[thrwaway1985882]

I've only recently started using AI, and have discovered my use or rejection of it is predicated on my feelings for the task. This argument of "authenticity" really resonates.

I'm a manager, so when I'm sending emails to a customer or talking with one of my reports, I care deeply - so you might get some overwrought florid prose, but it's my overwrought florid prose.

On the other hand, I have to lead a weekly meeting that exists solely to provide evidence for compliance reasons, something out of the CIA's sabotage field manual that David Graeber has probably written about. But is now a thirty second exercise in uploading a transcript to ChatGPT, prompting for three evidentiary bulletpoints, and pasting the output in a wiki no human will ever read.

[SkyBelow]

I was thinking about the authenticity of my writing earlier this week and wondering why I have no problem accepting code from an AI and committing it, but I find the idea of passing off an AI's writing as my own feels not just wrong, but immoral on the level of purposeful plagiarism. I feel a distinct difference, but I'm not particular clear why. I'm okay with sharing AI writing, but only when I've clearly communicated it was written by AI.

Probably related to why I can copy a piece of code from elsewhere (with sufficient work to verify it does what I expect and only what I expect) but I don't copy a quote and use it as my own. My words are my words. My code doesn't have the same guarantee.

[nicbou]

Code uses a simplified set of instructions to instruct a computer to do things. Hopefully these instructions can be understood and maintained by a human.

Writing uses the entire breadth of human language to convey information between human beings with unique and complex understandings of the universe. If those words come from a machine that is not you - that is not someone - you ought to disclose it.

[the_snooze]

It's probably because communication is a complex dance between humans, where you're constantly signaling that you're part of some group with the other person. Think of any profession or team, where members share common ways of speaking: jargon, inside jokes, terms of art, terms of endearment, etc. It's useful for cohesion, trust, and efficiency because you're assured that the person you're talking to is indeed "one of us."

If you use an AI to communicate, then you either fail to mimic those group membership signals and you look like an idiot. Or you succeed and show that a machine can fool humans at this game. Any grifter can come along and establish trust in a group by relying on this tech. This dance that humans have been doing since the dawn of time suddenly breaks down, and that doesn't feel good.

[nicbou]

That's also what I do. I hand-write every email because these words have my name under them. On the other hand, if I'm asking the tax office to issue a specific document, I let AI handle it.

[ajmurmann]

I wonder how people feel about "dumber" tools like hemingway.app that make mechanical suggestions for readability like suggesting simple synonyms and highlighting sentences that are too long. I've used it for writing documents that important and I knew a lot of people would read.

[unsupp0rted]

I’m hoping part of the ai revolution will be to eliminate overweight florid prose. The excuse can be “it’s terse because AI wrote it”.