[datsci_est_2015]

> I think that mostly depends on how good a writer you are. A lot of people aren't, and the AI legitimately writes better.

Even poor writers write with character. My dad misspells every 4th word when he texts me, but it’s unmistakably his voice. Endearingly so.

I would push back with passion that AI writes “legitimately” better, as it has no character except the smoothed mean of all internet voices. The millennial gray of prose.

[surfacedetail]

Oh god no, trust me, I'm an academic. I'd rather read an AI essay than the stuff some of my students write.

[zigzag312]

AI averages everything out, so there's no character left.

Similar thing happens when something is designed by a committee. Good for an average use, but not really great for anything specific.

[bananaflag]

Haskell was a success story of design by committee (please correct me if I'm wrong).

[zigzag312]

A success story by what definition? I cannot judge Haskell as I don't know it well enough.

I should have added "usually". On average when something is designed by a committee the effect is like this, but not always. You don't have to take my word for it [1]. That kind of outcome is not always guaranteed and the result can be good in some cases. In same way, an AI generated content can also sometimes have character.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_by_committee

[bananaflag]

> A success story by what definition? I cannot judge Haskell as I don't know it well enough.

In the sense that it looks coherent and incorporates a lot of lessons learned over the decades of functional programming.

Design by committee usually fails either by being boring or by becoming a Frankenstein monster made of various contradictory opinions of committee members. Neither is the case with Haskell.

And the only bad design decision that I know of, namely to not make Monad derived from Applicative, was corrected in a future release.