This is an interesting distinction. I can't stand AI writing but have no problem with AI coding.

I think the key difference is that code is a tool used for a given purpose. It can be slop, or structured better or worse, but at the end of the day it exists to be executed, and its execution is either correct or not. Additionally, good code that does a given thing can only be expressed so many reasonable ways, probably. So LLM-generated code can be perfectly fine.

By contrast, human writing is about exchanging thoughts. Often those thoughts are about infinitely complicated and poorly understood systems, like other people, or emotions, or politics, so it's not a matter of exactly encoding something but attempting to describe it imperfectly. All the tiny little details encoded in how someone writes something can work to this end and are also a product of the writer's thought patterns and overall personality; this all conveys useful information to the reader. In other words, there is a much greater degree of fine detail that affects the quality of writing than of code, and LLMs suck at those fine details for most subjects that are interesting. On top of that, they don't have original thoughts.

That's only one side of the article's point though. The other, more consequential part is:

>Like most writers, I find writing an almost-essential tool for thinking. Often it's only by writing something down, that I can really get my thoughts on a topic into coherence. ... . As more people delegate writing to LLMs they will also delegate thinking and comprehension to LLMs.

There's an analogy with LLM coding that is so screamingly obvious I'm embarrassed to point it out (changing "writer" for "programmer").

I'm curious to know if the author, given who he is, thought of it (he had to, its just too obvious) and what he thinks of it.

Agreed. I generally find that I spend rather more time editing the names of things and the comments in the generated code, than I do the logic.