Comment by alpha_squared
3 days ago
> Or do I want an insightful, well-thought-out response, even if it is LLM-enhanced?
I'd argue that anything insightful or well-though-out doesn't use LLMs at all. We can quibble over whether discussions with an LLM lead to insightful responses, but that still isn't your own personal thought. Just type what's on your mind, it's not that hard and nitpicking over this is just looking for ways to open up unnecessary opportunities for abuse.
Often i think of a novel idea or solution to a problem, but use AI to communicate or adjust what I already wrote out so it’s more comprehensible. Sometimes when I write, it’s hard to understand.
The more you write, the less this will be true. The more you write, the better you will become at it. Using an LLM to write is like sending a robot to the gym for you.
The more you use an LLM to write for you, the worse you will become at writing yourself. There is simply no other possible outcome. It's even true of spellcheck - the more you use a spellcheck the worse you become at spelling. I know this for a fact because I can no longer spell for shit. However, spelling is to writing as arithmetic is to mathematics. I also can't add up, but I have a degree in pure mathematics.
LLMs are a cancer on human thought and expression.
> LLMs are a cancer on human thought and expression.
LLMs help to express what many people dont have the energy or ability to express. It also has a broader scoped view of protocol...It does not have emotions, which often leads to less than optimal discourse.
In many ways, it help those who are challenged in discourse to better express themselves...rather than keeping silent or being misunderstood.
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How do you expect to get better at it then if you avoid the hard work and emotional weight of fixing it?
So if you want to reply to a comment you read today, and you don't feel like your writing skill is up to snuff, you should be content with expecting to wait the requisite weeks or months or years of practice before even considering replying to it?
This seems especially relevant for non-English-fluent commenters, who are increasingly using LLMs to be able to communicate more effectively on an English-only site like Hacker News than they'd otherwise be able to do.
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In that sense AI is a tool much like a dictionary, it enhances and I'd say improve the end result.
The difference is that I will retain what I drew out from the dictionary the next time. If people use Ai this way for writing, great! What many of the "enhanced-by-ai" arguments sound like is that this will be an indefinite outsourcing.
Use them to get better, like how reading good writing directly (not summarized) will also make you a much better writer. Learn from the before and after so next time there isn't a need to reach for Ai.
There are many obvious ways in which this may not be true.
Anyone learning the language and some people with learning disabilities, for example, may communicate better via an LLM.
There is a sliding scale from that, to it being the LLM that communicates, not the person. LLMs can really reshuffle and change priorities and modify emphasis in a text. All the missing pieces will be filled in and rounded out and sandpapered off by the inner-average-corporate-HR-Redditor of the LLM.
I promise you, after this past year, you don’t know how happy I am to read issues and PRs in broken English.