3 ms·

When you're writing, how are you "missing out" if you're not using chatgpt??? I don't even understand how this can be unless what you're writing is already unne

When you're writing, how are you "missing out" if you're not using chatgpt??? I don't even understand how this can be unless what you're writing is already unnecessary such that you shouldn't need to write it in the first place.

jwells89 2y ago
I don’t get it either. Writing is not something I need that level of assistance with, and I would even say that using LLMs to write defeats some significant portion of the point of writing — by using LLMs to write for me I feel that I’m no longer expressing myself in the purest sense, because the words are not mine and do not exhibit any of my personality, tendencies, etc. Even if I were to train an LLM on my style, it’d only be a temporal facsimile of middling quality, because peoples’ styles evolve (sometimes quite rapidly) and there’s no way to work around all the corner cases that never got trained for. As you say, if the subject is worth being written about, there should be no issue and writing will come naturally. If it’s a struggle, maybe one should step back and figure out why that is. There may some argument for speed, because writing quality prose does take time, but then the question becomes a matter of quantity vs. quality. Do you want to write high quality pieces that people want to read at a slower pace or churn out endless volumes of low-substance grey goo “content”?
dotnet00 2y ago
LLMs are surprisingly capable editors/brainstorming tools. So, you're missing out in that you're being less efficient in editing. Like, you can write a bunch of text, then ask an LLM to improve it with minimal changes. Then, you read through its output and pick out the improvements you like.
- tourmalinetaco 2y ago
  Sure, but Grammarly and similar have existed far before the LLM boom.
  - dotnet00 2y ago
    That's a fair point, I only very recently found that LLMs could actually be useful for editing, and hadn't really thought much of using tools for that kind of thing previously.
- jayd16 2y ago
  But that's the problem. Unique, quirky mannerisms become polished out. Flaws are smoothed and over sharpened. I'm personally not as gloomy about it as the parent comments but I fear it's a trend that pushes towards a samey, mass-produced style in all writing. Eventually there will be a counter culture and backlash to it and then equilibrium in quality content but it's probably here to stay for anything where cost is a major factor.
  - dotnet00 2y ago
    Yeah, I suppose that would be an issue for creative writing. My focus is mostly on scientific writing, where such mannerisms should be less relevant than precision, so I didn't consider that aspect of other kinds of writing.
- slashdave 2y ago
  And I the only one who doesn't even like automatic grammar checkers, because they are contributing to a single and uniformly bland style of writing? LLMs are just going to make this worse.

jwells89 2y ago

I don’t get it either. Writing is not something I need that level of assistance with, and I would even say that using LLMs to write defeats some significant portion of the point of writing — by using LLMs to write for me I feel that I’m no longer expressing myself in the purest sense, because the words are not mine and do not exhibit any of my personality, tendencies, etc. Even if I were to train an LLM on my style, it’d only be a temporal facsimile of middling quality, because peoples’ styles evolve (sometimes quite rapidly) and there’s no way to work around all the corner cases that never got trained for. As you say, if the subject is worth being written about, there should be no issue and writing will come naturally. If it’s a struggle, maybe one should step back and figure out why that is. There may some argument for speed, because writing quality prose does take time, but then the question becomes a matter of quantity vs. quality. Do you want to write high quality pieces that people want to read at a slower pace or churn out endless volumes of low-substance grey goo “content”?

dotnet00 2y ago

LLMs are surprisingly capable editors/brainstorming tools. So, you're missing out in that you're being less efficient in editing. Like, you can write a bunch of text, then ask an LLM to improve it with minimal changes. Then, you read through its output and pick out the improvements you like.

tourmalinetaco 2y ago
Sure, but Grammarly and similar have existed far before the LLM boom.
- dotnet00 2y ago
  That's a fair point, I only very recently found that LLMs could actually be useful for editing, and hadn't really thought much of using tools for that kind of thing previously.
jayd16 2y ago
But that's the problem. Unique, quirky mannerisms become polished out. Flaws are smoothed and over sharpened. I'm personally not as gloomy about it as the parent comments but I fear it's a trend that pushes towards a samey, mass-produced style in all writing. Eventually there will be a counter culture and backlash to it and then equilibrium in quality content but it's probably here to stay for anything where cost is a major factor.
- dotnet00 2y ago
  Yeah, I suppose that would be an issue for creative writing. My focus is mostly on scientific writing, where such mannerisms should be less relevant than precision, so I didn't consider that aspect of other kinds of writing.
slashdave 2y ago
And I the only one who doesn't even like automatic grammar checkers, because they are contributing to a single and uniformly bland style of writing? LLMs are just going to make this worse.