From TFA: "Eric Schwitzgebel writes that . . . There’s a huge cognitive difference between nodding along while reading something and actually productively generating a text. Two reasons: First, once the text is on the page, it’s easy to passively let the approximate word suffice, rather than thinking about word choice in the same effortful, active way we do when generating prose de novo. Second, as I suggested above, I doubt that human beings, even experts, have a good sense of all the factors that shape word choice -- everything they’re being sensitive to. You would have phrased it slightly differently, and even if you don’t know that, or why, a different signal is sent and received."
This is the best articulation I've seen of why simply reviewing and copy-editing does not provide remotely the same value as writing from scratch. I spent a considerable amount of time over the past two weeks reviewing and improving a work document that was the output of an LLM. Given the number of people involved and the final level of effort, I'm firmly convinced that writing it manually would have been faster and resulted in a higher quality product. Getting the wording right matters.
While I mostly agree with you, what is the real difference between an editor saying, 'when generating prose de novo' sounds pretentious to an American audience so let's use 'when writing from scratch' instead, versus an LLM giving the same advice?
Not that it's necessarily better but it's the kind of thing an editor might pick up and so why would you reject the advice if it's a machine giving it rather than a human?
TFA is about having AI do the writing, not about having AI suggest editorial improvements. The parent comment argues against having the AI write the text and having the human merely review it, not against having the AI review human-written text (and the human deciding which of the AI’s suggestions they might apply).
See also this existing comment: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49768564">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49768564, which I completely agree with and which is complementary to the above root comment.
I don’t see any conflict with what the root comment wrote. There are probably some differences between human and AI editorial suggestions that could be discussed, but that wasn’t the topic here.
patrickmay · · focus · HN ↗
This is the best articulation I've seen of why simply reviewing and copy-editing does not provide remotely the same value as writing from scratch. I spent a considerable amount of time over the past two weeks reviewing and improving a work document that was the output of an LLM. Given the number of people involved and the final level of effort, I'm firmly convinced that writing it manually would have been faster and resulted in a higher quality product. Getting the wording right matters.
onraglanroad · · focus · HN ↗
Not that it's necessarily better but it's the kind of thing an editor might pick up and so why would you reject the advice if it's a machine giving it rather than a human?
layer8 · · focus · HN ↗
See also this existing comment: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49768564">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49768564, which I completely agree with and which is complementary to the above root comment.
onraglanroad · · focus · HN ↗
layer8 · · focus · HN ↗
onraglanroad · · focus · HN ↗
What do you see as the difference?
layer8 · · focus · HN ↗
onraglanroad · · focus · HN ↗
If you want to discuss something else just let me know.