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S-E-P 9 hours ago

I fear in the future people will read even less because of how often people cheap out and use AI to write. I know the author of this article tells you never to use a single word it suggests, however I still, while reading, am checking for any amount of AI used. This makes reading less enjoyable, and even a bit stressful.

If you can't spend the time to write it, why should anyone read it?

Everything I post is from my own finger tips, only to get a reply from someone using a bot. I'm tired.

jakeinspace 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Excessive generative AI output devalues all communication media unfortunately. As a greater and greater portion of text, imagery, audio, and video come to be synthetic, I don't see why anybody would be motivated to do deep reading, or listening, or analysis of said media. It's frightening to think what that might do to our civilization, almost like putting us back into a weird version of the ancient past when nobody was literate, save the priest.

Maybe humans can adapt to care about generated content and treat it with the same emotional weight that human communication has. I don't know if that's good or not.

sixtyj 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There is a recent PISA research that students slowly decline in understanding the long reads.

E.g. in one country, 21% of high school students do not even achieve “sufficient reading literacy”…

So the question should be - what are we going to do with this? LLM can produce texts but we as people will not be able to understand anyway…

About PISA research for example here: https://www.edweek.org/leadership/reading-ability-craters-on...

watwut 12 minutes ago | parent [-]

> LLM can produce texts but we as people will not be able to understand anyway

LLM generated text oftentimes just do not have the point to be understood. LLM is training you to NOT read, because trying to do close reading of LLM generated text is usually a mistake. There is no deeper there. Either it was correct on the surface things or it is a gibberish.

Insimwytim 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You can't even watch funny animal compilations anymore!

jakeinspace 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Probably the worst part

boplicity 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> If you can't spend the time to write it, why should anyone read it?

That's actually a legitimate question, and one I've been thinking about, as I've been using LLM tools to compile factual information based on various search tools it uses. The workflow gets sources, fact checks them, filters them according to my needs, and gives me clean urls for source information to hand off to an editor for writing a short listing. It's very hard for the editor to do a much better job at this type of writing; the real benefit of the work was in the research, which was handled by the LLM. The rest is basically just putting the facts in the right order, with some guidance on style, preferred word choices, etc. I'm not comfortable with this at all, as giving work to an LLM that a human could do strikes me as wrong. But using LLM tools gives me a big competitive advantage (for now), in the space I'm doing this in.

derektank 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>I'm not comfortable with this at all, as giving work to an LLM that a human could do strikes me as wrong

Where does this feeling come from? Is it just because the work is complex? We’re all (excepting maybe the amish) comfortable with using at least some automation, be it mechanical or digital, elsewhere in our lives

boplicity 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Not sure. I don't like LLMs inserting itself into human to human communication, as it can shape our thinking in many ways. Delegating this also makes it much harder for a person to become a subject-matter expert, which is a real loss.

loloquwowndueo 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> compile factual information based on various search tools it uses. The workflow gets sources, fact checks them, filters them according to my needs, and gives me clean urls for source information to hand off to an editor for writing a short listing.

What’s preventing the editor from using one of your prompts/tooling and replacing you entirely?

There’s zero value in sharing ai-generated output unless your ai has access to something nobody else’s does on which to base things. If all it’s doing is web research you should share your prompt instead. That way people don’t have to deal with ai-written walls of text.

boplicity 8 hours ago | parent [-]

> What’s preventing the editor from using one of your prompts/tooling and replacing you entirely?

Well, they don't have the many other pieces of the business in place that makes this work meaningful. They certainly could try, though. If they succeeded, this aspect wouldn't be what made the difference, though.

iqp 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> If you can't spend the time to write it, why should anyone read it?

100%. We're producing more content, faster, than ever before but ... most of it is just click-producing garbage that won't stand the test of time.

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

People on my FOSS project couldn't see the issue with their AI slopped documentation contributions.

On one hand I'm like, yeah fair enough it needed writing and something is better than nothing.

On the other I know nobody wants to read it now because it's just word vomit rather than how a human would write something they'd like another human to read.

I hate it so much.

matheusmoreira 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> If you can't spend the time to write it, why should anyone read it?

Because the information in the post could be valuable regardless of human or LLM involvement.

californical an hour ago | parent [-]

But how much slop are you willing to wade through, hoping to find a nugget of insight?

beebmam 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't ever watch TV or streaming shows anymore. It's been a huge improvement in my life. It's the same with reading. Reading is mostly a waste of my time, with some notable exceptions. I'm glad I spend way less time doing each of these!

S-E-P 7 hours ago | parent [-]

It's sad that reading has become that way for you.

I love reading, but I mostly read non-fiction and I'm a bit of an amateur history buff. Last time I read a fiction book I was left feeling like I was preached to by an alien about how life doesn't really matter (sci-fi authors will often do that). The state of literature is pretty dire.

NuclearPM 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Agreed completely. (This reply took me 0.4 seconds to generate.)

shimman 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Just read people you can trust. Why are you giving yourself all this busy work?

Just make your own tree of material to read. You should have a couple dozen writers/journalists you admire, look at who these people read then start reading those people, then you repeat the cycle.

Don't waste your time reading anything new, most new things are bad. Most ideas we struggle with, are ideas we have been discussing since the written record was invented out of necessity.

Anything new worth reading will assuredly make your way to you if you are at all connected.