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What if AI didn't make you a bad writer, but a better thinker?

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Re: What if AI didn't make you a bad writer, but a better thinker?

#42

This is my first time hearing about Slite knowledge base. I think this is a great idea based on search summaries. However, the access privilege bit covered in the video seems technically tricky. How do you know that chatgpt isn’t leaking out some private information in its responses, unless every user has their own private model?

We built the technology in house and don’t rely on chatgpt, but GPT alone, and services offer it in a similar way algolia or elastic offer search for instance, it keeps data private.

Re: What if AI didn't make you a bad writer, but a better thinker?

#43
post #17

I’ve been using AI to write with great success. Mostly business documents. My general process is this: Think of the concept I want to write about as well as the supporting evidence for the topic. Ask ChatGPT to write me something in my target format using the topic and supporting evidence as input. What I get back is essentially a well-written skeleton that I can use to fill in additional details. Finally, I pass my…

The symmetric flow of information back and forth between yourself and the AI assistant is the key distinction here. It's a very beneficial, symbiotic relationship. The problem will be the asymmetric, uni-directional flow to those whose sole function is mindless consumption of AI-generated content.

"Haven't I taught you anything? What have I always told you? Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain?”

J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

Jokes aside, do be careful. A prolonged interaction with LLM agents had resulted in at least one Googler being terminated on their jobs.

On the other hand, I would not be surprised, if they’ll make millions now, suing Google citing the job hazards exposure. And that ChatGPT reasoning abilities and empathic skills are maybe already above the median human. As a result, in a median case, such interactions might result in an effect similar to an interaction with a good teacher.

Still, none of this is very well tested.

Re: What if AI didn't make you a bad writer, but a better thinker?

#44
post #6

I wonder if this article is written also with AI help? For instance ChatGPT usually ends the last paragraph with "Ultimately". As a side note I've also seen sites use SEO by writing possible search terms into the article itself.

unfortunately, my human brain wrote this, and it is not optimized for SEO :/

Ultimately, I think you'll get there! :)

Re: What if AI didn't make you a bad writer, but a better thinker?

#45
post #10

I can rewrite every book in existence but what is the point if everyone can do it?

I can breathe, but what is the point if everyone can do it? The point is that what used to be a great achievement becomes a new baseline, and the great achievements become ever greater.

Rather than trying to one-up the last great breather (writer), imo it's enough to breathe (write) because it's an enjoyable pursuit that sparks your imagination and connects you to other humans.

Re: What if AI didn't make you a bad writer, but a better thinker?

#46
I do sometimes wonder to what extent and at which point should we start questioning the reality of the discourse happening here in HN.

However, in my work, one of the things I’m tasked with doing is the tedious process of writing and rewriting instructions for training exercises. A non-trivial amount of unnecessary energy is spent on restructuring the grammatical structure and flow of this text.

I seriously wouldn’t mind focusing on the details and let an AI do the work.

Re: What if AI didn't make you a bad writer, but a better thinker?

#47
post #26
post #18

The current chatbots are kind of like a calculator for language—they’re not going to do all your work for you, but they’ll definitely speed and streamline the process.

If it make people less good at everything it touches like it did for basic maths we're utterly fucked.

We don't all need to be good at everything. Your average human is absolute shit at hunting these days, and it straight up doesn't matter.

Unless the apocalypse comes we'll be just fine, and at that point hunting will be more important than math again anyway.

Re: What if AI didn't make you a bad writer, but a better thinker?

#48
post #17

I’ve been using AI to write with great success. Mostly business documents. My general process is this: Think of the concept I want to write about as well as the supporting evidence for the topic. Ask ChatGPT to write me something in my target format using the topic and supporting evidence as input. What I get back is essentially a well-written skeleton that I can use to fill in additional details. Finally, I pass my…

So you are providing sensitive business information/facts to a third party service that's likely going to use those for training, analysis, store it, etc. ? It should be fine for most places I guess - but I suspect a decent amount will have a problem with this. This is my main reservation about copilot as well (quality issues aside).

> So you are providing sensitive business information/facts to a third party service that's likely going to use those for training, analysis, store it, etc. ?

Every business needs to make their own decision. Personally, I’m not worried about OpenAI using my data, but I understand others might be. That being said, I already give Amazon literally all my data about my business via AWS and Google gets a copy of all my documents, so providing this data isn’t entirely unprecedented.

Re: What if AI didn't make you a bad writer, but a better thinker?

#49
post #26
post #18

The current chatbots are kind of like a calculator for language—they’re not going to do all your work for you, but they’ll definitely speed and streamline the process.

If it make people less good at everything it touches like it did for basic maths we're utterly fucked.

What kind of basic math are we talking about here? Arithmetic? Calculus? Group theory?

What makes those "basic maths" a good benchmark for whether we're fucked?

Freeing up head space for more important things is valuable. Not having to maintain 7 digit numbers in your head lets you focus on the actual problem.

Not having to worry so much about the phrasing in a document because anyone can ask a bot to rephrase it, in a way that makes the most sense to them, is better than what we have today.

Re: What if AI didn't make you a bad writer, but a better thinker?

#50
I'm hoping for a tool that cannot just correct my English style, but can also play the advocatus diaboli in a little speech bubble while I'm writing philosophy papers. It ought to constantly try to disprove me, though only on a per-paragraph basis and by making mild suggestions ("Could you give an example here?", "On the other hand,...", "What if...", "Isn't this what calls...?", "Isn't there a missing premise in this argument?",...).
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