[gizmo]

I think you overestimate the value of things looking professional. The overwhelming majority of books published every year are trash, despite all the effort that went into research, writing, and editing them. Most news is trash. Most of what humanity produces just isn't any good. An top expert in his field can leave a typo-riddled comment in a hurry that contains more valuable information than a shelf of books written on the subject by lesser minds.

AIs are good at writing professional looking text because it's a low bar to clear. It doesn't require much intelligence or expertise.

[herval]

> AIs are good at writing professional looking text because it's a low bar to clear. It doesn't require much intelligence or expertise.

AIs are getting good at precisely imitating your voice with a single sample as reference, or generating original music, or creating video with all sorts of impossible physics and special effects. By your rationale, nothing “requires much intelligence or expertise”, which is patently false (even for text writing)

[gizmo]

My point is that writing a good book is vastly more difficult than writing a mediocre book. The distance between incoherent babble and a mediocre book is smaller than the distance between a mediocre book and a great book. Most people can write professional looking text just by putting in a little bit of effort.

[bitexploder]

I think you underestimate how high that bar is, but I will grant that it isn’t that high. It can be a form of sophistry all of its own. Still, it is a difficult skill to write clearly, simply, and without a lot of extravagant words.