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Comment by k__ | Hacker News Reader

I used ChatGPT for my work as a writer, and it's pretty nice.

I wouldn't let it write a whole article, but it can really save time at research. Just needs a bit of fact checking in the end.

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Can you elaborate more on your process, and the venue/focus of the writing?

I write educational technical articles for a living. Dev tools, frameworks, security, APIs, infrastructure, web3, etc.

I talk to the AI as if I would interview an expert on a subject matter.

This usually gives a good starting point for an article, if the subject is general enough, and not too new.

It's also good at structuring and rewriting texts. If you already have all the correct data, you can use it to write an outline or something like that.

The problems I saw were that it can't follow a coherent thought for more than a few paragraphs, and the writing style is generally a bit boring.

Also, the system uses sampling of results to sound more interesting and to prevent overfitting, it happens regularly that it tells you crap. One time you get a good answer, then you change one word in your prompt and the results isn't accurate anymore.

But I worked for years as a developer, so I usually notice when things are off, and I also fact check manually with Google when I want to be sure.

No offense but this approach worries me - it seems like a novel mechanism to (perhaps inadvertently) generate and spread false information. It takes a lot of fact checking to make sure everything is right, and if you do the research yourself that's a natural part of the process. It seems way too easy to minimize that effort in a process like this.

I was already worried about ChatGPT-like systems generating mass-produced nonsense and polluting the internet, but if people are also going to edit ChatGPT output just enough to make it seem right (a mechanism I hadn't thought of so far), that might make the nonsense a lot harder to detect.

I totally understand the reasoning though, it sounds like a productive workflow.

It's not as bad as it sounds.

And to be honest, I'm happy that this thing can't yet replace my job.

But yeah, it helps for more mainstream stuff to get started.

So how do you know if it's lying to you if you don't do the research?

In the short-term I'm certain that you have the background knowledge to detect when generated content is not quite correct - but going forward as your own personal knowledge atrophies (since you're letting AI do your research) - will you still be able to make sure it's not making everything up?

Good question!

I'm not sure.

I hope I'm curious enough that my knowledge doesn't atrophy and that I care more about the quality of my work than it might sound when I talk about it on HN.

Do you have examples you can provide of these technical articles? Because those topics your offered are really broad and very few people are knowledgeable about all of them, so it sounds like you're filling in your knowledge by querying ChatGPT.

Using ChatGPT to fill in knowledge for a technical articles sounds bad. If I'm reading an article about security, I want it written by a security expert not a semi-layman plus a ChatGPT model.

Like I said, I fact check when I want to be sure.

Some things are more critical than others and many of the articles I write are pretty mainstream. After all, clients pay for articles that get them customers, and niche stuff often doesn't help here.

Also, security is a broad topic. I wouldn't write an article that explains how to implement your own secure hash algorithm. Often I just tell people how they could lose their keys or such things.

But yeah, thanks for your input. Learning what readers care about is crucial for my job and I'm always trying to get better at it.

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