Comment by Rochus

11 hours ago

Who cares?

Still better than just nagging.

Using AI to write is one thing, claiming you didn't when you did should be objectionable to everyone.

  • This.

    I wouldn't mind a technical person transparently using AI for doing the writing which isn't necessary their strength, as long as the content itself comes from the author's expertise and the generated writing is thoroughly vetted to make sure there's no hallucinationated misunderstanding in the final text. At the end of the day this would just increase the amount of high quality technical content available, because the set of people with both a good writing skill and a deep technical expertise is much narrower than just the later.

    But claiming you didn't use AI when you did breaks all trust between you a your readership and makes the end result pretty much worthless because why read a book if you don't trust the author not to waste your time?

  • Who wants to be so petty.

    I'm sure there are more interesting things to say about this book.

    • So petty as to lie about using AI or so petty as to call it out? Calling it out doesn't seem petty to me.

      I intend to learn Zig when it reaches 1.0 so I was interested in this book. Now that I see it was probably generated by someone who claimed otherwise, I suspect this book would have as much of a chance of hurting my understanding as helping it. So I'll skip it. Does that really sound petty?

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My statement refers to this claim: "I'm 99% sure this is written by an LLM."

The hypocrisy and entitlement mentality that prevails in this discussion is disgusting. My recommendation to the fellow below that he should write a book himself (instead of complaining) was even flagged, demonstrating once again the abuse of this feature to suppress other, completely legitimate opinions.

  • I'm guessing it was flagged because it came off as snark. I've gone ahead and vouched it but of course I can't guarantee it won't get flagged again. To be frank this comment is probably also going to get flagged for the strong language you're using. I don't think either are abusive uses of flagging.

    Additionally please note that I neither complained not expressed an entitlement. The author owes me as much as I owe them (nothing beyond respect and courtesy). I'm just as entitled to express a criticism as they are to publish a book. I suppose you could characterize my criticism as complaints, but I don't see what purpose that really serves other than to turn up the rhetorical temperature.