[worthless-trash]

In my professional life, I've been told that documents I wrote in 2016 sound like they were written by AI. I put significant work into getting my message across clearly and then to have it dismissed was rough.

I no longer put a lot of effort into ensuring documents feel right when writing them.

[klibertp]

It just adds another layer of editing. For me, writing is always a multi-step process, even when many steps are condensed (in quick comments or IMs). First, dump the thoughts quickly in a rough form. Then settle the basic order of points and paragraphs. Fix the grammar. Simplify where needed. Fix the grammar again, then work on wording/phrases/metaphors if needed. Decide the final shape of the text, and do the last correctness pass. Before LLMs, I was done at this point. Now I need to also de-LLM the text before publishing/sending.

The problem is that the word "just" in the first sentence above does a lot of work. You want to get rid of even slightly LLM-adjacent phrases, just to be sure. And you have to do that pass always, for any writing that somebody else can read. It's less of a problem in larger texts, but the "de-LLM-ing tax" is pretty substantial on quick Slack messages. I think the time between typing the last dot and hitting Enter has easily doubled for me over the past 2 years. For now, most of the motivation is still just my care for the written word, but it is increasingly expected as a signal that I'm not letting an LLM write for me. I don't like where this is going, to say the least...