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bko 5 hours ago

> I think so because (1) the writing process is an essential part of the thinking process, (2) AI writing is vague and wrong in hard-to-notice ways, and (3) writing with AI (and not labeling it as such) is rude and misleading. I’ll explain these points in more detail below, but first, a few throat clearings.

1. Agree writing process is essential, but just getting your thoughts down is the start.

2. Human writing is very often vague and wrong in hard to notice ways, but I would say it's more likely to be wrong in easy to notice ways, which is ... better?

3. I think it's rude to not use the best tools to convey the message most clearly and most respectfully of my time. I often use AI to help me write emails and nearly every time it provides more concise well structured versions of what I have to say. 99% of the time I'm just trying to convey a message clearly, that's all. When I write my draft there is often words I can delete or phrases that I can shorten. It's hard to spot but when you have AI point them out it's obvious. This is the role of an editor (check out Stephen King book On Writing which makes this point). Unfortunately I don't have an editor, but I have AI that helps trim the fat, get to the point and save my readers time.

If these tools are available to you and you don't use them, then I think that would be disrespectful. I don't take any solace thinking how much time and effort went into what someone wrote me. If I could save them time and have AI write or edit, and save me time reading it since it would be more concise and better structured, it's a win-win.

elmomle 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Just a couple of days ago, a customer rep at a company we partner with dropped a long doc that had basic reasoning errors once you got into the individual sections.

I would have much preferred if the rep had written a shorter document and reached out about things they were uncertain about. Instead thet wasted my and my team's time as we first tried to make sense of the document on good faith before realizing the problem.

I don't care if people use LLMs per se, but if this is functionally the result, then in this aspect of my work things would go much better if people did not use them. They are a great interface for talking to a machine, but due to the laziness they breed, they are a terrible interface for talking to other humans unless approached with a great deal of discipline.

bko 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes, you hit on the main problem with LLMs for writing. It doesn't cost you anything. It can do the reasoning for you and creating long messaging with dodgy reasoning.

I think you should write down your thoughts, tell it to make the points you spelled out and be concise and respectful of the reader's time and attention. When I do this, it works very well. But I agree if you just have it respond and reason it tends to often produces bad responses.

mathgeek 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think your point on “cutting down on words”, so to speak, is relative to personal writing style. I find that AI tends to write far more words than I personally do, which is sometimes useful, but in the opposite direction that it works for you.

bko 5 hours ago | parent [-]

PROMPT: make this more concise while conveying the same message

I think “cutting down on words” depends on personal writing style. AI tends to write more than I would, so I usually have the opposite problem.