> An LLM written thing isn’t doing that, it’s something equivalent to copy/pasting a Wikipedia article.

Nonsense. I’m not sure whether this was ever an appropriate description of what LLMs do, but either way, they have obviously moved way, way beyond that.

> Nobody ever disclosed Word's grammar suggestions or spelling corrections

And plenty of people have made mistakes that clearly indicate mindlessly accepting such a "correction" when it was wrong (as opposed to just making a typo, or genuinely lacking skill in English, which both generally look different); and it's historically been common to poke fun at that.

> or the fact that they used some autocomplete tool to produce code

Right, because there are really only two options: either it's effectively guaranteed to be what the user would have written by hand anyway, or it's unambiguously wrong and does the wrong thing.

Not at all comparable to LLM prose.

> and if they want to put crappy writing out there with their name on it, that's on them.

The problem is that people who don't care (and quite possibly have no real sense for crappy writing) are vastly more enabled by the technology than people who do.

Oh please, come on now. Grammar correction (which gets applied to text that you wrote) isn't comparable to LLM text generation. A tool assists a user in a task. LLMs don't assist you in writing: they do it all on their own. There's obviously a continuum here (at what point does a tool become so helpful that it ceases being a tool?), but I think I echo the general consensus.

> in it's current state, it discloses itself to anyone paying attention.

Well, unfortunately, I've still sunk a good bit of time into reading texts that I only realize to be AI-authored part way through. Plus, it's constantly being made harder to discern human-authorship.

I don't really care about the tool per se, but if I'm reading some LLM output you give me its utility is awfully limited if you don't also supply the prompt. That's what I'd like to see normalized:

  Do not give me LLM output unless you also give me the full prompt text.

[edit] I suspect the fact that people are often reticent to share their prompts says quite a lot about how and why they're using an LLM.

I think this is the cleanest formulation of why it's wrong that I've heard. It's simply plagiarism and misrepresentation.

It's because they view the LLM's output as "their thoughts." They told the LLM (via the prompt) what to do—often with loads of run-on sentences and long trains-of-thought. From their perspective, the LLM is just acting as a translation tool, saving them the trouble of having to think (about grammar, ideal wording, or even the order in which their thoughts should be presented).

They treat it as "just another tool" to improve efficiency. Like using a drill instead of a screwdriver.

Then there's people who are so lazy they give LLMs instructions like, "write a LinkedIn post about how AI is changing the future of work for thumbnail consultants." That's when it moves from "translating your thoughts" to "writing for you."

I think the issue is that it can be hard to tell the difference. We need better terms for these things so we can differentiate use cases.

I don't think it would be fine.

Someone's actual writing (or talking) is a rich stream of information about who they are, their motives, their preferences, modes of persuasion, and so much more. Undetectable LLM writing essentially allows someone to assume another person's identity. That is not good for anyone except the person trying to pull off a "scam" of some sort, in the broadest sense of that term. It's bad for everyone else, and for society at large.

> There is no way this passes the Turing test of a competent reader.

Every day I get more depressed thinking of what's happened to the supply of competent readers.

[dead]

I agree with the gist of your sentiment, but I struggle with how to reconcile it with my use of these tools. My use LLMs is precisely because I can never hope to express myself clearly. I have many fuzzy, disparate thoughts and it was a struggle to express them at all before this time in which I can do a long rambling voice transcription (absent of social pressures) and continue doing the same throughout the exploration and drafting processes. In my view, I give them a seed or a morbidly obese skeleton and LLMs take that into something a lot more coherent for myself and for others. I was passive before in my life, now I’m engaging. As two concrete examples: I never would have sent an email to my city regarding snow removal last winter when their failure to remove snow from the only sidewalk going over the interstate. I never would have pulled together my previous coursework and e-mails to send to my current professors in a petition for transfer-credit equivalency when it became clear that my deteriorating health would not allow me to finish the semester as-is. I never would have remembered all the concerns that I want to bring up at medical appointments. That is not to say these things were ever impossible, there are coping strategies available, and whatnot, but I’m in my late 30’s; I know what I did and not get done in the last 10 years, and “AI”-tooling/environments have helped me express my dreams and passions and concerns, etc., etc., etc. over the past years in a way that was simply not practically available to me, with a new capacity that I simply could not previously hope to match due to limited and fragmented time,attention, and energy. While I was hand-typing this on my keyboard, I could have instead been talking, reviewing, redrafting in spurts as I go about my morning, instead of a solid 45 minutes at max effort on my own part, as I did here (and I don’t feel that I conveyed myself half-as-well here as I could have achieved at much less cost to my energy, etc. by using an LLM). I do take offense when people do not review and vouch for things written on their behalf by LLMs.

How do we make room for their use as a cognitive-prosthesis (if you will allow such framing) without losing humane-ness?

Wow, you must be one very unique and special person if you converse the way you write. By definition, a carefully written and edited piece will be much more refined and cogent than an extemporaneous conversation.

Just watch an interview with a famous author. Or compare a legal brief to what court actually sounds like.

I mean, these things can be tested. Maybe some people really are gifted at discerning AI work, and of course there's no accounting for taste. But the former is subject to objective evaluation, and the latter should at least be somewhat expressible.

> 1. It's usually low value and not trustworth - I could have just asked the AI myself.

You have no way of knowing what the input to the writing was. You're making the erroneous assumption that the person posting the article was a mouthbreathing spammer who used the prompt "write me an article on subject XYZ, make no mistakes!" and you could have supplied the same prompt.

> But I'd rather read LLM writing than read typical long form perfect English journalist crap.

The problem is precisely that LLM writing is that exact thing (at least by default), but even more so. Longer-form, more "perfect" in some technical sense, and yet crappier.

> LLMs write better than most journalists.

I used to think this, but now that I've been trying to use them to help with writing, it turns out they are not necessarily that great on the deeper level. The grammar and the surface style are impeccable, but they often struggle with continuity and carrying on a point or an argument.

> LLMs write better than most journalists

In my personal experience I strongly disagree. Curious what publications you read wherein this is the case.

I would almost never transmit LLM output without a decent amount of editing. But I also don't understand people who paint it as this horrible offensive unreadable slop.

Calling it better than most journalists is extreme (and probably the reason for down votes), but it must certainly be better than the average person.

We're hearing this criticism from the highly educated professional class people who bother to have their own blog or otherwise spend their time talking about technology online. I mean come on.

To most people, the LLM must feel incredibly empowering, like us wearing a mecha suit. Would we always show restraint and only apply our newfound enhanced physical strength in carefully considered situations?

They are worse than most people at communicating ideas.

You can really tell when the MAGA crowd shows up.