Comment by al_borland | Hacker News Reader

Comment by al_borland | Hacker News Reader

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The productive uses won’t become clear until the grifters move on to the next grift. Until that happens, I’m going to remain highly skeptical of most things.

The internet eventually became a tool/platform to build on, rather than a feature itself. I think those advertising AI or using AI as the main feature, are missing the mark. AI is a tool to do other things, and how valuable is the thing being done? If AI makes the thing being done trivial and low value, the human probably isn’t doing enough beyond the basic capabilities of the model.

A site churning out AI articles is like SHEIN turning out fast fashion. It’s quick, it’s cheap, but no one really thinks it’s good quality. Many would argue the industry and the Earth would be better without it. I prefer to opt for better quality clothes, just like I would prefer to opt for writing that isn’t all AI generated.

I have found some genuinely useful use cases for AI, but I don’t think writing is one of them. We already have more content than anyone can hope to read. Creating more text is going to create a bigger haystack. I believe what I said at the start, that if something has value, a person will be willing to spend time on it. I think that’s a great filter. I also think it’s important for people to write, because it helps the thinking process and the ability to organize complex thoughts and ideas. I don’t think short cutting this use for the brain is good for society as a whole.

"I have found some genuinely useful use cases for AI, but I don’t think writing is one of them."

In 2019 I was diagnosed with a rare, progressive brain disease that was slowly robbing me of all the skills ad abilities that make m ethe person I am and would continue to do so till the only thing left of "me" would be the box.

I almost lost m ability to write completely, a post like this could take hours to compose, and the only reason I can write now is because I didn't stop writing.

I've put Gemini to work writing for me but I look it over before publishing. If that turns you off you probably wouldn't be interested anyway. And that's ok, but it doesn't mean I'll stop.

> the only reason I can write now is because I didn't stop writing.

Isn’t this an argument to keep writing yourself, even when difficult? Won’t leaning on Gemini risk you losing the ability completely… and what other abilities go with it?

My grandmother lived to 104, and was walking right up until the last couple days. A lot of people wanted her to take a wheelchair various places, because it would be easier, but she fought to keep walking and would get extremely upset at anyone who tried to stop her. She knew that if she stopped, at some point she would never be able to walk again.

"I believe what I said at the start, that if something has value, a person will be willing to spend time on it." so, we have common ground.

I think only way we really differ is that I don't believe in preventing others from seeing AI writing because I saw it and decided it doesn't have value for me. Instead, I leave it to them to decide. I let the "great filter" of quality do its job.

My point from the start was. People flag content generated by AI as bad, when they don't even read the content themselves to determine if it is bad. It's a bias reaction. they are trying to curb the tide of AI use. The reality is, they can't. What they can do, is decide for themselves if what they see is valuable or not, and react accordingly. the truly bad stuff will fail. the good stuff will succeed.

Though, a few hours ago my original belief was it may take a little while before people who insta-reject AI writing are fooled into thinking the writing was done by a human... but it would seem based on other comments in this thread, people already can't tell what is written by people or llm.

That seems far more concerning. based solely on the other comment, I bet somewhere out there, people who use no AI at all and are getting labeled as AI writers and auto blocked by those individuals with their anti-AI guard up.

Just to level set, I didn’t flag or downvote the original post or any comments. I didn’t click the link, so I made the choice for myself, but didn’t try to make the choice for anyone else.

I’m opting out of AI content where it makes sense for me, and when I can tell, but I am fully aware that trying to make it my own personal mission to stop AI is not possible and a fool’s errand. I vote with my attention and dollars, that’s the best I can do. If enough people think slop is slop, maybe it won’t be worth producing and people will back off, but I’m not counting on that either. I’m mostly expecting to withdraw more and more from the internet and shift more into the real world, which is probably a good and healthy thing.

Not capitalizing your sentences does make it look like you told an AI to do that to appear more human… or that you’re doing it on purpose so people don’t accuse you of using AI in the comments. A lot of systems automatically capitalize the first letter of a sentence, and people on HN generally use proper capitalization and grammar, so it’s weird to see it all (or mostly) lowercase. That coupled with a post about AI, by someone who is all-in on AI and trying to convince others, it’s not a stretch for people to think you’re using AI for everything to prove a point.

I had some people say I comment I made sounded like AI a few weeks ago. When I wrote it, I knew it sounded AI-ish, but it was a bit of a tack-on that I thought was needed for clarification, and to write it differently would have meant rewriting the whole paragraph. Ironically, I likely would have never thought to phrase it the way it did if it wasn’t for the patterns seen in AI responses. So I think that’s a real problem too. Even if someone doesn’t use AI for a thing, their thoughts and style maybe be influenced by it, which will make them sound more like AI. I think professional writers might be wise to avoid using AI chats all together, to avoid picking up AI habits. Similar to how some bands will lock themselves away so they aren’t influenced by other music while trying to make an album.

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