Comment by Nevermark
2 days ago
This is a wonderful rule.
It also points out the need for AI writing tools that very strictly just:
1. Point out misspellings and typos.
2. Point our grammar mistakes, if they confuse the point.
3. Point out weaknesses of argument, without injecting their own reasoning.
I.e. help "prompt" humans to improve their writing, without doing the improvement for them.
In fact, I would like a reliable version of that approach for many types of tasks where my creativity or thought processes are the point, and quality-control feedback (but not assistance), is helpful.
This is a mode where models could push humans to work harder, think deeper, without enabling us to slack off.
I don’t want to read AI slop, but how do you feel about translations?
I don’t mind when non-native speakers use it to express themselves, especially if disclaimed (but I give a pass even if not). Does it bother you?
We've had machine translation for a while and I don't think anybody particularly thinks of it as a bad thing? Writing something and then having a machine directly translate it (possibly imperfectly) is a lot different than a machine writing the thing.
Personally I would like people to try learning other languages more (it's hard but rewarding) but you can't learn every language ever, and it is really hard to learn a language to fluency.
> We've had machine translation for a while and I don't think anybody particularly thinks of it as a bad thing?
Not all, but some machine translators can be comically (if not horrifically) bad sometimes. Search Twitter-become-X for examples. Native writers can't pick a working machine translator unless they are explicitly allowed to do so themselves.
I think it makes perfect sense.
But that a site might still want to discourage it, to avoid general degradation. It is a tradeoff.
If someone can write in the target language, just not well, a model could be asked to point out problems for the writer to fix. Rewrite a difficult sentence.
I suppose for me, it is the difference between a true “translation“ and having an LLM reinterpret intent and state “its” words.
Ideally, I want the speaker’s words translated “verbatim” to English, to the extent possible.