3 ms·

I strongly disagree, for reasons that are different from what's discussed in the thread. It doesn't matter if LLMs can't hold a candle to some of the finest hu

I strongly disagree, for reasons that are different from what's discussed in the thread. It doesn't matter if LLMs can't hold a candle to some of the finest human writing. What matters is that before you become a world-renowned writer, you need to pay your bills, often for a long time. And that's what LLMs take away. All the mundane literature-adjacent works: journalism, translations, technical writing / corporate comms, copyediting. The same goes for many other forms of art. A budding painter or a musician could support themselves off commissioned / commercial work while working on their grand opus... but now, the customers just prompt gen AI.

hparadiz 1mo ago
I find myself writing more than ever. In fact I must. I have to explain in no uncertain terms what I mean. Though I often find myself in very complex technical straits where words are not enough. There's something liberating about writing a wall of text and knowing that at least something will give you feedback. It won't be annoyed. It won't be tired. It won't say "tldr?" back at you. I don't know if that will convert into a novel for me. But it must for someone.
johnnyanmac 1mo ago
Yeah, the arts in general in this age are reverting back to 1) the privilege of the rich and secure who can do it despite the lack of financials. 2) the ultra passionate who spend every waking moment outside of their day job engaging in the craft. Often to the detriment to their health and social obligations. You shouldn't need to go all in on a skill just for a chance to maybe one day earn money from it.
deepwoods 1mo ago
I generally agree, but don't discount the impact of platforms like Patreon and Substack. Obviously, many authors of the past had patrons, but this was generally based on status and connections - and that's to say nothing of people who can support a writing career based off inherited wealth. But there is little historical precedent for an avenue for creatives to support themselves (or at least meaningfully supplement their income, potentially leading to less non-creative work hours and thus more time to hone the craft) using a decentralized base of support.
nicbou 1mo ago
AI overviews are killing traffic to websites that do the original research. It’s putting translators out of work. The replacement is not better, but it’s good enough for the undiscerning people who prefer the cost pr convenience of LLM-generated content. In any case, you find yourself competing with oligopolies that can insert their bad LLM output in front of your good work. It’s not a fair fight.
ncr100 1mo ago
I also disagree with the author. The first careers I witnessed being negatively impacted by AI coming onto the scene .. just a couple years ago .. was tech writers. Source: my personal network of tech writer colleagues.
- kranner 1mo ago
  Have seen the same thing happen to literary translator friends. Barring the very rare few who broke through to international fame via well-known literary award, the rest were largely sustaining themselves with more mundane business translations and that work is ended.
  - ProllyInfamous 1mo ago
    My father knows a guy that financed a Texas mansion, for $2MM, using the collateral from his decade of running a very large technical document translation service (US resident, using foreign workforce from his homeland), popular throughout the 2010s. Was a beautiful house, which I briefly lived in during scatterbrained renovations (never met the new owner). The bank forclosed on his house ~late2024/early2025... anybody can now just use an LLM to translate (in real time), on sub-$300 hardware (offline, open-source models run via e.g: Whisper[GUI]).
- hcknwscommenter 1mo ago
  tech writers disrupted by AI a couple of years ago? Seems very dubious. A couple of years ago, AI was terrible at writing anything.
  - weeu 1mo ago
    [dead]
- passwordoops 1mo ago
  Yeah not seeing it for technical writing. Especially in industries with even a hint of regulatory compliance, the imprecision is too significant. It's not for lack of trying or wishful thinking. Either your colleagues are facing stiffer competition off-shore (not LLM driven) or their jobs were more about organizing, checking and sorting topics and data (LLMs can take that away)
ellis0n 1mo ago
Totally agree. LLMs are taking over everything related to intellectual work and work in general. But that doesn’t mean people will have nothing to do. The show will go on and humanity will probably split into those who work deeply with AI and create an AI economy, where AIs develop and interact with each other (much like cloud systems do today) and a human world where people compete with other people both in art and in sports with the best receiving rewards and recognition from other humans.
- ellis0n 1mo ago
  Dislikes without a reason in -1 are considered a violation. Reported to the admins.
fluoridation 1mo ago
AI will definitely not take over translation for a long time. Machine translation has improved to the point it's mostly no longer incoherent, but for non-formulaic content it's still very hit-and-miss, not that much better compared to 10-20 years ago. For example, something they still struggle with is consistently translating terms coined within the text with consistent phrases. >A budding painter or a musician could support themselves off commissioned / commercial work while working on their grand opus... but now, the customers just prompt gen AI. Are you joking? The only people I see using generative AI are either companies, shitposters, and spammers. Who are all these people who have stopped paying commissions and moved over to prompting AIs?
- adrianN 1mo ago
  But what share of translation dollars are non-formulaic content? To me it seems that there are tons of manuals for dishwasher and such to translate (where from my experience quality basically doesn't matter) and only a limited amount of diplomatic communiques.
  - fluoridation 1mo ago
    Manuals have been machine-translated for ages, well before algorithms were anywhere close to ready for the task. No change there. >a limited amount of diplomatic communiques With zero data to support it, I'd bet good money the vast majority of semi-professional translators (that is, those not employed by publishers but still making some money off of their work) work on fiction, translating comics, subtitles, etc. Actually, come to think of it, mixed media like those will be the last where machine translation will be able to fully take over humans, just because the text doesn't contain the entire relevant context for the job.
    - roskoe 1mo ago
      > not employed by publishers Full time professional, 20 years of experience. Keep in mind that 99% of translators are freelance. Translating something takes only a fraction of the time it takes to write the original, so publishers only have full time project managers and editors and hire translators per job as needed. Engines like Deepl do give very good results on some single sentences. After all, they are huge databases of previous human translations, they are bound to nail it here and there. Where it falls apart is in keeping a good average and a consistent voice, so either you leave it all as messy AI sludge or you rewrite it substantially (at which point it's a glorified dictionary)
smfjaw 1mo ago
Agree, Hunter S Thompson would've never written fear and loathing were he not a sports journo first

hparadiz 1mo ago

I find myself writing more than ever. In fact I must. I have to explain in no uncertain terms what I mean. Though I often find myself in very complex technical straits where words are not enough. There's something liberating about writing a wall of text and knowing that at least something will give you feedback. It won't be annoyed. It won't be tired. It won't say "tldr?" back at you. I don't know if that will convert into a novel for me. But it must for someone.

johnnyanmac 1mo ago

Yeah, the arts in general in this age are reverting back to 1) the privilege of the rich and secure who can do it despite the lack of financials. 2) the ultra passionate who spend every waking moment outside of their day job engaging in the craft. Often to the detriment to their health and social obligations. You shouldn't need to go all in on a skill just for a chance to maybe one day earn money from it.

deepwoods 1mo ago

I generally agree, but don't discount the impact of platforms like Patreon and Substack. Obviously, many authors of the past had patrons, but this was generally based on status and connections - and that's to say nothing of people who can support a writing career based off inherited wealth. But there is little historical precedent for an avenue for creatives to support themselves (or at least meaningfully supplement their income, potentially leading to less non-creative work hours and thus more time to hone the craft) using a decentralized base of support.

nicbou 1mo ago

AI overviews are killing traffic to websites that do the original research. It’s putting translators out of work. The replacement is not better, but it’s good enough for the undiscerning people who prefer the cost pr convenience of LLM-generated content. In any case, you find yourself competing with oligopolies that can insert their bad LLM output in front of your good work. It’s not a fair fight.

ncr100 1mo ago

I also disagree with the author. The first careers I witnessed being negatively impacted by AI coming onto the scene .. just a couple years ago .. was tech writers. Source: my personal network of tech writer colleagues.

kranner 1mo ago
Have seen the same thing happen to literary translator friends. Barring the very rare few who broke through to international fame via well-known literary award, the rest were largely sustaining themselves with more mundane business translations and that work is ended.
- ProllyInfamous 1mo ago
  My father knows a guy that financed a Texas mansion, for $2MM, using the collateral from his decade of running a very large technical document translation service (US resident, using foreign workforce from his homeland), popular throughout the 2010s. Was a beautiful house, which I briefly lived in during scatterbrained renovations (never met the new owner). The bank forclosed on his house ~late2024/early2025... anybody can now just use an LLM to translate (in real time), on sub-$300 hardware (offline, open-source models run via e.g: Whisper[GUI]).
hcknwscommenter 1mo ago
tech writers disrupted by AI a couple of years ago? Seems very dubious. A couple of years ago, AI was terrible at writing anything.
- weeu 1mo ago
  [dead]
passwordoops 1mo ago
Yeah not seeing it for technical writing. Especially in industries with even a hint of regulatory compliance, the imprecision is too significant. It's not for lack of trying or wishful thinking. Either your colleagues are facing stiffer competition off-shore (not LLM driven) or their jobs were more about organizing, checking and sorting topics and data (LLMs can take that away)

ellis0n 1mo ago

Totally agree. LLMs are taking over everything related to intellectual work and work in general. But that doesn’t mean people will have nothing to do. The show will go on and humanity will probably split into those who work deeply with AI and create an AI economy, where AIs develop and interact with each other (much like cloud systems do today) and a human world where people compete with other people both in art and in sports with the best receiving rewards and recognition from other humans.

ellis0n 1mo ago
Dislikes without a reason in -1 are considered a violation. Reported to the admins.

fluoridation 1mo ago

AI will definitely not take over translation for a long time. Machine translation has improved to the point it's mostly no longer incoherent, but for non-formulaic content it's still very hit-and-miss, not that much better compared to 10-20 years ago. For example, something they still struggle with is consistently translating terms coined within the text with consistent phrases. >A budding painter or a musician could support themselves off commissioned / commercial work while working on their grand opus... but now, the customers just prompt gen AI. Are you joking? The only people I see using generative AI are either companies, shitposters, and spammers. Who are all these people who have stopped paying commissions and moved over to prompting AIs?

adrianN 1mo ago
But what share of translation dollars are non-formulaic content? To me it seems that there are tons of manuals for dishwasher and such to translate (where from my experience quality basically doesn't matter) and only a limited amount of diplomatic communiques.
- fluoridation 1mo ago
  Manuals have been machine-translated for ages, well before algorithms were anywhere close to ready for the task. No change there. >a limited amount of diplomatic communiques With zero data to support it, I'd bet good money the vast majority of semi-professional translators (that is, those not employed by publishers but still making some money off of their work) work on fiction, translating comics, subtitles, etc. Actually, come to think of it, mixed media like those will be the last where machine translation will be able to fully take over humans, just because the text doesn't contain the entire relevant context for the job.
  - roskoe 1mo ago
    > not employed by publishers Full time professional, 20 years of experience. Keep in mind that 99% of translators are freelance. Translating something takes only a fraction of the time it takes to write the original, so publishers only have full time project managers and editors and hire translators per job as needed. Engines like Deepl do give very good results on some single sentences. After all, they are huge databases of previous human translations, they are bound to nail it here and there. Where it falls apart is in keeping a good average and a consistent voice, so either you leave it all as messy AI sludge or you rewrite it substantially (at which point it's a glorified dictionary)

smfjaw 1mo ago

Agree, Hunter S Thompson would've never written fear and loathing were he not a sports journo first