3 ms·
It’s the same with writing: AI writing is coherent on the surface, but is impossible to edit because it’s built on no real insight. Now the sharpening of a coh
by FinnLobsien 3mo ago
It’s the same with writing: AI writing is coherent on the surface, but is impossible to edit because it’s built on no real insight.
Now the sharpening of a coherent point, challenging one’s assumptions, and editorial decisions of what (not) to include are super important because they’re no longer a byproduct of the writing process.
- snerbles 3mo agoHuman insight can emerge from attacking the semblance of sense in the LLM's output. Much of the cognitive work in writing emerges in the labor of writing prose and challenging assumptions against the model you build in your head as you go. I've found this process is inverted when working with an LLM: it in effect emits a provisional structure first, and I discover what I actually think by finding where its output is vague, overconfident, incomplete or outright false. Accepting surface-level coherence as finished thought is the failure mode to avoid.
- FinnLobsien 3mo agoSure this is true. And if an AI draft helps in creating quality writing, great! I was thinking more when it comes to stuff other people send me (like a freelance writer) and “editing” is basically writing the first draft because no cognitive effort has yet been spent on the piece
- snerbles 3mo agoAnd the mechanical correctness is the hazard. To anyone used to essay assignments since time immemorial it feels intuitively done.
- FinnLobsien 3mo agoYes! It has all the polish and flourish of something that has all the finishing touches, but none of the underlying structure your brain infers it to have due to its polish.
- contextfree 3mo agoYeah I've written some docs using the following process: 1. Throw some notes, PR links, etc. into copilot and ask for a first draft 2. Go back and forth for a while asking for revisions 3. Trash all of the AI-generated text and rewrite the whole thing myself from scratch, which I can do quickly in a typing frenzy because I now have a clear idea what I want, by way of seeing what I don't want.
- kimjune01 3mo agoI do this
- Terr_ 3mo ago> It’s the same with writing: AI writing is coherent on the surface, but is impossible to edit because it’s built on no real insight. LLMs lie in the unhappy-medium between an abstract machine we can reason-about versus a person we can instinctively model and simulate. Instead it's a complicated machine that evades both reasoning and intuition.