Then AI is thinking. Next question.
If writing is thinking then what happens if AI is doing the writing and reading?
51–60 of 121 posts
Re: If writing is thinking then what happens if AI is doing the writing and reading?
#52Idk, I'm more optimistic than the author. I'm currently using a LLM to rewrite a fitness book. It takes ~20 pages of rambling text by a professional coach // amateur writer and turns it into a crisp clear 4 pages of latex with informative diagrams, flow charts, color-coding, tables, etc. I sent it out to friends and they all love the new style. Even the ones who hate the gym. My experience is LLMs can write very very…
>My experience is LLMs can write very very well; we just have to care. My experience is that people who think this are really bad writers. That's fine, because most human writing is bad too. So if your goal is just to put more bad writing into the world for commercial reasons, then there's some utility in it for sure.
Then in the A/B test you're the 1 fail out of 7 tries, everyone else loved it, and you haven't even looked at it. I can live with those results. Lesson is don't always publicize the LLM help.
Re: If writing is thinking then what happens if AI is doing the writing and reading?
#53Writing isn't necessarily thinking. For example you can have a spreadsheet of 20 000 words and use an algorithm to randomly pick a sequence of words. No one would call that thinking, even if such a process made intelligible sentences sometimes. "AI" is using an algorithm and statistics in the same way---it's just more accurate at making intelligible sentences than the example above. I wouldn't call either thinking, w…
That’s not at all the point the author is making. The point is people don’t read. Now we don’t even write. At least what USED to be written had to cost a human time, something relatively precious. Now we can churn out text at rates unprecedented and the original problem, no one reading, is left untouched. The author wonders what happens when the weird lossy gap in-between these processes gets worse. There’s lots of e…
>Now we can churn out text at rates unprecedented and the original problem, no one reading, is left untouched.
I think you miss my point a bit.
Any text that can be churned out at unprecedented rates likely isn't worth reading (or writing, or looking at, or listening to), and anyone consuming this stuff already isn't doing much thinking.
You can lead a horse etc etc
Re: If writing is thinking then what happens if AI is doing the writing and reading?
#54I think Sinofsky is asking a question: what does the future look like given that (a) writing is thinking but (b) nobody reads and (c) LLMs are being used to write and read.
It's that (already) old joke: we give the LLM 5 bullet points to write a memo and the recipient uses an LLM to turn it back to 5 bullet points.
Some plausible (to me) possibilities:
1. Bifurcation: Maybe a subset of knowledge workers continue to write and read and therefore drive the decisions of the business. The remainder just do what the LLM says and eventually get automated away.
2. Augmentation: Thinking is primarily done by humans, but augmented by AI. E.g., I write my thoughts down (maybe in 5 bullet points or maybe in paragraphs) and I give it to the LLM to critique. The LLM helps by poking holes and providing better arguments. The result can be distributed to everyone else by LLMs in customized form (some people get bullet points, some get slide decks, some get the full document).
3. Transformation: Maybe the AI does the thinking. Would that be so bad? The board of directors sets goals and approves the basic strategy. The executive team is far smaller and just oversees the AI. The AI decides how to allocate resources, align incentives, and communicate plans. Just as programmers let the compiler write the machine code, why bother with the minutiae of resource allocation? That sounds like something an algorithm could do. And since nobody reads anyway, the AI can direct people individually, but in a coordinated fashion. Indeed, the AI can be far more coordinated than an executive team.
Re: If writing is thinking then what happens if AI is doing the writing and reading?
#55AI talking to AI will be the dominant form of communication
Re: If writing is thinking then what happens if AI is doing the writing and reading?
#56I use AI a ton for writing emails and other corporate stuff, I have no problems there, it structures and presents them well enough and quickly that it saves me a ton of time.
Where I am conflicted is creative writing -- its something I have been interested in but never pursued...and now I am able to pursue it with AI's help. There is a degree of embarrassment when confiding to folks, that yes a piece was AI assisted... see here by what I mean: https://humancurious.substack.com/p/the-architect-and-the-cr...
Re: If writing is thinking then what happens if AI is doing the writing and reading?
#57These are the infinite monkeys at typewriters with an effective culling algorithm. There needs to be no thought to get useful output "written".
Re: If writing is thinking then what happens if AI is doing the writing and reading?
#58I think Sinofsky is asking a question: what does the future look like given that (a) writing is thinking but (b) nobody reads and (c) LLMs are being used to write and read. It's that (already) old joke: we give the LLM 5 bullet points to write a memo and the recipient uses an LLM to turn it back to 5 bullet points. Some plausible (to me) possibilities: 1. Bifurcation: Maybe a subset of knowledge workers continue to w…
The executives in example three seem redundant and a cost center we can eliminate.
Re: If writing is thinking then what happens if AI is doing the writing and reading?
#59I think it's the type of thing that the mere awareness of it counts a lot to counterweight the problem.
It's like when you are growing up and a certain type of behaviour that would work for socializing when you're 14 years old suddenly doesn't work anymore when you are 21. You learn about it when someone you trust brings you attention to it and suddenly you have the opportunity to reflect and change your behaviour.
The thing with AI that I really fear is the same with mind-altering drugs like Adderall. In some places you just can't afford the luxury of not using it without losing competitiveness (I think, never used it but I know of people that do with regularity).
So maybe we don't want to not read what we write, but sometimes there is a middle manager making you do it. Then it's a problem of context that awareness in itself doesn't help, maybe only in the long run.
Re: If writing is thinking then what happens if AI is doing the writing and reading?
#60To me, the short answer is we collectively stop learning.
I'll take the flip side of the argument and say AI allows humans to get back to raw, first-principals research and writing.
In many ways, middle men of literature (i.e. re-bloggers, article writers, etc) are moot. Groups who don't actually add value but have insane amount of ads on the page. This pushes people to actually write original content.
Is this perfect? no way. Is it dangerous? yes.
There are so many problems, but for better/worse, too many of us have changed the way we operate. It's here to stay.