We're losing our voice to LLMs • Hacker News Board

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#421

Post by BoredomIsFun » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 11:16 AM UTC

ashton314 wrote: post #388

BoredomIsFun wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does this even matter? If it can say something more eloquently, in less stilted way something what I wanted to say, adding some interesting nuance on the way, while still sounding close to me - why not? I meanwhile, can learn one-two rhetorical tricks from LLMs reading the result.

A analogy: For the same reason why natural wood is more beautiful than plastic. Natural wood gets its beauty from little faults and irregularities. The process of growing a tree takes a long time and thereby is more valuable. A plastic facsimile can be made to look similar and be cheaper to produce, but it lacks the unique grain and quality of the wood. It’s not just the end product that matters. The process and inte…

Not every artist use wood though. Some prefer plastic as a medium.

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#422

Post by BoredomIsFun » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 11:19 AM UTC

ashton314 wrote: post #390

BoredomIsFun wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "struggle needed to get there." "Struggle" argument is from gatekeepers and for masochists. Thank you very much.

Life is pain! Anyone who says otherwise is selling something. —The Dread Pirate Roberts Everyone who’s produced something good, beautiful, or valuable has had to struggle. That’s just the way work works.

> The Dread Pirate Roberts

Okay, who is the next one to cite? Marquis de Carabas?

> Everyone who’s produced something good, beautiful, or valuable has had to struggle. That’s just the way work works.

It is simply not true.

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#423

Post by pardon_me » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 4:06 PM UTC

anonymouskimmer wrote: post #170

grey-area wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The LLM may well have pulled the answer from a medical reference similar to that used by the dr. I have no idea why you think an expert in the field would use ChatGPT for a simple question, that would be negligence.

A climate scientist I follow uses Perplexity AI in some of his YouTube videos. He stated one time that he uses it for the formatting, graphs, and synopses, but knows enough about what he's asking that he knows what it's outputting is correct. An "expert" might use ChatGPT for the brief synopsis. It beats trying to recall something learned about a completely different sub-discipline years ago.

This is the root of the problem with LLMs.

At best, the can attempt to recall sections of scraped information, which may happen to be the answer to a question. No different to searching the web except you instantly know the source and how much to trust it, if you search yourself. I've found LLMs tend to invent sources when queried (although that seems to be getting better), so it's slower than searching for information I already know exists.

If you have to be more of an expert than the LLM to then verify the output, it requires more careful attention than going back to the original source. Useful, but it's always writing in a different way to previous models/conversations and your own writing style.

LLMs can be used to suggest ideas and summarize sources, if you can verify and mediate it. They can be used for a potential sourcing of information (and the more data agreeing, the better). However, they cannot readily be used to accurately infer new information, so the best they can do here is guess. It would be useful if they could provide a confidence indicator for all scenarios.

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#424

Post by amrocha » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 6:41 PM UTC

boxerab wrote: post #420

amrocha wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really want a “competitor” to linkedin? Do you really want to have to make and manage accounts on multiple sites because you need a job and you don’t know which a company uses? Isn’t it better to have a single place you check when you need a job because everyone else is also there?

Do you really want a “competitor” to Facebook? Do you really want to have to make and manage accounts on multiple sites because you want to chat with someone and you don’t know which social media that person uses? Isn’t it better to have a single place you check when you need to chat with someone because everyone else is also there?

Yes, it is better, which is why facebook is the only old school social network left. Do you really think we would be using myspace if it still existed?

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#425

Post by grey-area » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 9:46 AM UTC

randycupertino wrote: post #205

grey-area wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The LLM may well have pulled the answer from a medical reference similar to that used by the dr. I have no idea why you think an expert in the field would use ChatGPT for a simple question, that would be negligence.

She read it EXACTLY as written from the ChatGPT response, verbatim. If it was her own unique response there would have been some variation.

What makes you think the LLM wasn't reproducing a snippet from a medical reference?

I mean it's possible an expert in the field was using ChatGPT to answer questions but is seems rather stupid and improbable doesn't it? It'd be a good way to completely crash your career when found out.