[bluefirebrand]

> The joy of creating should be in the creation

> I think LLMs are the most interesting paintbrush-for-words we've come up with since the typewriter

I cannot reconcile these thoughts in my head

For me, the joy of creating does not come from asking the computer to create something for me. It doesn't matter what careful prompt I made, I did not create the outcome. The computer did

And no, this is not the same as other computer tools. A drawing tablet may offer tools to me, but I still have to create myself

AI is not a "tool" it is the author

Prompt engineers are editors at best

[gabriel666smith]

I understand that point of view.

Perhaps this is contextually useful - when writing prose fiction, one technique I've played with recently which I found interesting is generating a really broad spectrum of 'next tokens' halfway through a sentence, via multiple calls to different models on different temp. settings, etc.

It's fascinating to see the expected route for a sentence, and (this is much harder to get LLMs to output!) the unexpected route for a sentence.

But seeing some expected routes, per the LLM, can make the unexpected, surprising, or interesting routes much more clear in the mind's eye. It makes sentences feel closer to music theory.

You are right that this does create a more 'editorial' relationship between yourself and the work.

I'd stress that this isn't a negative thing, and has heavy literary precedence - an example that comes to mind is Gordon Lish's "intuitive structuring" principle, in which you just write the best-sounding next word, and see what the story becomes by itself, then edit from there - a totally sonic approach.

My example here with "arrays of next tokens" is a super granular, paintbrush-type example, but I want to be clear that I'm not at all advocating for the workflow of 'write a prompt, get a piece of art'.

I do however think that there's a vast middleground between "write me a whole book" and "show me the expected next token", and that this middleground is absolutely fascinating.

Not least because it makes literature (an artform previously more resistant to mathematics than say, music, or painting) more in touch with its own mathematics, which were previously very hidden, and are only currently being discovered.

[vidarh]

To some, the joy in writing is in producing a story. To others, it lies in crafting the words. If you want to "direct" a story, an LLM that could take your exposition of your plot and make it into something enjoyable to read could still let you enjoy the process. If what you care about is crafting the perfect sentence, an LLM that could assist with the plot could still let you enjoy the process. Maybe more, because not everyone enjoys every aspect of the process.

And even authors who enjoy both might hate the many subsequent steps to publishing a book, such as getting editorial feedback and doing rewrites that can sometimes feel like a gut-punch (I sat on my first editorial feedback for a month, agonising over what to accept and what to ignore, and it was anxiety-inducing and felt awful - since I don't expect to make much money from my novels, I decided to ignore a lot of it, even when I knew the editor was probably right from a mass-market appeal point of view, but it sure as hell was not an enjoyable part of the process).

And some people don't enjoy the actual writing at all, but enjoys coming up with high-level plots and seeing what pops out.

In other words: It's not all or nothing, and people enjoy wildly different things about the process.

Or to put it yet another way: Some people - even adults - enjoy paint by numbers too. Not everyone want to create - sometimes people just want to be adjacent to creation and discover things.