AI Usage
I often use generative AI models (typically through TypingMind) for
searches, to answer questions, or to brainstorm. I also use them to
autocomplete software code or write snippets from a design spec, and to
reformat text in ways that would be annoying to achieve programmatically in a
more traditional fashion.
I have occasionally used LLMs to reformat and fix the grammar of poorly written
corporate articles I’ve been asked to improve, then edited them myself
afterwards.
If I write to you, or you read something I have written on the web – blog
posts, M2 tiddlers, emails, etc. – the words are always
100% written by me (except for quotations, obviously). I have at least four
reasons for this:
- When I write, I normally do it to figure out what I think about the topic.
Even if that isn’t the primary purpose,
it’s a wildly valuable secondary one.
Using an LLM here would be asking the model to tell me what I should think,
which is exactly as foolish as it sounds.
- On that note, writing and thinking is my core value proposition as a human.
With today’s technology, my writing virtually always comes out better than an LLM’s,
even when it’s unpolished,
and I don’t want to dilute that.
(Future LLMs will likely get good enough
that they could play a partial role in the editing process.
They are not there yet for me.)
- I find that being tempted to respond or publish something using an LLM
is a signal that the task is B.S. to begin with,
so an even better approach is to not do it at all,
or find a different way to achieve the goal.
- I don’t want people to have to question whether I really think something
or whether I just had someone else say I do.
Since there is limited value in using LLMs here right now,
it’s easier to just say I never do this.
(I don’t have other humans write things for me and put my name on them either.)
Part of the ai page movement.
