This is an amazing quote - thank you. This is also my argument for why I can't use LLMs for writing (proofreading is OK) - what I write is not produced as a side-effect of thinking through a problem, writing is how I think through a problem.

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Cthulhu_ 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Counterpoint (more devil's advocate), I'd argue it's better than an LLM writes something (e.g. the solution or thinking through of a problem) than nothing at all.

Counterpoint to my own counterpoint, will anyone actually (want to) read it?

counterpoint to the third degree, to loop it back around, an LLM might and I'd even argue an LLM is better at reading and ingesting long text (I'm thinking architectural documentation etc) than humans are. Speaking for myself, I struggle to read attentively through e.g. a document, I quickly lose interest and scan read or just focus on what I need instead.

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yurishimo 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I kinda saw this happen in realtime on reddit yesterday. Someone asked for advice on how to deal with a team that was in over their heads shipping slop. The crux of their question was fair, but they used a different LLM to translate their original thoughts from their native language into English. The prompt was "translate this to english for a reddit post" - nothing else.

The LLM adding a bunch of extra formatting to add emphasis and structure to what might have originally been a bit of a ramble, but obviously human written. The comments absolutely lambasted this OP for being a hypocrite complaining about their team using AI, but then seeing little problem with posting what is obviously an AI generated question because the OP didn't deem their English skills good enough to ask the question directly.

I'm not going to pass judgement on this scenario, but I did think the entire encounter was a "fun" anecdote in addition to your comments.

Edit: wrods

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vict7 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I saw the same post and was a bit saddened that all the comments seemed to be focused on the implied hypocrisy of the OP instead of addressing the original concern.

As someone that’s a bit of a fence-sitter on the matter of AI, I feel that using it in the way that OP did is one of the less harmful or intrusive uses.

	▲	duskdozer an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I see it as worse because you could have put just as much effort in - less even - and gotten a better result just sticking it in a machine translator and pasting that.

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samusiam 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Writing is how I think through a problem too, but that also applies to writing and communicating with an AI coding agent. I don't need to write the code per se to do the thinking.

	▲	skydhash 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You could write pseudocode as well. Bit fo someone who is familiar with a programming language, it’s just faster to use the latter. And if you’re really familiar with the language, you start thinking in it.