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Comment by lukan | Hacker News Reader

Are you sure he is sending automated messages, or used LLM to polish up some writing? Would be a difference to me, but .. still weird.

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No message between friends should ever need “polishing” unless you are trying to deliver really bad news in the softest way possible.

To be honest, especially then I would feel offended.

That's even worse. What could be more cold and impersonal than delivering bad news using an LLM?

Skywriting?

Don't break bad news over text...

I'm unconvinced of this "polishing" everyone seems to claim. Whenever someone dumps a load of slop on you, that's always the answer, oh this is totally my own work, but I used AI to "polish" it. Then why is it so clearly crap? What kind of "polishing" makes text bloated and empty?

No, they were too lazy to write and let the machine do it.

Well, I like writing. But I have friends who hate it .. but need to for work. So they enjoy LLM's to make professional drafts out of some notes (technical reports) without all their grammar misstakes etc. No fluff, just the document in a shape the target audience expects.

But if they would do this to me .. I would object. I prefer their authentic ramblings ..

> No fluff, just the document in a shape the target audience expects

I see what you did there

Finally, someone calling this one out. Are there legit english-learners or unskilled communicators out there who sparingly use LLMs to tweak 1-10% their prose here and there? Yes. Does that mean that the vast majority of slop-senders just using it for this "polishing"? No way.

I will make use of Apple's AI writing tools to check my grammer and spelling before hitting send on more important messages, but that is about all the "polishing" I let it do. It always wants to change how I write, which isn't that helpful.

> Whenever someone dumps a load of slop on you, that's always the answer, oh this is totally my own work, but I used AI to "polish" it.

D'you mean this sort of polishing: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/67/af/5c/67af5cb3b3d0953d91d180e52...

Sorry about the Pinterest link, couldn't find a cleaner one.

Not the parent, but I have a teammate who stunned me when, after a long back and forth texting that seemed out of character for them (I can be a fast & long texter, admittedly), sent me a long message that ended:

"If you want, I'll write you a response to 9x39 that follows up on ..."

Bro. Come on. Anyway, weirder things have happened. A chatbot that works like what people do on social media comments would be just be offensive.

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