> The LLM generated writing obviously felt significantly better than my own writing.

A general pattern for LLMs is that they look really good at things you are bad at. What that means is that if you find yourself thinking of its output as significantly better than yours in a particular domain, there's a high chance that you are not equipped to judge that quality effectively.

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ryandrake 17 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> A general pattern for LLMs is that they look really good at things you are bad at.

This is true for coding, too, which I think, to a large degree, might explain the polarized differences in opinions on HN about the quality of LLM-produced code. You have the 1. "AI produces code better than I could possibly write, one shots things it would take me days to do, and has made me 10X more productive!" camp, and you have the 2. "AI constantly hallucinates, makes mistakes, has to be babysat, and ultimately costs me time!" camp, with a spectrum in between those. How could the output of the same product be seen so differently? Well, I have bad news for camp 1...

	▲	kybernetikos 9 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I think there are some factors beyond just skill too - the kinds of tasks you're giving the AI, and how involved you are in ensuring the output is good (via either extensive planning guidance, extensive review/testing, or a combination).

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flatline an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't disagree about the probability, but the current frontier models are not completely useless for writing even in areas where I have significant knowledge. I would not have said that a year ago. You have to watch them like a hawk -- they are good at spitting out plausible sounding nonsense that is hard even for an expert to discern. But the dice roll going on behind the scenes is continually more biased towards being correct/useful than not.

	▲	Aperocky 39 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		On factual things, potentially. But if I want to read your writing, wouldn't I be trying to pick your brain? Otherwise why don't I read wikipedia or usage documentation?

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dvt an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Honestly, I can't fathom thinking that LLM writing is even remotely passable. People that think this should honestly read more. One book a month is hardly an aspirational goal. You don't even have to read Melville or Hemingway or Chaucer or Shakespeare, just pick up any popular NYT best seller, and it'll be significantly better than anything an LLM can generate.

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xienze an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> I can't fathom thinking that LLM writing is even remotely passable. People that think this should honestly read more.

This makes me think you're only exposing yourself to high quality writing online and from an intelligent circle of friends and coworkers. The average person's reading and writing abilities are _atrocious_ and only getting worse. We're almost at the point where kids are communicating through abbreviations and emojis exclusively. LLM prose is significantly better than what the average person can produce.

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xtracto 30 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Someone way more eloquent than me should write a column titled "Why do we read?"

Way back in the past (around 30 years ago) I remember reading an article on "how to read a book" or a similar subject. They argued that, you should not skip the acknowledgments, preface and other "personal" related sections of a book, because it was there where you got a glimpse of the person that was writing the book. The idea being that, you should had in mind that the person writing was explaining something through you.

Carl Sagan even has a video where he argues Books/Writing is some sort of communication through time.

Now, this has been the case historically: A person writes some text (even in botched language like my writing, as English is not my first language) with thinking that someone else in the future will read the ideas and reason about them.

But what about text written by an LLM? Does it have inherent intention? When reading LLM text, it feels like looking at those "this is not a person" photos. Yeah, they are words, yeah they form sentences and paragraphs but... they lack "soul".

	▲	devin 18 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It's not "Why do we read?" but something related that is coming up a lot in my thinking lately is Walter J. Ong's "Writing is a Technology that Restructures Human Thought".

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ryandrake 14 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

...or read.

At least in the USA: 21% of adults in the US are illiterate in 2024. 54% of adults have a literacy below a 6th-grade level [1].

1: https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/2024-2025-liter...

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sublinear an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Are we also saying it's acceptable to feed people junk because it's better than what they would cook?

At some point you're just making bad excuses for false scarcity.

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cryzinger an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I think it's both true that most LLM writing ("writing") sucks and that it's better than what a lot of people can produce unassisted. Which to me doesn't mean that we should roll over and accept LLM output as a lesser evil... it just means that the bar is so low it might as well be in hell, and rapidly getting lower :')

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dspillett 22 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They weren't saying it is aceptable, or making excuses, just stating how things are. Average reading and writing abilities seem to be dropping noticeably in many circles. Probably as a consequence of falling attention spans rather than an issue in is own right.

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solumunus an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It’s acceptable for someone to buy a ready meal or takeout if it’s better than what they can cook. Why wouldn’t it be? Is that the greatest choice for their personal development? Probably not, but life is complex and folk have limited capability and bandwidth for acquiring skills.

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xienze an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Tell me your thoughts on the quality of LLM-generated code. I've never understood this attitude where people are absolutely disgusted by the slightest whiff of AI prose but will happily slurp up AI-generated code by the bucketful and proudly proclaim that it's OK because it's better than the average developer can produce.

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dvt 30 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

The key difference is that code is not the end product, but writing is itself the product. (No one's doing "vibe-product-management" for example.) Tbh, I still think code can have a beauty and elegance to it (like a logical proof can, or like a mathematical theorem can), but there's a difference between the two and I'm way less forgiving of AI writing than I am of AI code, especially considering most code (by line count) is just boilerplate anyway.

	▲	ryandrake 9 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> The key difference is that code is not the end product I think this is open to debate. To me, the code has always been the goal, and the fact that writing it sometimes serves to produce a product is important to others (and what brings the paychecks in), but ultimately not something I've ever been excited about or interested in throughout my career. So I judge a developer based on the beauty and quality of the code he produces, just as I judge an LLM by the same sorts of things. The fact that AI can one-shot a working CRUD app is not really that interesting to me. If it could make the code beautiful, concise, maintainable, extensible, minimal, performant, readable, and bug-free: a work of art and love that a craftsman would be proud of... that would impress me.

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sublinear 24 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm not sure if your question is serious, but I've been a developer for over a decade now.

I write code for a living mostly by hand. In the odd case where I need help I still use google like I always have. I spend more of my time in meetings or staring at the ceiling than writing code. This was also true a decade ago before LLMs. It was also true several decades ago when someone else's ass was in my seat.

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gchamonlive an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Really hard to take your comment serious when the only post on dvt.name is a hello world page, because at least OP is trying to publish and you are lacking moral high ground to judge him thinking LLM writing is good.

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jvanderbot an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Oh if I had a nickle for every web domain I bought and put a hello-world.html into s3 and never checked again ...

FWIW, I'm with GP. It's quite easy to get just mind-numbingly tired reading beyond the first two sentences of a typical LLM output, let alone on something I'm familiar with.

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gchamonlive 26 minutes ago | parent [-]

It's on dvt about page in HN, so hardly something hidden. People are different, and the in the blog post itself the author writes that in time he became tired of the way LLM wtites

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jvanderbot 18 minutes ago | parent [-]

I'm trying to playfully divert away from the captious and unhelpful comment, but if you want to double down, that's ok too. Cheers, my dude, have a good Thursday.

	▲	gchamonlive 14 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Sure whatever, why even bother commenting if you didn't want to engage then. I don't owe you anything just because you were trying to cheerfully diverge. Same to you though, have a nice day

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dvt an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Lol my blog was hacked recently and I've been lazy about moving my backed-up mySQL DB to the new WP installation. Not sure where moral high ground enters the picture. If I really wanted to be an asshole, I'd cite a book I co-wrote and another I edited.

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gchamonlive 25 minutes ago | parent [-]

> Honestly, I can't fathom thinking that LLM writing is even remotely passable. People that think this should honestly read more.

How do you think the author of the page would read this? That sounded pretty asshole-like for me. If it's not for you I'm really sorry for you, you must have to endure really screwed up people.

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dvt 14 minutes ago | parent [-]

Maybe you're right and I was a bit too snarky, apologies to the author if he/she was offended. Writing anything implies some vulnerability, and criticism should be constructive.

	▲	gchamonlive 2 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		[delayed]

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skydhash an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I dabble in drawing and I find LLM images (and maybe some non LLM one) abhorrent. As for why, I can think are no consistency (perspective, small details, and color theory) and too much details making it a visual noise. In most painting, the artist will have a subject that is most detailed (to draw the eyes) and from there, the lost of details will follow some kind of logic. This is how you pinpoint what the artist is most interested in. LLM looks like a filter applied to a montage of pictures.

	▲	gchamonlive an hour ago \| parent [-]
		It's like a gross looking slice of pizza, it's mindbending because at first it looks good, after all it's pizza, but something in it makes it really disgusting

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bell-cot an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Mnemonic: geLL-Mann amnesia effect