Two engineers with overlapping AI backgrounds are trading views on whether handing writing duties to LLMs strips away the personal act of crafting words or simply follows the same convenience path that maps apps took years ago.
the whole point of writing is that YOU YOURSELF ARE CREATING THE WORDS YOU IDIOT
Unfortunately, I think that in the near future, not using LLMs to write for you will be like someone refusing to use Google Maps for directions in a new city. A bizarre idiosyncratic choice that's just completely incomprehensible to the vast majority of people.
Yacine argues the entire exercise of writing collapses once the words stop coming directly from the author, treating the refusal to outsource as a deliberate choice rather than a temporary habit.
Nabeel counters that rapid tool improvements and reader indifference to origins will make AI-generated prose the default online, shrinking the share of human-only writing without anyone noticing the switch.
Positive users praise the rejection of LLM use in writing as principled while negative users lament the loss of value and human writing as AI text grows dominant.
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It’s too easy to write with LLMs and most people don’t care very much (either as readers or writers); *and* the LLMs will get better. People take the easy route for most things.
So the conclusion seems inevitable: over time, the majority of the text we read will be AI-written.
Unfortunately, I think that in the near future, not using LLMs to write for you will be like someone refusing to use Google Maps for directions in a new city. A bizarre idiosyncratic choice that's just completely incomprehensible to the vast majority of people.
@yacineMTB That's not the "whole point of writing" in any sense whatosever. One major point of writing is to communicate information across time and geography,.
I wonder what fraction of our civilization's peak thinking is being done by people through the medium of writing? I suspect it's high. And how much of that will vanish, versus transmute into other forms (perhaps better forms)?
Unfortunately, I think that in the near future, not using LLMs to write for you will be like someone refusing to use Google Maps for directions in a new city. A bizarre idiosyncratic choice that's just completely incomprehensible to the vast majority of people.
A few formative books for me (in the order I read them). I wonder what those authors would have done with their lives, in the age of LLMs?
I wonder what fraction of our civilization's peak thinking is being done by people through the medium of writing? I suspect it's high. And how much of that will vanish, versus transmute into other forms (perhaps better forms)?
i write, i speak, audience of two. myself and my creator
@TheStalwart @yacineMTB Probably 99% of all writing is not done by “writers”—it’s just people “communicating info across time and geography” as you put it, but we talk about LLMs on here as if they are only proposed to supplant human writing of fiction or journalism
@TheStalwart @yacineMTB Communicate what? Interpolations in latent space? I may as well “communicate” with a brick wall
@TheStalwart @yacineMTB No, “to communicate information across time and geography” is the point of dissemination. Writing doesn't need to be communicated.
Our brains excel at making connections, thoughts, ideas. They are not so good at remembering them all. That is the point of writing.
@TheStalwart @yacineMTB AI can do a bit of editing maybe but like choice of words, prose, and other stylistic choices belong to an author which should not be AI. Otherwise there's no point, readers can just go ask chatgpt directly. And IDK even an editor might influence overall feeling of publications
@eliesgalvira @yacineMTB I agree, not all writing is about time/space travel. Hence the existence of diaries that people don't re-read
@TheStalwart @yacineMTB Pretty much the definition of stupidity to use the word "idiot" like this. I sort of understand that the cloak of the internet allows it, but you'd think people would be embarrassed even with that cloak.
@TheStalwart @yacineMTB the emotional response says it all...
@TheStalwart @yacineMTB The art of sentence structure and paragraph construction. Joe who is your favorite writer?
@mhoeft @TheStalwart @yacineMTB I think formulaic stuff like cover letters will often be LLM-generated. But relying on LLMs to text your friends—I don't mean letting autocomplete jump in, but having Claude hold up an end of an actual conversation—will probably still seem weird to a lot of people.
IMO it's going to come down to social norms around disclosure of AI use. I pitched a job yesterday related to the Intercept Fund and I used AI to help me translate my thoughts, my approach, and what I could bring to the effort. I created a Github repo with a readme detailing my AI use. I gave as much information as possible to the recipients of the pitch to understand that I use AI to augment my work. They can decide how to receive and process that information.
@yacineMTB By painting them with a brush on papyrus or what ? Guess autocorrect or spellcheckers are haram for you too ?
@TheStalwart @yacineMTB True, and another is using it as a mapping exercise for articulating your thoughts I suppose. But I agree with your take: I don’t think most people will care about that. Suspect it will become more and more ‘artisan’ in that sense.
I lament this as much as anyone else who loves human writing but as a proportion of overall writing it is going to shrink, and fast.
@TheStalwart @yacineMTB Joe relatedly you might enjoy the work of Richard Seaford.
@yacineMTB We already have enough stereotypes about Canadians, don't add media illiteracy to the list
