[ericdykstra]

I won't ever put my name on something written by an LLM, and I will blacklist any site or person I see doing it. If I want to read LLM output I can prompt it myself, subjecting me to it and passing it off as your own is disrespectful.

As the author says, there will certainly be a number of people who decide to play with LLM games or whatever, and content farms will get even more generic while having less writing errors, but I don't think that the age of communicating thought, person to person, through text is "over".

[SkyPuncher]

It's easy to output LLM junk, but I and my colleagues are doing a lot of incredible work that simply isn't possible without LLMs involved. I'm not talking a 10 turn chat to whip out some junk. I'm talking deep research and thinking with Opus to develop ideas. Chats where you've pressure tested every angle, backed it up with data pulled in from a dozen different places, and have intentionally guided it towards an outcome. Opus can take these wildly complex ideas and distill them down into tangible, organized artifacts. It can tune all of that writing to your audience, so they read it in terms they're familiar with.

Reading it isn't the most fun, but let's face it - most professional reading isn't the most fun. You're probably skimming most of the content anyways.

Our customers don't care how we communicate internally. They don't care if we waste a bunch of our time rewriting perfectly suitable AI content. They care that we move quickly on solving their problems - AI let's us do that.

[NathanielK]

> Reading it isn't the most fun, but let's face it - most professional reading isn't the most fun. You're probably skimming most of the content anyways.

I find it difficult to skim AI writing. It's persuasive even when there's minimal data. It'll infer or connect things that flow nice, but simply don't make sense.

[giraffe_lady]

I hear stories like this a lot (on here anyway) but I haven't seen any output that backs it up. Any day now I guess.

[mlinhares]

Pretty sure people are trying to prompt chatgpt to write Brandon Sanderson-like stories and we'll see their successful prints anytime now.

[SkyPuncher]

I don't really understand this retort. I assume most of us work in a professional environment where it's difficult, if not impossible, to share our work.

We've been discussing these types of anecdotes with code patterns, management practices, communication styles, pretty much anything professionally for years. Why are the LLM conversations held to this standard?

[giraffe_lady]

Well, because I've worked in different places, and with different organizations, and can see for myself how different approaches to professional conduct manifest in the finished product, or the flexibility of the team, effectiveness of communication, etc.

Especially with things like code and writing, I assess the artifacts: software and prose. These stories of incredibly facility of LLMs on code and writing are never accompanied by artifacts that back up these claims. The ones that I can assess don't meet the bar that is being claimed. So everyone who has it working well is keeping it to themselves, and only those with bad-to-mediocre output are publishing them, I am meant to believe? I can't rule it out entirely of course, but I am frustrated at the ongoing demands that I maintain credulity.

FWIW I have sat out many other professional organization and software development trends because I wanted to wait and assess for myself their benefits, which then failed to materialize. That is why I hold LLMs to this standard, I hold all tools to this standard: be useful or be dismissed.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Because I have a proof of the Riemann hypothesis but I'm not showing it to you because I don't want you to steal my idea.

[throw10920]

It's really interesting that I've only seen a few actual pieces of large-scale LLM output by people boasting about it, and most of them (e.g. the trash fire of a "web browser" by Anthropic) are bad.

[sonofhans]

To build what, though? I’m truly curious. You talk about researching and developing ideas — what are you doing with it?

[habinero]

> but I and my colleagues are doing a lot of incredible work that simply isn't possible without LLMs involved

...Which part is impossible? "Writing a bunch of ideas down" was definitely possible before.

[dw_arthur]

I assume if someone used an LLM to write for them that they must not be comfortabley familiar with their subject. Writing about something you know well tends to come easy and usually is enjoyable. Why would you use an LLM for that and how could you be okay with its output?

[NathanielK]

Writing a first draft may come easy, but there's more to the process than that. An LLM can go from outline to "article" in one step. I can't.

I don't write often, so revising and rewriting is very slow for me. I'm not confident in my writing and it looks clunky to my eye.

I see the appeal, though I want to keep developing my own skills.

[AlecSchueler]

> An LLM can go from outline to "article" in one step. I can't.

But the point is that the results tend to be very grating.

> I'm not confident in my writing and it looks clunky to my eye.

AI writing is clunky!

> I don't write often, so revising and rewriting is very slow for me.

This is totally fair, but maybe consider editing the AI output once it's given you a second draft?

[NathanielK]

I agree entirely. Seeing all llm garbage being published made me realize how insecure people are about their writing.

Since realizing, I've been stubbornly improving my own writing and not touching LLMs. Takes a bit of work though.

[chairmansteve]

"maybe consider editing the AI output once it's given you a second draft?".

I would completely rewrite the LLM output. Use it as a researcher or idea generator.

[aleph_minus_one]

> I assume if someone used an LLM to write for them that they must not be comfortabley familiar with their subject.

This statement assumes that the writer is a native speaker in the language in which he writes the text.

[habinero]

If you're not a good enough speaker to write it, you're not good enough to proofread it, either.

[botusaurus]

some people might be better at prompting a LLM than you

just like when you go to a restaurant to have a chef cook for you when you can cook yourself

[throawayonthe]

a chef can only do so much with a frozen microwave meal

[trollbridge]

Most restaurants, by volume, these days churn out ultra processed, mass-marketed slop.

It’s true there is the occasional Michelin starred place or an amazing local farm to table place. There is also the occasional excellent use of LLMs. Most LLM output I have to read, though, is straight up spam.