When I am working on an email or I have to write something that I'm not quite sure how to phrase, I notice that "I could just throw it in Chat" flashes across my mental marquee.
I have yet to actually try this, because I don't believe that an LLM has any intuition and also I don't want my communications to sound like a greasy machine. Yet, the thought is there. For a fragment of a second, I look to AI to save me.
Perhaps it is because I see so many people talking about using LLMs for this or for that, and it is clear that the wider world believes sincerely, deeply, childishly that LLMs can save them -- they can write the email. A draft at least. Probably come up with an outline or some stock phrases for how people say these things.
Why do I think of AI saving me if I don't actually believe it can save me? What I think is happening is that I don't like doing difficult things. This isn't new. I don't want to have to focus hard and think through how my words will be received. This is especially true when I'm writing something that is beyond my comfort zone -- where I'm unsure about what it is that I'm saying or asking.
So, I look to AI, this great god in the sky, to save me.
I don't believe it can save me. But, like a reverse of every religion on Earth, it impresses with daily miracles and doesn't seem to need my faith at all -- just my monthly subscription.
(and all my data)
For now, my attitude is one of resistance. I'm not going to take the easy path and have Chat write my complicated emails. It's possible I am become a noble savage, uncivilized, in the back eddy of progress.
reminder & caution: Artificial Interactive Computation is still a baby; who's ur daddy?
This also happens to me. I usually end up just not writing it.
I'm on the resistance side too and I publish less posts because of this. It's less enjoyable when choosing between either writing inferior posts or falling back to the monotone, soulless autocorrect.
The third option where we attempt to get the best of both worlds is 2-3x labor and time intensive versus not using the LLM and I am too swamped right now to do it. HitL means you are the bottleneck and this can be rather disillusioning.
But do you find the brief flash of "I could just have AI solve this problem" is changing how you think? The presence of this new option changes the experience of confronting the problem.
I'm trying to figure out how the presence of a "Chat can solve this" solution changes how I think through my own solution to a piece of work.
Try DeepL (https://www.deepl.com/en/write)
It makes ai texts sound more natural and human like.
I'm not so worried about how the chatbot sounds. I am worried that now that there is an easy button, it is present in every attempt to write, and that changes how we write.
I feel ya.
I have the same temptation. I think it comes from feeling like, I'm stuck now; getting something decent out, even if tonally boring, is better than staying stuck.
Which may be true, in the moment. But what does it do to us when we consistently turn to this crutch? It likely short circuits our own capacity to think deeply, or at the very least to express ourselves with precision and depth.
better than staying stuck for sure. We are so conscious of "wasting time" and being stuck feels like "wasting time" so the temptation is to solve the problem with mediocre output, because it's better than the crime of time wasting.
I'm still worried, though, that spending some time being stuck is somewhat important.
I think differently about this. When it comes to work emails, I quickly dump whatever’s going on in my
mind and turn to ChatGPT to refine it to a more formal tone.
I have been called out when I tried to inject my funky personality into previous emails. So I don’t think people at work will appreciate me not toeing the line. Also I think if I finish writing emails faster, I would have more energy for the real work that is educating my students
The name is sympatic.
The urge to use AI and the urge to resist it seem to coexist in a lot of us.
You might just be the last of a dying breed as everyone is hopping on the AI trend. It's no longer the hype marketing many believed it to me. Real world solutions are getting solved by it but I still appreciate your resistance.
To me it's like a drug, something to use in time of need and not to get addicted to it.