Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

If writing is thinking then what happens if AI is doing the writing and reading?

hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 121 posts

Re: If writing is thinking then what happens if AI is doing the writing and reading?

#91

Post by photios »

mayukh wrote: post #56

I 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.…

> I 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.

My manager uses AI when generating docs and emails. I think he does it because English isn't his native language and he goes for the "polished" look.

Frankly, I prefer the grammar errors and the authentic version. The AI polish is always impersonal and reeks of low effort.

I also love how everyone thinks coworkers don't notice the AI touch... of course we do.

Re: If writing is thinking then what happens if AI is doing the writing and reading?

#92

Post by xwolfi »

indigodaddy wrote: post #71
mayukh wrote: post #56

I 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.…

Do you feel weird that your coworkers must largely know that you use AI to communicate with them? I'd feel weird doing it, I know that much, so I've never even contemplated using AI for emails/communication.

I'm in a new budding relationship and we're exchanging letters. There is no way in Earth I touch chatgpt, but if I write well, how believable is it ? Is she ?

I hate this thing, it's so soul-less.

Re: If writing is thinking then what happens if AI is doing the writing and reading?

#93

Post by edg5000 »

gchamonlive wrote: post #59

I 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. T…

In what industries do you see this amphetamine use and what region? From TV I know maybe some bankers do it. Personally I really need my cafeine, but never heard about people taking amphetamime for work. Outside of work is another thing though.

Re: If writing is thinking then what happens if AI is doing the writing and reading?

#94

Post by pillefitz »

southernplaces7 wrote: post #86
Herring wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gemini pro. The flow chart, color-coding, tables etc are just latex. The illustrations are picked off the web. I suspect I might have to hire a professional photographer eventually.

>The flow chart, color-coding, tables etc are just latex. The illustrations are picked off the web Thanks for replying so quickly! Just to clarify, what do you mean by latex? So you don't use AI-generated illustrations. Those are real.

By latex he means LaTeX.

Re: If writing is thinking then what happens if AI is doing the writing and reading?

#95

Post by bowsamic »

caseyohara wrote: post #65
gchamonlive wrote: post #59

I 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. T…

> mind-altering drugs like Adderall This is strange to me. You could give me 100 chances to guess which “mind-altering drug” you are thinking of and Adderall wouldn’t cross my mind. Amphetamine is a stimulant; it’s plainly not mind-altering in the way that psychedelics are. Adderall is mind-altering in the same way that caffeine is. Which is to say, it isn’t.

You either have ADHD and so it affects you differently or you’ve never tried it. Anyone who has tried amphetamines knows it’s a completely different story to caffeine

Re: If writing is thinking then what happens if AI is doing the writing and reading?

#96

Post by [deleted] »

GMoromisato wrote: post #54

I 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…

[deleted]

Re: If writing is thinking then what happens if AI is doing the writing and reading?

#97

Post by MoltenMan »

gchamonlive wrote: post #59

I 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. T…

> I think it's the type of thing that the mere awareness of it counts a lot to counterweight the problem.

I'm unfortunately not too optimistic about this. There are plenty of things that are bad for you that everyone is aware of: not exercising, eating junk food, spending all day online, etc. But so many people do these things anyways; the human mind is incredible at cheating itself to make things easier on itself, and I don't think this is an exception.

Re: If writing is thinking then what happens if AI is doing the writing and reading?

#98

Post by dzonga »

every once in a while everyone should watch Jonathan's Blow: Collapse of Civilization [0]

by not reading and going through docs - we cut out our critique ability as we just ingest fully what A.I gives us. by not writing we don't exercise thinking - question our assumptions etc. since what AI writes will mostly be positive not negative.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko&pp=ygU1cHJldmVud... and just like that society stops thinking. stops creating.

then civilization collapses.

Re: If writing is thinking then what happens if AI is doing the writing and reading?

#99

Post by ozim »

gleenn wrote: post #13
karaterobot wrote: post #6

The title made me think this was going to be about the mental consequences of outsourcing writing to AI. In fact, the article is completely about people not reading documents. Corporate documents to be exact. His examples are from the 00s, so the problem has absolutely nothing to do with AI. Heck, I, too, have noticed that nobody reads anything: what does that have to do with AI? At least with AI, people could read a…

I am firmly a believer very few people read anything. They don't read long things as much as they don't even read short ones. One of the things I always thought was funny was having Product Managers see there were problems with UI, then I would get tickets to add text near the problems. It always crackme up because if users didn't even barely read the button they were clicking they why would they read a paragraph nea…

I don’t have the link but somewhere in last 3 years I read article found on HN.

It was about the fact that lots of people actually struggle reading.

Bad parts are that they don’t even know or they won’t admit it. Then they make people who are fluent at reading angry because those people will expect reading a paragraph is not noticeable effort and will think everyone is fluent at reading.

Re: If writing is thinking then what happens if AI is doing the writing and reading?

#100

Post by tonyedgecombe »

wlesieutre wrote: post #20
gleenn wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am firmly a believer very few people read anything. They don't read long things as much as they don't even read short ones. One of the things I always thought was funny was having Product Managers see there were problems with UI, then I would get tickets to add text near the problems. It always crackme up because if users didn't even barely read the button they were clicking they why would they read a paragraph nea…

In school they were really big on the 5-paragraph persuasive essay format. I guess because it teaches you to think through an argument and present it to someone. In practice, I find that if I don't format something as a bulleted/numbered list, nobody is going to look at it.

I was always surprised when my customers read past the first item in a list.
Post reply on HN