[itake]

I am someone that prefers a slack message to a coworker than talking to them and I use AI.

My current flow is: Google Eloquent to capture 127WPM (my typing is best case is 65wpm). This lets me get the thoughts out without thinking too much about structure or flow, the same way I would brain-dump type it.

Next I use AI to compress, summarize, and restructure to create a clear coherent message for my peer to read (which is way faster for them).

When communicating with AI, its the same thing, except I skip the second step since AI does a good job at understanding my ramblings.

----

It drives me crazy that some cultures only send voice messages to each other. It drives me crazy they can't be respectful of my time and use STT+AI to convert their 90 second monologue to a few written sentences.

[garblegarble]

Slightly off-topic but: does it concern you that you're letting atrophy a very important skill for human communication (organising your thoughts and ideas, and then clearly communicating them to others)?

[itake]

Tbh, I never have been a good writer. A college professor once told me I am a terrible writer. I've tried to get better (I read a lot, I write a lot, I've taken multiple college level writing course). I even started a blog (https://kcoleman.me).

I kinda view myself as a wheelchair user. I'm bad at walking so I use at wheelchair so I can at least have a semblance of decent communication. I don't think my ideas are not worth sharing, but I'm just bad at writing them in an engaging way.

The scarier thing for me is coding. I am good at coding. But I don't even read a single line of code any more.

[limflick]

As someone who's still learning English, this is one thing I'd never use AI for, at least not in the near future, simply because thinking and structuring my thoughts before typing is the same as it is before speaking and actually talking to other people can't be outsourced to AI.

But I imagine if I'd been a native speaker I wouldn't mind using AI like OC does since it's a convenience. Same way I use a calculator for two digit multiplications in real life but spent years learning to do it manually in school.

[itake]

You're probably further into english than I am into vietnamese, but I really like using AI to help me improve my vocabulary and understanding of the language.

I avoid using AI as a direct translation tool, but its super useful for me to translate complex english ideas to vietnamese.

[billnad]

As a native English Speaker I can tell you that I would have some trouble talking out an email. I like the back and forth in my head of editing as I go. Text messaging may be fine but email is more difficult for me to just talk through.

I am loving the conversation here though of how people are using speech to talk to LLMs or not though, it is something that no one talks about much

[a34729t]

This worries me tremendously. In fact, it is one of the major points of value that i deliver as an engineer. Organizing and iteration on thoughts is not trivial or easy, but it is very important!

[johnvanommen]

> Organizing and iteration on thoughts is not trivial or easy, but it is very important!

Two of the silliest things that helped me in my career:

* I worked at fast food restaurants in high school. This instills a near pavlovian response to client requests; if at the age of sixteen you can deal with someone who's mad because there isn't enough cheese on their pizza, it goes a long way in the real world.

* My first I.T. job was in an office where the vast majority of the people who worked there had never used a computer at all. Just to stay employed, I had to resist the urge to explain things in a complex way. When I'm trying to sell an idea to a group of people, I do my best NOT to ignore the people in the room who may not understand that idea well. I think that engineers often have a bad habit of getting into engineering arguments with management in the room, where they take things to a level of complexity where management may not understand what's being talked about. Bringing things back down a few levels goes a long way towards getting management to sign off IMHO. Unfortunately, it's a double edged sword, and it can fall flat when management is especially well informed. Classic information asymmetry.

[jnovek]

I would find this behavior extremely aggravating from a co-worker. If you can’t be bothered to edit down your ramblings by hand, just don’t send me anything at all.

[ivell]

Why do we have to insist that messages must be made with lots of effort even if it is hard to understand for the reader? As long as what needs to be communicated is done respectfully, I don't see a value for it to be done manually, especially if the handwritten one is hard to read and thus wasting readers' time.

We don't hold the same standards for spellings. Rather we expect messages to be spell checked before being sent.

[itake]

Maybe you missed my point?

I can either edit down my rambling by hand (costs about 10-30min depending on the length) or I can ask chatGPT for assistance, where I manually edit chatgpt's edits for factual correctness and tone.

--- STT

Like, besides the lease risk, I think 30 to 50% of the business is going to end the moment the owner stops showing up and the motorbikes are gone. Either, I think it was Roger mentioned or you mentioned the Google reviews all mentioned that people go to the bar because it attracts other motorcycle people. And, you know, we don't have an existing, like, network to come in and grow this. And so we might see a 30 to 50% decline in revenue within a month or two with nothing ready to, like, backfill that with. And if our main goal is to make a private club or event space, ideally, I'd like to have some, like, something substantial to, like, commit to that spot. Like, right now, we're three fucking dudes with, you know, a little bit of a vision, but not really. And, you know, we're buying what will be a failing bar unless we, you know, figure out how to run events or use that backspace.

polish

---- gpt5.5

Polished version:

Separate from the lease risk, I think there is a real chance that 30–50% of the business disappears once the current owner stops showing up and the motorbikes are gone.

Either Roger mentioned this, or we discussed it separately, but the Google reviews seem to reinforce the same point: a meaningful part of the bar’s appeal is that it attracts motorcycle people. We do not currently have an existing network or community that can step in and replace that traffic.

That means we could see a 30–50% revenue decline within the first month or two, with no clear plan in place to backfill it. If the main goal is to turn the space into a private club or event venue, I would feel much better if we had something substantial already committed to that location.

Right now, we are three guys with a loose vision, but not much concrete traction. Without a clearer plan for events, memberships, or activating the back space, we may effectively be buying a bar that starts failing the moment the current identity and customer base disappear.

[johnvanommen]

I vote for number 2.

[KronisLV]

> It drives me crazy they can't be respectful of my time and use STT+AI to convert their 90 second monologue to a few written sentences.

I have used Whisper to transcribe audio into text in the past. You could probably build a pipeline for that, whether running locally or in the cloud - and the run the transcription through the same summarization agent.

[adammarples]

Sending me your AI compressed ramblings = straight in the bin

[jamwil]

What did you do prior to 2023?

[tailscaler2026]

Just my two cents: I have coworkers who use AI to drive basically all their communication in Slack and I absolutely hate them with a deep passion. I actively avoid meetings, conversations, and exclude them from everything possible.

If you use AI to drive your communication with other humans, you suck.