I avoid using LLMs as a publisher and writer

Just like a poorly managed team, you need to learn how to manage AI to get value from it. All ambiguous processes are like this.

In my case, I find the value with LLMs with respect to writing is consolidation. Use it to make outlines, not writing. One example is I record voice memos when driving or jogging and turn them into documents that can be the basis for all sorts of things. End of the day it saves me alot of time and arguably makes me more effective.

AI goes bad because it’s not smart, and it will pretend that it is. Figure out the things it does well for your scenario and exploit it.

> You know that teammate

now imagine he can be scaled indefinitely

you thought software was bad today?

imagine Microsoft Teams in 5 years time

We need to update Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to AI that which is adequately explained by incompetence.

smart people are reading comments like and going “I am glad I am in the same market as people making such comments” :)

I'm extremely wary of AI myself, especially for creative tasks like writing or making images, etc., but this feels a little over the top. If you let it run wild then yes the result is disaster, but for well defined jobs with a small perimeter AI can save a lot of time.

You are not wrong, but I pose the argument that too many people approach Gen AI as a replacement instead of a tool, and therein lies the root of the problem.

When I use Claude for code, for example, I am not asking it to write my code. I'm asking it to review what I have written and either suggest improvements or ways to troubleshoot a problem I am having. I also don't always follow its advice, either, but that depends on how much I understand the reply. Sometimes it outputs something that makes sense based on my current skill level, sometimes it proposes things that I know nothing about, in which case I ask it to break it down further so I can go search the Internet for more info and see if I can learn more, which pushes the limits of my skill level.

It works well, since my goal is to improve what I bring to the table and I have learned a lot, both about coding and about prompt engineering.

When I talk to other people, they accuse me of having the AI do all the work for me because that's how they approach their use of it. They want the AI to produce the whole project, as opposed to just using it as a second brain to offload some mental chunking. That's where Gen AI fails and the user spends all their time correcting convoluted mistakes caused by confabulation, unless they're making a simple monolithic program or script, but even then there's often hiccups.

Point is, Gen AI is a great tool, if you approach it with the right mindset. The hammer does not build the whole house, but it can certainly help.

You can think that..and you will eventually be left behind. AI is not going anywhere and can be used as a performance booster. Eventually, it will be a requirement for most tech-based jobs.

You sound bitter. Did you try using more AI for the bug fixing? It gets better and better.

Michelangelo worked alone on the David for more than two years:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_(Michelangelo)#Process

Maybe later he got lazier. I haven't really heard of famous authors using assistants for drafts instead of research (I don't mean commercial authors like Stephen King).

Even research many authors simply could not afford.

At its most basic level I just like throwing things I’ve written at ChatGPT and telling it to rewrite it in “x” voice or tone, maybe condense it or expand on some element, and I just pick whatever word comes to mind for the style. Half the time I don’t really use what it spits out. I am a much stronger editor than I am a writer, so when I see things written a different way it really helps me break through writer’s block or just the inertia of moving forward on something. I just treat it like a mediocre sounding board and frankly it’s been great for that.

When I was in high school I really leaned on friends for edits. Not just because of the changes they would make (though they often did make great suggestions), but for the changes I would make to their changes after. That’s what would inevitably turn my papers from a B into an A. It’s basically the same thing in principle. I need to see something written in a way I would not write it or I start talking in circles/get too wordy. And yes this comment is an example of that haha

My phone is a fixture in my life but spend a lot of effort trying to rid myself of it actually. The thing for me is currently, on the receiving end is that I just don't read anything (apart from books) like it has any semblance of authenticity anymore. My immediate assumption is that a large chunk of it or sometimes the entire piece has been written or substantially altered by AI. Seeing this transferring into the publishing and writing domain is just simply depressing.

I avoided web3/crypto/bitcoin altogether when they came out. I'm happy I did and I don't see myself diving into this world anytime soon. I've also never used VR/AR, never owned a headset, never even tried one. Again, I don't see this changing any time soon.

Some technology is just capital trying to find growth in new markets and doesn't represent a fundamental value add.

smart phones became a fixture because they were a key enabler for dozens of other things like fitness tracking fads, logging into key services, communication methods that were not available on desktop, etc. If AI becomes a key enabler of business, then yeah people won't have a choice.

I expect this will be around the time that websites are no longer a thing and we see companies directly pumping information into AI agents which are then postured as the only mechanism for receiving certain information.

As an example, imagine Fandango becoming such a powerful movie agent that theaters no longer need websites. You don't ask it questions. Instead, it notifies YOU based on what it knows about your schedule, your preferences, your income, etc. Right around 5pm it says "Hey did you know F1 is showing down the street from you at Regal Cinema in IMAX tonight at 7:30? That will give you time to finish your 30 minute commute and pickup your girlfriend! Want me to send her a notification that you want to do this?"

People install a litany of agents on their smartphones, and they train their agents based on their personal preferences etc, and the agents then become the advertisers directly feeding relevant and timely information to you that maximizes your spend.

MCP will probably kill the web as we know it.

True, but at least for me also true: Smartphones are a stable fixture in my life and by now I try to get rid of them as much as possible.

What AI currently lacks is mainly context. A well trained, experienced human knows their reader very well and knows what they don't need to write. And for what they write they know the tone they need to hit. I totally expect that in the future this will totally turn around, the Author will write the facts and framework with the help of AI and your AI will extract and condense it for your consumption. Your AI knows everything about you. Knows everything you ever consumed. Knows how you think and what it needs to tell you in which tone to give you the best experience. You will be informed better than ever before. The future in AI will be bright!

Analogies are not arguments.

I am not a writer. My oldest son,16, started writing short stories. He did not use AI in any aspect of the words on the page. I did however recommend that he feed his stories and ask a LLM for feedback on things that are confusing, unclear, or holes in the plot.

Not to take any words it gives but read what it says and decide if those things are true, if so, make edits. I am not saying it is a great editor but it is better than any other resource he has access to as a teenager. Yeah better than me or his mom

I know a publisher who translates books (English to Korean). He works alone these days. Using GPT, he can produce a decent-quality first draft within a day or two. His later steps are also vastly accelerated because GPT reliably catches typos and grammar errors. It doesn't take more than a month to translate and print a book from scratch. Marvelous.

But I still don't like that the same model struggles w/ my projects...

I'm worried that an increasing number of people are relying on LLMs for things as fundamental to daily life as expressing themselves verbally or critical thinking.

Perhaps LLMs can move someone's results from the 25th percentile to the 50th for a single task. (Although there's probably a much more nuanced discussion to be had about that: people with poor writing skills can still have unique, valuable, and interesting perspectives that get destroyed in the median-ization of current LLM output.) But after a couple years of using LLMs regularly, I fear that whatever actual talent they have will atrophy below their starting point.

Idk, LLM writing style somehow almost always ends up sounding like an insufferable smartass Redditor spiel. Maybe it's only appealing to the respective audience.

I'm pretty sure they were generally (if not completely) correct when they said that.

It's either the tech is advancing so quickly that many people can't keep up, or simply the cost of adapting outweighs the potential profit from their remaining careers, even when taking the new tech into account.