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Writing with LLM is not a shame

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Re: Writing with LLM is not a shame

#91

Post by NicuCalcea »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #77

AI prose is mediocre right now. Too verbose, indirect constructions, passive, etc. That being said, it's actually a great editor and can pick out all those issues consistently. My workflow right now is to use AI for rough draft and developmental editing stages, then switch AI from changing files to leaving comments on files suggesting I change something. It is slower than letting it line/copyedit itself, but models d…

That's my main criticism as well. Even before we get to the ethical implications of AIs communicating on your behalf without a disclaimer, LLM writing is just poor and making me read through it is disrespectful of my time.

I recently had a colleague send me a link to a ChatGPT conversation instead of responding to me. Another colleague organised a quiz where the answers were hallucinated by Grok. In some Facebook groups I'm in where people are meant to help each other, people have started just pasting the questions into ChatGPT and responding with screenshots of the conversation. I use LLMs almost daily, but this is all incredibly depressing. The only time I want to interact with an LLM is when I choose to, not when it's forced on me without my consent or at least a disclaimer.

Re: Writing with LLM is not a shame

#92

Post by fluidcruft »

SweetSoftPillow wrote: post #28
dep_b wrote: post #11

Just got a few recommendations by my colleagues on LinkedIn that were clearly written by an LLM, the long emdash was even present. But then again, the message was tuned to specific things I did. Also they were from Eastern Europe, so I imagine they just fixed their input. If you call yourself a writer, having tell tale LLM signs is bad. But for people who's work doesn't involve having a personal voice in written lang…

I've been using em dashes since long before LLMs existed, and I won't stop. Some people might think it's a sign of an LLM, but I know it's just a sign of their own short-sightedness.

Yeah, we smart people were using en and em dashes appropriately long before LLMs mimics appeared.

Latex power users unite against the markdown monkey keyboard mashers!

So... sorry (not sorry!) that LLMs try to be like us and not the heathens.

Re: Writing with LLM is not a shame

#93

Post by bluefirebrand »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #36
amiga386 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Expecting people to read unverified machine output is rude. Quite. Its the attention economy, you've demanded people's attention, and then you shove crap that even you didn't spend time reading in their face. Even if you're using it as an editor... you know that editors vary in quality, right? You wouldn't accept a random editor just because they're cheap or free. Prose has a lot in it, not just syntax, spelling an…

> Its the attention economy, you've demanded people's attention, and then you shove crap that even you didn't spend time reading in their face. That’s the rudeness. But this takes care of itself— we just adjust trust accordingly

> But this takes care of itself— we just adjust trust accordingly

This should be viewed as an absolute unacceptable outcome

I want society to become higher trust not even lower trust :(

Re: Writing with LLM is not a shame

#94

Post by antonymoose »

matt123456789 wrote: post #82

When I put real time and thought into an email—and the response I get back is obviously AI-generated—and it comes with no disclaimer—it infuriates me. Maybe the model happened to spit out exactly what the sender meant—just dressed up and grammatically polished. Doesn’t matter—I’d rather someone talk to me directly than funnel a thought through a word-grinder and hit send. Downvote me—call me anti-progress—I don’t car…

I recently had my first AI recruiter experience. To be clear, the person behind the account was a real person with a real business - except everything was uncanny valley levels of bad correspondence. I shortly disconnected and blocked this jerk.

Re: Writing with LLM is not a shame

#95

Post by viccis »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #53
SweetSoftPillow wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using em dashes since long before LLMs existed, and I won't stop. Some people might think it's a sign of an LLM, but I know it's just a sign of their own short-sightedness.

It's really frustrating to have to adjust my writing style to seem more human despite being entirely human. Many of us have been using em dashes for a long time, who else do people think the LLMs learnt it from?

Em dashes are fine in throwaway casual writing like internet comments or tweets or whatever. However, I think that, in any writing that is significant enough that LLM usage is scrutinized, they often just come across as a crutch to avoid more planned out sentence flow. I think it's actually a good thing that people are feeling like they should cut down on them.

Re: Writing with LLM is not a shame

#96

Post by macmar »

This part of the text caught my attention the most.

"There are a lot of tools out there (Gramarly, Antidote for naming the most famous) and I did not see someone mentioning he used this or that."

I was criticized in another thread because I used a translation assistant to improve my text, a tool that, long before the current AI hype, everyone used to write more effectively.

People need to stop believing that the watchdogs of reason are the all-seeing eye(1989). Many people, in general, seek to be ethical and utilize tools to enhance their ideas (such as a text in a non-native language), and that's okay.

Re: Writing with LLM is not a shame

#97

Post by fragmede »

QRY wrote: post #66
Refreeze5224 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the tool does the task for you, then you didnt do the task. I don't keep my food cold, my refrigerator does. I just turned it on. This doesn't matter unless I am for some reason pretending I myself am keeping my food cold somehow, and then that becomes a lie. When a tool blurs the line between who performed the task, and you take full credit despite being assisted, that is deceitful. Spell checking helps us all pr…

When does a woodworker cease to be one? When he uses a handsaw? A circular saw? A sawmill? > When a tool blurs the line between who performed the task Who saws the wood? He who operates the tool, or the tool performing its function? What is the value of agency in a business that, supposedly, sells product? Code authorship isn't like writing, is it? Should it be? Or is the distinction not in the product, but in the pr…

There's also the perception of time. How long did it take you to write that email/comment/code? Did you laborious pour over every word, every line, for hours, before you hit send, regardless of if you used an LLM or not. Or did you spend barely five minutes, and just pasted whatever ChatGPT shit out?

That's the real question that people are trying to suss out.

Re: Writing with LLM is not a shame

#98

Post by zahlman »

viccis wrote: post #95
AlecSchueler wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really frustrating to have to adjust my writing style to seem more human despite being entirely human. Many of us have been using em dashes for a long time, who else do people think the LLMs learnt it from?

Em dashes are fine in throwaway casual writing like internet comments or tweets or whatever. However, I think that, in any writing that is significant enough that LLM usage is scrutinized, they often just come across as a crutch to avoid more planned out sentence flow. I think it's actually a good thing that people are feeling like they should cut down on them.

This issue, as I understand it, is about the actual choice to use an emdash character (—) rather than a hyphen (-), and about the effort involved in doing so. It's not about sentence structure.

I don't really understand how AI developed a bias towards doing it correctly rather than doing it the lazy way. But hearing so much about emdashes qua LLM detection mechanism eventually just got me to decide that typing an ordinary hyphen really is just lazy. And then I ended up configuring my system to make it reasonably easy to type them.

Re: Writing with LLM is not a shame

#99

Post by Gigachad »

singpolyma3 wrote: post #47
Gigachad wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Craziest thing I saw at work was someone using AI generated text in a farewell card. Like it's so obvious, it's so much more offensive to send someone an AI generated message than to just not send anything at all.

What made it obvious?

Non native English speaker suddenly using very elaborate language, a particularly long message without any specific details, just fluffy phrases. And em dashes.

Re: Writing with LLM is not a shame

#100

Post by zahlman »

ginko wrote: post #50
latexr wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> clearly written by an LLM, the long emdash was even present. Can we please stop propagating this accusation? Alright, sure, maybe LLMs overuse the em-dash, but it is a valid topographical mark which was in use way before LLMs and is even auto-inserted by default by popular software on popular operating systems— it is never sufficient on its own to identify LLM use (and yes, I just used it—multiple times—on purpose…

So do you always put in the ALT+ incantation to get an emdash or copy&paste? I feel the emdash is a tell because you have to go out of your way to use it on a computer keyboard. Something anyone other than the most dedicated punctuation geeks won't do for a random message on the internet. Things are different for typeset books.

On Linux, I configured my Caps Lock key to function as a compose key, and then use my ~/.XCompose file to make it easier.

I also set things up such that hitting Caps Lock twice in a row sends an Escape character, which makes using Vim a tiny bit nicer.

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