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Too AI; Didn't Read

111 points · 113 comments · rfonseca

  1. tptacek · · focus · HN ↗
    While I agree with the sentiment, this:

    If you couldn't bother to read it, why should I?

    doesn't follow. You don't know that they didn't read it! Only that they didn't write it. If the point of things like this is to be careful, then be careful.

    1. slongfield · · focus · HN ↗
      I like Oxide&#x27;s version of this: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;rfd.shared.oxide.computer&#x2F;rfd&#x2F;0576#_llms_as_writers" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;rfd.shared.oxide.computer&#x2F;rfd&#x2F;0576#_llms_as_writers

      The old social contract was that the writer had done more work than they were asking of the reader, but this is torn to shreds with LLM-generated text.

      1. sieve · · focus · HN ↗
        &gt; The old social contract was that the writer had done more work than they were asking of the reader, but this is torn to shreds with LLM-generated text.

        The problem is that your biases kick in long before you read the stuff. And I do not see a solution for this.

        I write my devlog by hand and then run it through an LLM for a quick sanity check. Grammatical errors and spelling mistakes in stuff you publish in this age of AI is lazy. But I don&#x27;t do it when I comment on HN&#x2F;Reddit etc because this is stream-of-consciousness stuff and using AI actively interferes with my thought process.

        My code is almost entirely written by LLMs today, but no one can judge how much time I spend on it unless they actively follow my comments on WA, Reddit, HN, my devlog and other places. All they would see is a repo with commits done in the space of a day with nice multi-para commit messages.

        This is because I get an LLM to rewrite the entire commit tree once I stabilize a project and have it reproduce the final state in a sequential manner with bite-sized commits. My own development process involves 3-5 word opaque commit messages and a lot of squashing&#x2F;force pushes: impenetrable&#x2F;cryptic for anyone other than myself.

        There is also the problem with pushing people --- for whom English is a second&#x2F;third language --- out of entire conversations. Last year, I was talking (on Reddit) to someone from South America who was using LLMs to write in English and a few people were so dismissive of the messages.

        I see this as an unstated case of preening.

        For better or for worse, the world now communicates in English. You cannot shut people out --- because LLM --- when you yourself would not take the time to read someone if they wrote in Spanish or Russian or Japanese (or the ~25 commonly used languages from my own country).

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