched Sudowrite briefly, which purports to be able to do exactly this; not only could it not write convincingly in my voice (and the novel I gave it has a pretty strong narrative voice), following Sudowrite’s own tutorial in which they have you get their app to write a few paragraphs in Dan Brown’s voice demonstrated it could not convincingly do that.

I don’t think having a ML-backed proofreading system is an intrinsically bad idea; the oft-maligned “Apple Intelligence” suite has a proofreading function which is actually pretty good (although it has a UI so abysmal it’s virtually useless in most circumstances). But unless you truly, deeply believe your own writing isn’t as good as a precocious eighth-grader trying to impress their teacher with a book report, don’t ask an LLM to rewrite your stuff.

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

#233

Post by soiltype »

cm2012 wrote: post #148
MangoToupe wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I use ChatGPT to learn about a variety of different things Why do you trust the output? Chatbots are so inaccurate you surely must be going out of your way to misinform yourself.

Chatbots are more reliable than 95% of people you can ask, on a wide variety of researched topics.

Yeah... you're supposed to ask the 5%.

If you have a habit of asking random lay persons for technical advice, I can see why an idiot chatbot would seem like an upgrade.

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

#234

Post by jquaint »

> Do you not enjoy the pride that comes with attaching your name to something you made on your own? It's great!

This is like saying a photographer shouldn't find the sunset they photographed pretty or be proud of the work, because they didn't personally labor to paint the image of it.

A lot more goes into a blog post than the actual act of typing the context out.

Lazy work is always lazy work, but its possible to make work you are proud of with AI, in the same way you can create work you are proud of with a camera

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

#235

Post by [deleted] »

afavour wrote: post #176
jvanderbot wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> reviewing your own PRs is a very good idea It is, but for all the reasons AI is supposed to fix. If I look at code I myself wrote I might come to a different conclusion about how things should be done because humans are fallible and often have different things on their mind. If it's in any way worth using an AI should be producing one single correct answer each time, rendering self PR review useless.

[deleted]

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

#236

Post by charcircuit »

latexr wrote: post #114
nbardy wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know you can AI review the PR too, don't be such a curmudgeon. I have PR's at work I and coworkers fully AI generated and fully AI review. And

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…

Your assumptions are wrong. AI models do not have equal generation and discrimination abilities. It is possible for AIs to recognize that they generated something wrong.

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

#238

Post by mediaman »

noir_lord wrote: post #14
4fterd4rk wrote: post #3

It's insulting but I also find it extremely concerning that my younger colleagues can't seem to tell the difference. An article will very clearly be AI slop and I'll express frustration, only to discover that they have no idea what I"m talking about.

I'd be curious to do a general study to see what percentage of humans can spot AI written content vs human written content on the same subject. Specifically is there any correlation between people who have always read a lot as I do and people who don't. My observation (anecdota) is that the people I know who read heavily are much better at and much more against AI slop vs people who don't read at all. Even when I've…

I both read a fair amount (and long books, 800-1,000 page classic Russian novels, that kind of thing) and use LLMs.

I quite like using LLMs to learn new things. But I agree: I can't stand reading blog posts written by LLMs. Perhaps it is about expectations. A blog post I am expecting to gain a view into an individual's thinking; for an AI, I am looking into an abyss of whirring matrix-shaped gears.

There's nothing wrong with the abyss of matrices, but if I'm at a party and start talking with someone, and get the whirring sound of gears instead of the expected human banter, I'm a little disturbed. And it feels the same for blog content: these are personal communications; machines have their place and their use, but if I get a machine when I'm expecting something personal, it counters expectations.

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

#239

Post by adverbly »

As someone who briefly wrote a bunch of AI generated blog posts, I kind of agree... The voicing is terrible, and the only thing it it does particularly well is replace the existing slop.

I'm starting to pivot and realize that quality is actually way more important than I thought, especially in a world where it is very easy to create things of low quality using AI.

Another place I've noticed it is in hiring. There are so many low quality applications its insane. One application with a full GitHub and profile and cover letter and or video which actually demonstrates that you understand where you are applying is worth more than 100 low quality ones.

It's gone from a charming gimmick to quickly becoming an ick.

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

#240

Post by ar_lan »

goostavos wrote: post #178
mikepurvis wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would never put up a copilot PR for colleague review without fully reviewing it myself first. But once that’s done, why not?

It destroys the value of code review and wastes the reviewers time. Code review is one of the places where experience is transferred. It is disheartening to leave thoughtful comments and have them met with "I duno. I just had [AI] do it." If all you do is 'review' the output of your prompting before cutting a CR, I'd prefer you just send the prompt.

> It is disheartening to leave thoughtful comments and have them met with "I duno. I just had [AI] do it."

This is not just disheartening - this should be flat out refused. I'm sensitive to issues of firing people but honestly this is just someone not pulling their weight for their job.

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