2 ms·

I'm skeptical of how useful ChatGPT would be for writing. Truly great writing is a painstaking process. Writers go through many drafts to craft great sentences.

I'm skeptical of how useful ChatGPT would be for writing. Truly great writing is a painstaking process. Writers go through many drafts to craft great sentences. Read Hemingway and it's not at all apparent why. But try to write Hemingway? Forget about it! Asking ChatGPT to rewrite a particular sentence over and over again, until it's perfect, does not sound like a particularly efficient or meaningful use of one's time. You've replaced the process of crafting a sentence with the process of crafting a prompt and the relationship between the two is non-obvious. Now I suppose someone will actually try to do it, as some kind of writing exercise. Like that book written without the letter 'e' [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Void https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Void

psychphysic 4y ago
I believe there is roles for both. The same way a Tesco chocolate custard doughnut and the artisanal one from my local market both exist. It's not all Lord of the Rings or even Game of Thrones out there. We also have Harry Potter and Spot the Dog. Sometimes you want dense detailed intricate plot AI can't do. Sometimes you want sparser text AI is excellent at. (Recently there was a link posted on HN I can't find about the following). Why does my commuter train announce "Please remember to take all your belongings before you leave the train". When "don't leave your stuff" will do? Sometimes wordy is better. Why do we say "yesterday I went shopping" when "yesterday I go shops"? It's a matter of distributing the information content through the sentence as much as possible.
- chongli 4y ago
  When I used the word writing I meant literature. Of course ChatGPT will be useful for cranking out text where quantity matters more than quality. Corporate speak, PR, ad copy. The problem there is not how good the writing will be, but how much worse things will get from a signal-noise ratio perspective!

psychphysic 4y ago

I believe there is roles for both. The same way a Tesco chocolate custard doughnut and the artisanal one from my local market both exist. It's not all Lord of the Rings or even Game of Thrones out there. We also have Harry Potter and Spot the Dog. Sometimes you want dense detailed intricate plot AI can't do. Sometimes you want sparser text AI is excellent at. (Recently there was a link posted on HN I can't find about the following). Why does my commuter train announce "Please remember to take all your belongings before you leave the train". When "don't leave your stuff" will do? Sometimes wordy is better. Why do we say "yesterday I went shopping" when "yesterday I go shops"? It's a matter of distributing the information content through the sentence as much as possible.

chongli 4y ago
When I used the word writing I meant literature. Of course ChatGPT will be useful for cranking out text where quantity matters more than quality. Corporate speak, PR, ad copy. The problem there is not how good the writing will be, but how much worse things will get from a signal-noise ratio perspective!