"LLM paragraph will register to much of your audience not as writing but as output"
The best advice for writing for other humans is: don't use LLMs.
If you're writing for machines, liking coding, then fine go for it. If you're writing for processes with formal highly structured content like manuals, specifications, form content, procedures, information, that sort of thing, then also ok to use LLMS. But if you're writing for a human mind to ingest and extract meaning from, then LLMs are poison.
Too simple, too dogmatic
at the start and at the end (“don’t use LLMs” and “then they are poison”). The middle section is all good.
Writing with a LLM is a boon if you are trying to write while mastering a new field. Imagine a neuroscientist entering robotics or an electrical engineer trying to enter the field of neuromorphic systems. In these cases a human will need help from an LLM to think and write more deeply AND broadly. I sure do.
You could object that this form of human-LLM collaborative writing is just for one reader; the writer. True at the start but not true toward the end.
I do agree that even the frontier models do not touch a really strong human writer. Way too much gimmickry. They do not yet match individuals such as Leslie Lamport, Terry Winograd, John MacArthur, Richard Rorty, Humberto Maturana, William James, Rodney Brooks. They don’t have the depth of understanding to simplify. But give them a few more years and excursions in the real world and a concept if “now” and the situation may improve.
I often ask Fable and Opus to explain difficult topics to me as if I were the canonical dog Rover. It works.
A person isn’t becoming a master in the new field if the LLM is doing all that for them.
New areas are where it is most dangerous to use an LLM, as a person can’t tell when it doesn’t align with their views (because they don’t have any yet), is misleading, or flat out wrong.
If I want to know what an LLM thinks, I’ll ask an LLM. If I’m reading a paper from a human, it’s, because I want to know what that human thinks. If they need the LLM to fill in the gaps in their knowledge, then they don’t know enough to write about the topic yet. Doing that work to write something themselves could help move them learn enough to write something that is hopefully worth reading.
Eddy_Viscosity2 · · focus · HN ↗
The best advice for writing for other humans is: don't use LLMs.
If you're writing for machines, liking coding, then fine go for it. If you're writing for processes with formal highly structured content like manuals, specifications, form content, procedures, information, that sort of thing, then also ok to use LLMS. But if you're writing for a human mind to ingest and extract meaning from, then LLMs are poison.
robwwilliams · · focus · HN ↗
Writing with a LLM is a boon if you are trying to write while mastering a new field. Imagine a neuroscientist entering robotics or an electrical engineer trying to enter the field of neuromorphic systems. In these cases a human will need help from an LLM to think and write more deeply AND broadly. I sure do.
You could object that this form of human-LLM collaborative writing is just for one reader; the writer. True at the start but not true toward the end.
I do agree that even the frontier models do not touch a really strong human writer. Way too much gimmickry. They do not yet match individuals such as Leslie Lamport, Terry Winograd, John MacArthur, Richard Rorty, Humberto Maturana, William James, Rodney Brooks. They don’t have the depth of understanding to simplify. But give them a few more years and excursions in the real world and a concept if “now” and the situation may improve.
I often ask Fable and Opus to explain difficult topics to me as if I were the canonical dog Rover. It works.
al_borland · · focus · HN ↗
New areas are where it is most dangerous to use an LLM, as a person can’t tell when it doesn’t align with their views (because they don’t have any yet), is misleading, or flat out wrong.
If I want to know what an LLM thinks, I’ll ask an LLM. If I’m reading a paper from a human, it’s, because I want to know what that human thinks. If they need the LLM to fill in the gaps in their knowledge, then they don’t know enough to write about the topic yet. Doing that work to write something themselves could help move them learn enough to write something that is hopefully worth reading.