I don't want to read what you didn't write

hatthew

As I have been saying for years: Writing is fundamentally the transfer of information from your brain to my brain. If you have 1000 bits of semantic information you want to transfer, you can't give 300 bits of semantic information to an LLM and have it fill in the remaining 700, because it doesn't know what those 700 bits are. If it's able to guess those 700 bits correctly, then they aren't true semantic information, and you really only have 300 bits you want to transfer. You might as well transfer those bits to me directly, rather than having the LLM add on an extra superfluous 700 bits that I then have to filter out.

saulpw

It's tricky because I don't want to write what no one is going to read (but that for some reason I'm required to write).

blandcoffee

I appreciate the direction of this article, and commend the author on publishing work, but the first sentence in the first paragraph is exactly what they lament. > A pattern I see is that people use AI to build something new, then they use AI to retrospectively summarize what they have already built into a design document. Reading a document like this isn’t just difficult—it is punishing.

idreyn

These last few days, there has been a small stream of blogposts on HN expressing similar things, and I have enjoyed them all. My question recently has been how to broach this subject with colleagues who really enjoy producing prose with AI. There is not yet a better cultural shorthand for this sort of thing than "slop" which is a harsh-sounding word and itself sort of a thought-terminating cliché. "I don't want to read what you didn't write" is maybe closer — but it needs a pithier and somewhat more encouraging encapsulation, like "I want to hear it from you". Has anyone had good experiences setting up professional boundaries or team norms around AI-written docs?

tygon

This sentiment gets echoed over and over. While I can certainly see the value in human-created creative works, if the subject is pure facts, there are only so many ways to state the facts without being caught in the weeds and missing your entire point. Moreover, people are finding it hard to differentiate what is an is not AI-generated with newer models, often attributing original work with those of LLMs. It has just become an easy scapegoat for lazy comprehension and a desire to do less. You are jumping at AI boogeymen. Just about the only thing here I can level with you on is, yes, AI is far from perfect and will continue to advance. Otherwise, so much of this reads as fruity prose to excuse apathy.

ummonk

“Reading a document like this isn’t just difficult—it is punishing.” I’d be curious whether the author composed this sentence himself or it was the output of AI. Personally I often find myself “it’s not X it’s Y” and then recoiling in disgust and rephrasing it simply because AI has made it so grating from overuse.

zmmmmm

It's funny, i push back on pull requests because there is too much description now - a 20 line change has pages and pages of generated description, rationalisation for why it is safe, defense of each design decision, analysis of risks and side effects. People are indignant, you're rejecting my change because there is too much documentation? And my response is, I don't have time to read it and you put me in the position where I can't afford not to - because approving the PR implies I did and accepted it. The investment to read all that for the value of a code change that I'm one prompt away from doing myself if I cared is just not high enough. So it's rejected.

almondfestival

this is intended as a silly observation and not an actual accusation, but for an article about not writing with AI, the following is one AI-ass sentence: “Reading a document like this isn’t just difficult—it is punishing.”

somewhereoutth

Also, writing, indeed any making activity, forces you to think clearly . Often that is the deepest purpose of prose, even code - forcing the author to confront the problem and sharpen their own understanding of the world we share. That it then communicates something to another person (or to a machine), is a happy bonus.

lazyownrt

How do I type this character on my English keyboard? — also not reading what you didn't write.

lazyownrt

How do I type this character on your English keyboard? — also not reading what you didn't write.

benatkin

> I don’t want to live in a world where you use AI to summarize something important into unreadable text, and then I use AI in an attempt to decipher it. I want to hear you, imperfections and all. It doesn't fundamentally change the equation if I use AI to prepare and then write it myself. If I'm using AI effectively, it's likely that you won't be able to tell. This sort of post is increasingly coming off as high and mighty, where the user thinks they are being exceptionally creative and other people who are using AI are using it mindlessly.

figarus314

The other comments here were written by LLMs that have a hard time detecting meta-irony.

xlayn

Just imagine the quality of text we will have if we re-feed this into an llm a thousand times... The juxta-positioning of the ambi-dextrous personification of the meta-sematicism is going to be both rich and soul transpiring.... It's gonna be basically a fingerprint in your soul, from my soul...

jmcgough

"Reading a document like this isn’t just difficult—it is punishing." I can't tell if this essay was written in earnest or as a subtle troll.

kingcauchy

I don't disagree with the main points of the article. But I feel like soon with all the writing that's been hating on AI writing recently on HN, the LLMs are going to be really good at writing articles about how bad AI is for writing...

StanislavPetrov

If it isn't worth the time for someone to write something themselves, it isn't worth my time to read it.

addisonj

On the note of imperfections... My preference is now strongly towards reading someone's stream of thought thrown down at speed over than that same stream of thought shat through the digestive track of an AI agent. At least that feels human. To me, it also seems like they AI digestion is getting actively worse? As best as I can tell, all the agentic nature and reasoning for code is now making writing actively worse, as the agent pulls across your whole knowledge base and will take that one thought and eagerly join and context it thinks is relevant, with the reasoning spread throughout the page.

bathtub365

I’m fine with reading something you didn’t write if it has the information I need. I’m not fine with reading something you didn’t read and will just waste my time.

metalspot

And I don't want to read the millionth iteration of some old man complaining about the kids these days, written by a human or not, yet here we are. If you don't like AI slop. Don't read it. But wasting your time generating human slop to complain about AI slop is so obviously futile that it immediately identifies the writer as lacking the capacity for reason or emotional clarity, or merely seeking attention for their self-promotion with clickbait.