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> A closer analogy with AI for science writing would be to accuse you of getting help from a computer to create the new font and not doing it by hand. When you

> A closer analogy with AI for science writing would be to accuse you of getting help from a computer to create the new font and not doing it by hand. When you create fonts goal is the font. Ok fine, we'll go with your formulation of the analogy, because it doesn't affect my overarching point at all. If I spent hours tweaking my font manually with the pen tool in a vector graphics software suite, and someone accused me of using ChatGPT to simply spit out an SVG file, I'd be annoyed. > When you publish research the writeup is important [...] Because accuracy and clarity of the writeup matters Yes, exactly. If it were just a matter of uploading data, then scientists would be publishing their results strictly as csv files and excel spreadsheets. You're admitting that the writeup itself is important. Whatever small iota of importance you assign to the writeup, why can't a human being take credit for that achievement (regardless of how marginal you think it is)? Do you want to argue about the relative percentage of importance we assign to the writing vs the data? If I gave you the percentage you're looking for would you be content? I feel like we have nothing substantive to debate here. > The example you quoted states the output comes from ChatGPT. It was used to explain some concepts and it did a far better job than I could do for the time it took. Out of curiosity, why did you attribute the work to ChatGPT at all? I was under the impression that you don't value the craft of writing, and don't care about who receives the credit for it. So why admit to using AI at all? Isn't this the same as using the HTML input element's spellcheck feature, or using someone else's font according to your philosophy? > Say I took years to develop penmanship skills such that my hand writing looks like mechanical fonts. Should I be annoyed if you say “Your hand writing looks like a mechanical font!”? If you're a professional calligrapher and someone says you didn't produce your letterforms by hand, but instead used a robot that mechanically held a pen to produce the output, then yes you would have a right to be annoyed. > In the future do you not expect AIs will be used to judge writing (like Latex style sheets guide journal submissions today)? Will writing not be rejected unless it meets high standards for clarity etc? Perhaps the best way to meet those standards will be to get an AI to help you? That's not the future, that's the present. Half of job applications these days have a disclaimer stating that AI will be used to analyze the application, and writing is already (and has always) been rejected if it's not intelligible. The best way to meet those standards for you might involve using an AI to help you write...and that's fine. I'll repeat this again — I don't have a problem with people using AI to assist in their writing. The only thing I'm lamenting is the fact that it's becoming functionally impossible to take credit for your writing without someone assigning all of the credit to some tech company's AI product. I think you have this preconceived notion that there's something we have to disagree about, and you're desperately searching for the point of contention. I'm not really sure what your goal in this discussion is. Are you really trying to convince me that humans can't take credit for their writing? This is such a bizarre "debate".

czl 3y ago
> I'm not really sure what your goal in this discussion is. My goal in this discussion is to make the case that AI assistance for science research writing is much like the use of mechanical fonts and layout engines for that purpose. > Are you really trying to convince me that humans can't take credit for their writing? A scientist was accused of using ChatGPT to help write up their research and wrote an article about it. In my mind the novelty and usefulness of the ideas matters when you publish research and the use of AI assistance to help you write is useful much like mechanical fonts and mechanical computation and layouts are useful. You agree with this view yet you think there is inherent value in writing without AI assistance whereas I feel our energy is better spent on the ideas being communicated. My time / energy is finite and when I allocate it to X I can not allocate it to Y. We used to take pride in the letter shapes our hands create and we still teach children hand writing however in practice handwriting no longer matters. We use mechanical fonts and machines for writing. The legibility of communication for all has greatly improved and our time is best spent on aspects that do add value. > This is such a bizarre "debate". We are sharing our views and explaining them. I do not see a debate.
- throwitaway1123 3y ago
  > My goal in this discussion is to make the case that AI assistance for science research writing is much like the use of mechanical fonts and layout engines for that purpose. AI chatbots are tools, fonts are tools, and layout engines are tools. Tools assist people. If your goal was to define those terms, then consider your goal achieved. This is why I sometimes despise philosophical discussions because they often accomplish very little besides defining terms. > We used to take pride in the letter shapes our hands create and we still teach children hand writing however in practice handwriting no longer matters. What I'm more interested in is to what extent different tools assist people, and how can we assign credit for work in a world where technology can mimic human work. For example, when I wrote this comment entirely on my own, but used someone else's font and HN's CSS to layout my response, I did a moderate amount of work and deserve a moderate amount of credit. If I had instead simply copy and pasted your comment into ChatGPT and said "ChatGPT please write a response to this comment", then I would have done less work and deserved less credit. I'm not really sure what substantive discussion can be derived from such rudimentary assertions. It feels like we're discussing how blue the sky is. > You agree with this view I never said I agreed with this view. > yet you think there is inherent value in writing without AI assistance whereas I feel our energy is better spent on the ideas being communicated. My time / energy is finite and when I allocate it to X I can not allocate it to Y. I think if you're not able to communicate at the level you would like to, then it makes sense to outsource the work to a machine. Similarly to how if you had trouble seeing you might outsource the work to a screen reader, but if you don't have trouble seeing you might find more value in using your eyes to visually view a computer's display. I personally find that introducing an intermediary (an AI chatbot) between myself and the person I'm communicating with reduces the accuracy of my communication, and I'd rather just speak to my audience directly. That may not be the case for you and that's fine. > our time is best spent on aspects that do add value. I think human writing can add value, and perhaps we'll just have to agree to disagree. I frequently find quotes that perfectly encapsulate an idea in a way that I find worthy of credit, and when the author of that quote is a human, I think it's worthwhile to award that person the credit for it. I found a great quote on HN today ironically by the CEO of OpenAI: "But I always want it to be a project that, if successful, will make the rest of my career look like a footnote". Everyone in the comments quickly attributed the quote to Sam Altman so that he could receive the credit for his writing [1]. Now of course in a scientific paper the importance is distributed between the communication and the data itself, so like I said before, are you simply looking for me to assign a weighting function to the writing vs the data? Are we really discussing a hypothetical importance weighting function? Also, can I ask you a question (you ignored my last one about why you chose to credit ChatGPT for your writing by the way)? Are you writing these comments yourself or using a chatbot, and if you aren't using a chatbot why haven't you allocated your valuable time/energy elsewhere, since you apparently don't consider communicating by hand to be a valuable usage of time? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39341637#:~:text=my%20favorite%20life%20motto%20that%20i%20stole%20from%20who%20knows%20where%3A%20do%20things%20that%2C%20if%20they%20succeed%2C%20make%20the%20rest%20of%20your%20life%2Fcareer%20look%20like%20a%20footnote https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39341637#:~:text=my%20f....

czl 3y ago

> I'm not really sure what your goal in this discussion is. My goal in this discussion is to make the case that AI assistance for science research writing is much like the use of mechanical fonts and layout engines for that purpose. > Are you really trying to convince me that humans can't take credit for their writing? A scientist was accused of using ChatGPT to help write up their research and wrote an article about it. In my mind the novelty and usefulness of the ideas matters when you publish research and the use of AI assistance to help you write is useful much like mechanical fonts and mechanical computation and layouts are useful. You agree with this view yet you think there is inherent value in writing without AI assistance whereas I feel our energy is better spent on the ideas being communicated. My time / energy is finite and when I allocate it to X I can not allocate it to Y. We used to take pride in the letter shapes our hands create and we still teach children hand writing however in practice handwriting no longer matters. We use mechanical fonts and machines for writing. The legibility of communication for all has greatly improved and our time is best spent on aspects that do add value. > This is such a bizarre "debate". We are sharing our views and explaining them. I do not see a debate.

throwitaway1123 3y ago
> My goal in this discussion is to make the case that AI assistance for science research writing is much like the use of mechanical fonts and layout engines for that purpose. AI chatbots are tools, fonts are tools, and layout engines are tools. Tools assist people. If your goal was to define those terms, then consider your goal achieved. This is why I sometimes despise philosophical discussions because they often accomplish very little besides defining terms. > We used to take pride in the letter shapes our hands create and we still teach children hand writing however in practice handwriting no longer matters. What I'm more interested in is to what extent different tools assist people, and how can we assign credit for work in a world where technology can mimic human work. For example, when I wrote this comment entirely on my own, but used someone else's font and HN's CSS to layout my response, I did a moderate amount of work and deserve a moderate amount of credit. If I had instead simply copy and pasted your comment into ChatGPT and said "ChatGPT please write a response to this comment", then I would have done less work and deserved less credit. I'm not really sure what substantive discussion can be derived from such rudimentary assertions. It feels like we're discussing how blue the sky is. > You agree with this view I never said I agreed with this view. > yet you think there is inherent value in writing without AI assistance whereas I feel our energy is better spent on the ideas being communicated. My time / energy is finite and when I allocate it to X I can not allocate it to Y. I think if you're not able to communicate at the level you would like to, then it makes sense to outsource the work to a machine. Similarly to how if you had trouble seeing you might outsource the work to a screen reader, but if you don't have trouble seeing you might find more value in using your eyes to visually view a computer's display. I personally find that introducing an intermediary (an AI chatbot) between myself and the person I'm communicating with reduces the accuracy of my communication, and I'd rather just speak to my audience directly. That may not be the case for you and that's fine. > our time is best spent on aspects that do add value. I think human writing can add value, and perhaps we'll just have to agree to disagree. I frequently find quotes that perfectly encapsulate an idea in a way that I find worthy of credit, and when the author of that quote is a human, I think it's worthwhile to award that person the credit for it. I found a great quote on HN today ironically by the CEO of OpenAI: "But I always want it to be a project that, if successful, will make the rest of my career look like a footnote". Everyone in the comments quickly attributed the quote to Sam Altman so that he could receive the credit for his writing [1]. Now of course in a scientific paper the importance is distributed between the communication and the data itself, so like I said before, are you simply looking for me to assign a weighting function to the writing vs the data? Are we really discussing a hypothetical importance weighting function? Also, can I ask you a question (you ignored my last one about why you chose to credit ChatGPT for your writing by the way)? Are you writing these comments yourself or using a chatbot, and if you aren't using a chatbot why haven't you allocated your valuable time/energy elsewhere, since you apparently don't consider communicating by hand to be a valuable usage of time? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39341637#:~:text=my%20favorite%20life%20motto%20that%20i%20stole%20from%20who%20knows%20where%3A%20do%20things%20that%2C%20if%20they%20succeed%2C%20make%20the%20rest%20of%20your%20life%2Fcareer%20look%20like%20a%20footnote https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39341637#:~:text=my%20f....