I think the argument is misguided, even if I agree with the principle: it is based in the effort one puts in and how it's similar to a sport.

I don't care whether my favorite author sweated for months facing a typewriter, of he effortlessly dictated the final form of the book in one sitting to a secretary while sipping mojitos.

I think my issue with AI has more to do with the signal it sends: reading takes effort, particularly literature, and I use the author's name as a proxy to judge whether to invest that effort myself. Nothing bad in selling dollar store crap, but it's bad to put 'Nike' on it.

Your individuality is what you sell as an author. I can get access to the LLM without you.

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em-bee 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

i don't get your point. am i reading the article in a different way?

my reading is: if you use AI to help you write, then i can't know how much of the work is yours and how much is AI. therefore, when AI helps i have to expect the worst and assume that it is mainly AI and your input is very little. consequently, don't use AI at all, or the work is no longer yours.

i think that's a pretty good argument. it's not about the effort you made but about the amount of control you have over the text. and, as you say, the signal it sends. so i think you agree more with the article than you say.

what is weird is the title: don't say you use AI for writing, but then in the text it says: don't lie. if you can't do either then you can't use AI for writing, so why not just say it directly: don't use AI to help you writing.

	▲	torben-friis 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I should have clarified or quoted, my bad. I was talking about the work references, mainly this paragraph: >was I tempted to use AI to speed things up? No. It would be like hooking a motor to a stationary bike and calling that exercise. It would be like taking a helicopter to the top of Everest and saying that I summited.

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dist-epoch 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> I can get access to the LLM without you.

And you can read a car maintenance book. That doesn't mean you can fix your car now.

The author vouched the LLM output using their experience, that's what you get. Unless you are as experienced in their domain, it will take you time to figure out if the output of your LLM prompt is correct or non-sense.

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torben-friis 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Yeah, the somelier argument.

It doesn't work for me sorry, because you wouldn't accept a book by John, a friend of Hemingway, as a Hemingway book no matter how much he assisted in editing. Nor a Picasso museum exhibition is by Marie because Marie chose which paintings to display.

Authorship and edition are different claims.

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em-bee 2 hours ago | parent [-]

they are, but when i read a scifi magazine like clarkesworld, i can trust that the editor made a good selection of stories. the work of the editor does have value. it's just a different value.

and how do you handle the reverse? use AI as the editor for a hemmingway book. is it still hemmingway?

	▲	torben-friis an hour ago \| parent [-]
		>the work of the editor does have value. it's just a different value. I mostly agree with that, with some caveats (in short, there's an uncomfortably thin line to appropriating the curated work, consciously or not). >and how do you handle the reverse? use AI as the editor for a hemmingway book. is it still hemmingway? I'd be comfortable saying at least that it's less misleading to declare that book as written by Hemingway. Doing so is more in line with the social expectations that come with having the author's signature on it.