I should never spend more effort reading something than the author spent writing it. With AI-generated texts the author effort approaches zero.
It's insulting to read AI-generated blog posts
351–360 of 565 posts
Re: It's insulting to read AI-generated blog posts
#352Is it just me, or is OP posting a bunch of links on HN for karma farming? Some of seem to be AI-generated, like this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45724022
Re: It's insulting to read AI-generated blog posts
#353What am I even reading if it is AI generated?
The reason AI is so hyped up at the moment is that you give it little, it gives you back more.
But then whose blog-post am I reading? What really is the point?
Re: It's insulting to read AI-generated blog posts
#354Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Code review is one of the places where experience is transferred. Almost nobody uses it for that today, unfortunately, and code reviews in both directions are probably where the vast majority of learning software development comes from. I learned nearly zilch in my first 5 years as a software dev at crappy startups, then I learned more about software development in 6 months when a new team actually took the time to…
I agree. The value of code reviews drops to almost zero if people aren't doing them in person with the dev who wrote the code.
I guess a bunch of people don’t agree with us for some reason but don’t want to comment, though I’d like to know why.
Re: It's insulting to read AI-generated blog posts
#355Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Code review is one of the places where experience is transferred. Almost nobody uses it for that today, unfortunately, and code reviews in both directions are probably where the vast majority of learning software development comes from. I learned nearly zilch in my first 5 years as a software dev at crappy startups, then I learned more about software development in 6 months when a new team actually took the time to…
I agree. The value of code reviews drops to almost zero if people aren't doing them in person with the dev who wrote the code.
This doesn't deserve to be downvoted. Above all else, code review is the moment for pair programming. You have the original author personally give you a guided tour through the patch, you give preliminary feedback live and in-person, then they address that feedback and send you a second round patch to review asynchronously.
Re: It's insulting to read AI-generated blog posts
#356Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve been learning piano and I’ve noticed a similar thing with music. You can listen to perfect machine generated performances of songs and there is just something missing. A live performance even of a master pianist will have little ‘mistakes’ or interpretations that make the whole performance so much more enjoyable. Not only that, but just knowing that a person spent months drilling a song adds something.
Two things this great comment reminds me of: I've been learning piano too, and I find more joy in performing a piece poorly, than listening to it played competently. My brother asked me why I play if I'm just playing music that's already been performed (a leading question, he's not ignorant). I asked him why he plays hockey if you can watch pros play it far better. It's the journey, not the destination. I've been (re…
> Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for?
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43745/andrea-del-sart...
Re: It's insulting to read AI-generated blog posts
#357Earlier 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.
I don't like ChatGPT's voice any more than you do, but it is definitely not HR-voice. LLM writing tends to be in active voice with clear topic sentences, which is already 10x better writing than corporate-speak.
Yep, it's like Coke Zero vs Diet Coke: 10x the flavor and 10x the calories.
Re: It's insulting to read AI-generated blog posts
#358I don't see the objection to using LLMs to check for grammatical mistakes and spelling errors. That strikes me as a reactionary and dogmatic position, not a rational one. Anyone who has done any serious writing knows that a good editor will always find a dozen or more errors in any essay of reasonable length, and very few people are willing to pay for professional proofreading services on blog posts. On the other sid…
The fact that you were downvoted into dark grey for this post on this forum makes me very sad. I hope it's just that this article is attracting a certain kind of segment of the community.
I'm pretty sure my mistake was assuming people had read the article and knew the author veered wildly halfway through towards also advocating against using LLMs for proofreading and that you should "just let your mistakes stand." Obviously no one reads the article, just the headline, so they assumed I was disagreeing with that (which I was not.) Other comments that expressed the same sentiment as mine but also quoted that part did manage to get upvoted.
This is an emotionally charged subject for many, so they're operating in Hurrah/Boo mode[1]. After all, how can we defend the value of careful human thought if we don't rush blindly to the defense of every low-effort blog post with a headline that signals agreement with our side?
Re: It's insulting to read AI-generated blog posts
#359Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Maybe we should enforce that users bundle the prompting with their PRs.
In the beginning, there was the binary, and it was difficult to change.
Then the golden age of ascii encoded source, where all was easy to change.
Now we've forgotten that lesson and changed to ascii encoded binary.
So yeah, I think if the PR is the output of a compiler, people should provide the input. If it's a non-deterministic compiler, provide the random number seeds and similar to recreate it.
Re: It's insulting to read AI-generated blog posts
#360Earlier 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…
AI PR reviews do end up providing useful comments. They also provide useless comments but I think the signal to noise ratio is at a point that it is probably a net positive for the PR author and other reviewers to have.