[glial]

Yesterday I had semi-coherent idea for an essay. I told it to an LLM and asked for a list of authors and writings where similar thoughts have been expressed - and it provided a fantastic bibliography. To me, this is extremely fun. And, reading similar works to help articulate an idea is absolutely part of writing.

"LLMs" are like "screens" or "recording technology". They are not good or bad by themselves - they facilitate or inhibit certain behaviors and outcomes. They are good for some things, and they ruin some things. We, as their users, need to be deliberate and thoughtful about where we use them. Unfortunately, it's difficult to gain wisdom like this a priori.

[encyclopedism]

As someone said "I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes".

[autoexec]

Sadly all the AI is owned by companies that want to do all your art and writing so that they can keep you as a slave doing their laundry and dishes. Maybe we'll eventually see powerful LLMs running locally so that you don't have to beg some cloud service for permission to use it in the ways you want, but at this point most people will be priced out of the hardware they'd need to run it anyway.

However you feel about LLMs or AI right now, there are a lot of people with way more money and power than you have who are primarily interested in further enriching and empowering themselves and that means bad news for you. They're already looking into how to best leverage the technology against you, and the last thing they care about is what you want.

[bugglebeetle]

As a former artist, I can tell you that you will never have good or sufficient ideas for your art or writing if you don’t do your laundry and dishes.

A good proxy for understanding this reality is that wealthy people who pay people to do all of these things for them have almost uniformly terrible ideas. This is even true for artists themselves. Have you ever noticed how that the albums all tend to get worse the more successful the musicians become?

It’s mundanity and tedium that forces your mind to reach out for more creative things and when you subtract that completely from your life, you’re generally left with self-indulgence instead of hunger.

[xnx]

You don't have to use them.

[dbtc]

When I do dishes by hand I think all kinds of interesting thoughts.

Anyway, we've had machines that do our dishes and laundry for a long while now.

[coldtea]

>"LLMs" are like "screens" or "recording technology". They are not good or bad by themselves

Screens are absolutely not neutral and are bad by themselves. Might be a bad we've become used to, but they are a bad.

[blks]

So finding out information was fun for you. Would it be also fun if said LLM write your essay for you based on your semi-coherent idea?

[glial]

Maybe, but probably not. For me, an early goal of writing is to get my thoughts in order. A later goal is to discuss the writing with people, which can only happen in a high-quality way if my thoughts are in order. Achieving goals is fun.

Whether the LLM could do a better job than me at writing the essay is a separate question...I suspect it probably could. But it wouldn't be as fun.