When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think
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Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think
#2I said the same thing to my SO the first time I tried out ChatGPT.
However, I'm not sure if AI is where I'd draw the boundary for myself at least, as I've had the same lingering feeling from only reading HN comments and seldom writing my own, or consuming BreadTube content for instance.
More often than not, my opinions and thoughts are constructed for me by someone else as opposed to me doing my own critical thinking. Perhaps I'm one of the below-average thinkers for who ChatGPT will be a godsend.
Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think
#3As a possible counterpoint to LLMs atrophying writing, in order to have fun on Character.AI, and tease out nuances with various GPTs, I've had to dust off my ability to write/think. I notice a lot more verbal reasoning going on in my mind after these weeks of back-and-forthing.
Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think
#4Interestingly enough, you can reverse this statement: "when you gain the ability to write, you gain the ability to think" - and in part gain some insight into how LLMs seem to suddenly have "emergent" behaviour to perform quite impressive feats of logic.
Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think
#5I said the same thing to my SO the first time I tried out ChatGPT. However, I'm not sure if AI is where I'd draw the boundary for myself at least, as I've had the same lingering feeling from only reading HN comments and seldom writing my own, or consuming BreadTube content for instance. More often than not, my opinions and thoughts are constructed for me by someone else as opposed to me doing my own critical thinking…
Some of my favorite thoughts are those that I wouldn't in a million years have come up with on my own. Being exposed to these is a warp gate for the mind.
The strange thing about being human is that we have an inordinate capacity to normalize and then universalize just about anything. On one had this plasticity allows us to deal with almost anything we are apt to encounter. On the other hand, it's an enormous blind spot to what could be. We're much more likely to add to our initial mental model than conceive of an entirely new perspective and it's these entirely new perspectives that I value the most.
Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think
#6I said the same thing to my SO the first time I tried out ChatGPT. However, I'm not sure if AI is where I'd draw the boundary for myself at least, as I've had the same lingering feeling from only reading HN comments and seldom writing my own, or consuming BreadTube content for instance. More often than not, my opinions and thoughts are constructed for me by someone else as opposed to me doing my own critical thinking…
My experience with ChatGPT writing is that, if I have some essentially boilerplate to put down on page and work from, it's "fine" so long as I know enough to cross out the stuff I don't like and expand on the parts I do. Saves some time. But if I ask it to analyze a more complicated/nuanced question, it's far less useful. It certainly doesn't come up with unique insights into complicated topics I have a lot of familiarity with so far as I've experienced.
Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think
#7When discussing writing as a form of thinking, I think it is unlikely that ChatGPT will replace this process. In fact, ChatGPT could potentially enhance it, as thinking through writing primarily involves refining ideas, clarifying concepts, and ensuring they are well-considered and robust. ChatGPT offers well-organized summaries of established facts and information, thereby aiding in the clarification of ideas.
Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think
#8How much is ChatGPT replacing human writing?
It still seems to me like most of the articles on HN are human-written, and I heard CNBC tried replacing writers with ChatGPT and it went terribly. But I've also heard anecdotes of freelance writers getting replaced [1] [2] [3], and every once in a while I spot or hear about something ChatGPT-written in the wild. I'm sure ChatGPT replaces boilerplate writing (e.g. legal documents, mandatory code documentation, technical specifications, formal communication) but what about "real" writing (articles, papers, slogans, and books)?
ChatGPT (including GPT4) has a distinctive writing style (neutral-helpful tone, verbose), and in my own experiments and observations I can still recognize it even when it's prompted to write differently. But this is selection bias: when ChatGPT writes something I can't spot, I just don't notice and assume it's human-written. And I know for a fact I can't recognize ChatGPT's writing in isolated paragraphs (I took the quizzes), so it's clear some writings slip past my radar.
This is an important thing to track. Idk how we'd track it in a way that's even remotely accurate; perhaps by taking small samples where you know for sure whether each article was written by GPT or human (if your subjects disclose, or if they have edit history turned on). But we can't say how much ChatGPT is replacing human writing, and how it's affecting human thinking, until we have actual evidence this is happening at a large scale.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/139o1q6/lost_all_m...
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/138clv9/spent_5_ye...
[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/freelanceWriters/comments/12ff5mw/i...)
Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think
#9How much is ChatGPT replacing human writing? It still seems to me like most of the articles on HN are human-written, and I heard CNBC tried replacing writers with ChatGPT and it went terribly. But I've also heard anecdotes of freelance writers getting replaced [1] [2] [3], and every once in a while I spot or hear about something ChatGPT-written in the wild. I'm sure ChatGPT replaces boilerplate writing (e.g. legal do…
Later on, gpt or other spun off gpts can be trained to write with a specific voice. The future is limitless with this tech, for good or bad
Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think
#10How much is ChatGPT replacing human writing? It still seems to me like most of the articles on HN are human-written, and I heard CNBC tried replacing writers with ChatGPT and it went terribly. But I've also heard anecdotes of freelance writers getting replaced [1] [2] [3], and every once in a while I spot or hear about something ChatGPT-written in the wild. I'm sure ChatGPT replaces boilerplate writing (e.g. legal do…
ChatGPT can't replace writing intended to convey information, but that's only a small fraction of the writing that's getting created. There's a whole industry where people are given prompts like "five paragraphs about the history of spaghetti" and get paid $0.01 per word, then that text gets put into an Italy-themed travel blog full of ads.
You and I wouldn't notice if that entire industry was replaced by ChatGPT because nobody reads that text, it doesn't exist to be read, it exists to tickle some ranking model deep in the bowels of Google. But you can be sure that the people selling coherent text for $0.01/word will notice when ChatGPT can generate the same thing for $0.000001/word.