Words, Words, Words

> ...tell me what you think about AI, and I’ll tell you who you are. Those worried about [...]

Significant omission: those worried about automating the production of bullshit at industrial scale.

Derrida was worried that people were merely imitating his style of thinking without the substance, but it's fine for AI to do it to humanity-in-general. OK.

I agree with the point that the content of the text matters, but most people care more about who wrote it. For example, no matter how much I write on my blog (www.makonea.com), no one reads it. But if the same content is written by someone famous, it gets cited far more often. That's the problem.

There are people who want to obtain information from text, and there are people who want "communication." In communication, the more famous the person is, the more enthusiastic the response tends to be. In other words, the purpose of reading is often different.

So I think there are two types of reading: reading for communication and reading for information.

Writing for communication elicits completely different reactions depending on who wrote it. That's one example. Writing by AI betrays that expectation. The problem is that there's quite a fuzzy boundary between what's written by AI and what's written by me.

On top of that, I want to add something about the "flatness" of AI writing. By flatness, I mean not pushing any particular argument strongly and appropriately acknowledging drawbacks as well. When I write my blog posts, I run everything through an AI red-team review. The final draft ends up very different from the initial one, but the writing loses the sharpness of my subjective bias. It becomes blunted. As a result, the sentences become flatter in places. This happens because the AI detects and smooths out my unconscious biases. (Of course, AI has its own biases too, but humans also chip away at AI's biases.)

That said, if I don't use AI at all, since I pride myself on running a technical blog, not detecting technical errors would also be a problem. So it's a dilemma.

My personal concern is that in the long run, a lot of people's writing will become flat. AI is genuinely useful as an encyclopedia, and while it can contain errors, on average it's often more accurate than I am, so it's hard not to use it. The problem is that the materials AI learned from, the writings of knowledgeable people, were shaped by a strategy of finding safe, low-cost landing points when engaging in high-cost criticism. In a social context, that's actually a fairly valid strategy. Strong claims invite strong backlash, but most people smooth things over appropriately for the sake of social harmony.

The issue is that human writing is generally rougher. But if we insist on preserving only human writing, we end up having to define humanity's roughness as mere "barbarism." Ultimately, I think human writing might even start imitating AI writing. And if that happens, what becomes of writing as "communication"? We write not only for information, but also because we want to talk to someone. Like when I write on HN.

And while AI expands the creative world, giving tools to people who want to create but didn't know how, like building a philosophical Frankenstein RAG chatbot, whether that tool is actually accurate ultimately requires knowing how to use the tool properly. In other words, liberation and accuracy exist in tension with each other.

As for cultural comparisons, I've worked with people from Korea, China, Japan, and the US. The fact that Korea and China are more lenient toward AI is partly because Korea, China, and Japan are direct beneficiaries of AI. For instance, Korean stocks are essentially a massive semiconductor leverage play, and the direct consumers of memory semiconductors are AI. China, meanwhile, sees AI as a new path to surpass the US.

I really enjoyed reading your text. Humanities scholars definitely write in a way that's fun and logically compelling, which makes it a pleasure to read. It really drove home for me that this is the kind of writing you need to produce to make money from writing. Fortunately, I'm grateful that my job is being a programmer.

Rugnir's points:

> "readers feel cheated when they learn that a text was written by AI. But will this attitude persist?"

Yes, yes it will. I don't say this as a value judgement, just an inevitability. When people can generate stuff themselves, it becomes less magical. You have to do something they themselves cannot, or would not think to do. Its possible to do surprising and insightful with ai, but you aren't going to get that with a single one paragraph prompt. If you aren't sure, you aren't doing it. By definition, very few people will reach this level with AI (because if more did, it would no longer be noteworthy or interesting).

I imagine social norms will develop that you chat with these yourself to develop something (including having it fetch human works on the topic for you to read), then write your piece in your own words/say it in your own voice.

> "an app that stages debates among these philosophers, allowing what many philosophers and humanists have long dreamed about: assembling the best minds in the world and having them talk to each other."

this is not actually assembling the best minds, its asking one mind to write fanfiction about what it thinks those best minds might have said. It might be interesting, just as such a work could be if authored by a human, but it is meaningfully different.

overall, I personally reckon AI's will likely be integrated into most peoples workflows and ways of thinking eventually. Some valuable things will be lost, or at least diminished as a result. But at the same time, it won't be a disaster, and life will go on. People will recognise the biases the tools have, and learn to have self control, restraint, and social norms around their use that lets society continue to exist in some form or another.

I don't say that because I think it's good (or bad!), just what I think will actually happen.

I found the first paragraph amusing.

  > Since artificial intelligence went mainstream a few years ago, it has done double duty as a political personality test: tell me what you think about AI, and I’ll tell you who you are.

Ok, let's see what has the author noted.

  > Those worried about climate change focus on energy consumption.

Climate change, a left-wing policy issue.

  > Those who denounce late capitalism see it as the ultimate example of corporate monopoly.

"Late capitalism" is a marxist term, so another left-wing point.

  > Those concerned about racism have warned about AI biases.

This is a toss up between left-wing identity politics and American obsession with race.

  > Those studying the effects of colonialism see it as yet another form of exploitation.

Colonialism. Another left-wing talking point.

  > And those tending toward doom have seen ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Grok as the four riders of the apocalypse.

And we get neuroticism. As the last point. So the "political personality test" can diagnose a person as a left-winger, American, or someone neurotic. Those are my options? :)

I think one of the ways of going about thinking this is how we must've felt about being shared a google search (let me google that for you) or within programming, a stackoverflow link by say someone in the team or anything.

We wouldn't feel like they have done any effort because they haven't. The idea about readers feeling cheated is the same way as such and the attitude towards disdain of AI would be in same capacity as someone just giving us a stackoverflow link or google link. (tangentially, Ironic that both of these (SO and google) are now focusing on AI as well)

And in essence we humans would favour human effort. Not because its about the end output but perhaps the journey as well and more important than anything, if a human being is writing about something you enjoy or are passionate of, you firstly have a community and are able to talk with a actual person with hopefully nuanced opinions and just discuss things with things and most importantly, you wouldn't feel alone.

Human cinema,art (media) and music actually go through multiple invisible filters of rejections and previously centralized control and now algorithmic.

Internet has helped with it but it has once again been capitalized and the thing we know is that Ragebait and lack of nuance sells and so the economic incentive alone has led us to the state of the internet that we generally so speak of.

So in some sense, one can argue that even art created by humans have some algorithmic influence and preference but it has also been shown that there are people who are able to persist through with an idea and fight up against the algorithmic, at the end of the day algorithms although having power still serve the main purpose of money and if enough people want something and are willing to pay for it, someone is probably going to provide it who is genuinely passionate about it too.

So in some sense, real creativity and talent are already pushed down upon but it is part of the human spirit not in lack of it but inspite of all these negative conditions which is able to persist through. People love making music and they make it inspite of all the negativity and persist through. I am taking the example of music here and linking a relevant video for those interested[0]

I suppose the same goes for other art and I think that there can be two things correct at the same time. Internet is full of corporate-esque things and also niche things created by the spirit and love of mankind. I suppose that AI might have its impact on the corporate-esque part of things as I feel like some layoff letters are already getting written by AI in dystopian fashion but I also believe that it wouldn't be able to attack or impact the niche created by the spirit and love of mankind aspect that I mentioned.

But with corporations using AI they are pushing an already broken system down to an even more broken system and humans have shown time and time again that there is a breaking point for such scenarios from multiple revolutions throughout and one can argue that there is enough hate for AI already that it can constitute as one of the forming points. There has and should be more use with caution of AI even within corporate if they wish to survive long term as using AI unsustainably and hammering it everywhere both loses any sort of monopoly that they have, after all I could create an alternative of it with AI just as well and also at the same time, make their customers look for other alternatives which aren't filled with the slop-aganza of AI.

[0]: The music industry is broken: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx7baJMQuVA