4 ms·

> we readers shouldn’t be expected to labor to understand a sentence that the writer themselves didn’t work to create. What about answers that an LLM gave to a

> we readers shouldn’t be expected to labor to understand a sentence that the writer themselves didn’t work to create. What about answers that an LLM gave to a question that we ourselves asked? Should we “labor” to understand that answer? I think the argument, as presented in this and other similar pieces of critique, is too simplistic. I do understand the criticism, but I think it should be framed in a different manner. The problem, when we read a long form piece by an author, is that we imagine that there’s another “mind” at the other side. We imagine that we are following the reasoning within the mind of a fellow human being, the writer. There’s an implied sort of “intimacy” to it. And the breach is when we are fooled into thinking that we are engaged in human communication, only to discover that there is a machine on the other side. When we ask questions to an AI, this problem does not exist, because we are fully aware that the entity on the other side is not a human being. Yet there is no doubt that the reply from an AI can contain information that is very much worthy of our time, and of our “labor” and effort to understand it. So I think this ultimately will be about disclosure. As long as we are being made aware of the percentage of AI use in a text, explicitly or implicitly, I think we will actually grow to accept it.

ares623 28d ago
[flagged]
layer8 28d ago
I disagree. The problem is not that there isn’t a mind behind the AI (a claim not everyone might agree with anyway). The problem is that the writing is pretty bad. Another problem is that it is all the same “voice”, as opposed to the individual voices of the people who allegedly produced the writing. That isn’t a problem of it being a machine either, as there’s nothing in principle preventing a machine from accurately emulating a wide variety of writing and thinking styles.
- westcoast49 28d ago
  The deeper question is why we register it as bad. It has the "same voice" you say. But that is also, kind of, the same as saying that there is no humanity behind it, no identity, no "mind". For lexical articles, like text given as an answer to a single prompt or question, AI writing can be excellent. Because, there we do want an answer that represents the average or combination of all human knowledge about the topic. We're not looking for personality, or another mind. When we read long-form text, on the other hand, what we are engaging in, is mind-transfer. We then expect there to be a recognizable mind at the other end. And this is, in my opinion, what typically falls apart when we ask an AI to write a complete long-form text.

ares623 28d ago

[flagged]

layer8 28d ago

I disagree. The problem is not that there isn’t a mind behind the AI (a claim not everyone might agree with anyway). The problem is that the writing is pretty bad. Another problem is that it is all the same “voice”, as opposed to the individual voices of the people who allegedly produced the writing. That isn’t a problem of it being a machine either, as there’s nothing in principle preventing a machine from accurately emulating a wide variety of writing and thinking styles.

westcoast49 28d ago
The deeper question is why we register it as bad. It has the "same voice" you say. But that is also, kind of, the same as saying that there is no humanity behind it, no identity, no "mind". For lexical articles, like text given as an answer to a single prompt or question, AI writing can be excellent. Because, there we do want an answer that represents the average or combination of all human knowledge about the topic. We're not looking for personality, or another mind. When we read long-form text, on the other hand, what we are engaging in, is mind-transfer. We then expect there to be a recognizable mind at the other end. And this is, in my opinion, what typically falls apart when we ask an AI to write a complete long-form text.