Don't Use AI to Write

sasaf5

Also, don't use AI to translate into a language you can't read back. It glosses over assumptions you didn't know you made, and the output might not mean what you intended.

Kim_Bruning

Once upon a time the word processor was invented, and it made it so much easier to arrange your words on paper. iIf bits were wrong, you could just delete them, or copy and paste them across pages. It was actually pretty amazing what you could do; especially if you didn't mind dot-matrix type on fan-fold paper. Of course if you wanted to make a better impression, you'd type it on a typewriter, or better yet, hand-calligraph your writing with a fountain pen. So LLMs allow you to work at the speed of reading, if not faster. So you can try a paragraph here, completely rewrite the tone. Start a chapter in 1PP and just have it rewritten to 3PP. And sofort and so on. The number of new transformations you can do is endless. What do a lot of people do? Write a one line prompt and show everyone the oneshot result. Ok fine, sometimes you don't need to write amazing prose. But you can also be like the early writers who adopted the word processor. If you put the same amount of elbow-grease into using an LLM as you did writing before, you can get some pretty cool results.

nicbou

I use it to write in German, because my German sucks. I first write the thing myself, then feed it through Deepl Write to see how the AI would write it. It's been very helpful. I write everything else myself. However I don't know how I feel about spending my time on Earth typing personal responses to AI-generated messages. Do those people deserve my time and energy?

daoboy

Similar recent discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49767937

baalimago

AI for proofreading/spelling correction and reordering works quite well. My words, but perhaps structured in a way which makes more sense, with sentiment replaced by synonyms. Basically an automatic "second-pass" which I would've caught had I re-read it, but automatically.

vivzkestrel

- why stop at writing? put this advice for coding too - sure its good to ask AI feedback about your module or code review or identify vulnerabilities or better ways of doing your existing code - but maybe stop asking AI to generate entire projects from scratch?

trjordan

So let me get this straight: - You can use AI to look through docs and do research. - You can use AI to structure your argument. - You can NOT use AI to actually write the prose. - You can use AI to proofread, especially for how effectively you've communicated. I don't know, man, that sounds a lot like using AI to write. Your writing probably says "load-bearing" less than Claude's outputs, but I'm not sure it's much less AI.

bluepeter

> Writing requires thinking, don't let an AI do the thinking for you. Okay, but reading also requires substantial thinking. Moreover, we can say the same about, say, coding. And I am sure there are people who will say, yes, don't use AI to code. But I do, and the results are amazing, and I still think very deeply: in fact, I spend more time with AI coding (and thinking) than before as I do not get hamstrung on, how do I convert this Word doc to PDF in code again? I spend more time in higher order thinking. Same with when I read text written by an AI. I don't believe that writing is any more sacrosanct that coding. And reading and adjusting AI output requires substantial thinking.

4b11b4

I said this once in my recent "Trustworthy AI" class that... "I think writing with AI is one of the most detrimental things you can do". The reaction was pretty much silence and most people probably thought I was some angry, arrogant, anti-ai purist... which isn't the case. It can be acceptable to use a language model in code generation but requires new forms of discipline and tooling. But for for just regular old writing... Should never, ever be generated. I'll likely never change that stance.

retrocog

I'm on version 6 of a writing an agent voice, style, tone, and orientation guide I have been developing over the course of the past year. Every time the agent writes something using the guide, I edit it and then update the guide where needed. Slowly, the agent is beginning to sound eerily close to my natural writing voice. No, I didn't use it for this comment :)

huijzer

I agree. Writing manually and thoughtfully and then letting the AI figure out the nitty gritty implementation works very well.

tygon

My brain immediately went to "I wonder how many people got this article and used AI to summarize it for them."

gonzalohm

The article opens with > Writing requires thinking, don't let an AI do the thinking for you. And then the author goes on to admit that they use AI for coding. Does coding not require thinking or what? I agree that we shouldn't be delegating thinking to AI, but stopping at writing seems disingenuous.

simonw

Just this morning I used Claude to build an "omit needless words" app, which lets me paste in text and then marks up that text with strikes through the words that I can leave out. I used it to edit a document I'm working on, where I accepted about a third of its suggestions. I feel pretty good about it. If you have a Claude account you should be able to access the artifact I built here: https://claude.ai/artifact/RK7XfnaoxVV1Uji84ETaLr - it uses "Claudeception" - the feature of Claude artifacts that lets them use Claude prompts - so it will be billed against your Claude account (at a cost of probably a fraction of a cent per run.)

improbableinf

While I do agree with the premise of the article, if find this way of thinking applicable for writing code as well. Your code is meant to not only be read by machines, but also other fellow humans. Writing code requires substantial amount of thinking as well. Shouldn't we write code without AI as well?

John-16-3

Here is a good explanation in a deeper way of why using AI to write is not a good thing https://markgreville.ie/2024/12/10/generative-ai-is-digital-...

FiniteIntegral

I'm not sure where people are going with using LLMs for research on a topic. LLMs construct documents like a middle manager trying to get you fired, so it's a bad idea to get a system to try to research something for you. Anytime I've used the ol' panopticon-homunculus for something applied and niche I always follow the source linked to verify it. And the source is vague and generally unverifiable. Humans can actually link other documents that are actually readable to a greater degree. I think a large part of the blame is the dataset for large scale LLMs being thoroughly and disproportionality poisoned with popular media sites like Reddit.

sanjays442

Indeed, even the best models output needs to be checked thoroughly

efilife

wow really?

batmang

We can write draft by using our thoughts.. and check for grammer mistakes thats it. Our usual flow of writing should not be disturbed at all.. Fixing grammer mistakes wont change the soul.