Stop using LLM’s to write. It burns the commons by filling allowing you to share takes on topics you don’t care enough to write about yourself, while also introducing insidious (and perhaps eventually malign) errors.
Yeah, someone just started doing this in ACX comments, and it’s annoying.
When I read texts written by humans, there is some relation between the human and the text. If I trust the human, I will trust the text. If the text is wrong, I will stop trusting the human. Shortly, I hold humans accountable for their texts.
But if you just copy-paste whatever the LLM has vomited out, I don’t know… did you at least do some sanity check, in other words, are you staking your personal reputation on these words? Or if I spend my time finding an error, will you just shrug and say “not my fault, we all know that LLMs hallucinate sometimes”? In other words, will feedback improve your writing in the future? If not… then the only reason to give feedback is to warn other humans who happen to read that text.
The same thing applies when someone uses an LLM to generate code. Yes, it is often a way more efficient way to write the code. But did you review the code? Or are you just copying it blindly? We already had a smaller version of this problem with people blindly copying code from Stack Exchange. LLM is like Stack Exchange on steroids, both the good and the bad parts.
there do exist fairly coherent moral projects such as religions
I am not sure how coherent they are. For example, I was reading on ACX about Christianity, and… it has the message of loving your neighbor and turning the other cheek… but also the recommendation not to cast pearls before the swine… and I am not sure whether it makes it clear when exactly are you supposed to treat your neighbors with love or as swines.
It also doesn’t provide an answer to whom you should give your coat if two people are trying to steal your shirt, etc.
Plus, there were historical situations when Christians didn’t turn the other cheek (Crusades, Inquisition, etc.), and maybe without those situations Christianity would not exist today.
What I am saying is that there is a human judgment involved (which sometimes results in breaking the rules), and maybe the projects are not going to work without that.
My impression is that e.g. the Catholic church has a pretty deeply thought out moral philosophy that has persisted across generations. That doesn’t mean that every individual Catholic understands and executes it properly.
Yeah, someone just started doing this in ACX comments, and it’s annoying.
When I read texts written by humans, there is some relation between the human and the text. If I trust the human, I will trust the text. If the text is wrong, I will stop trusting the human. Shortly, I hold humans accountable for their texts.
But if you just copy-paste whatever the LLM has vomited out, I don’t know… did you at least do some sanity check, in other words, are you staking your personal reputation on these words? Or if I spend my time finding an error, will you just shrug and say “not my fault, we all know that LLMs hallucinate sometimes”? In other words, will feedback improve your writing in the future? If not… then the only reason to give feedback is to warn other humans who happen to read that text.
The same thing applies when someone uses an LLM to generate code. Yes, it is often a way more efficient way to write the code. But did you review the code? Or are you just copying it blindly? We already had a smaller version of this problem with people blindly copying code from Stack Exchange. LLM is like Stack Exchange on steroids, both the good and the bad parts.
I am not sure how coherent they are. For example, I was reading on ACX about Christianity, and… it has the message of loving your neighbor and turning the other cheek… but also the recommendation not to cast pearls before the swine… and I am not sure whether it makes it clear when exactly are you supposed to treat your neighbors with love or as swines.
It also doesn’t provide an answer to whom you should give your coat if two people are trying to steal your shirt, etc.
Plus, there were historical situations when Christians didn’t turn the other cheek (Crusades, Inquisition, etc.), and maybe without those situations Christianity would not exist today.
What I am saying is that there is a human judgment involved (which sometimes results in breaking the rules), and maybe the projects are not going to work without that.
My impression is that e.g. the Catholic church has a pretty deeply thought out moral philosophy that has persisted across generations. That doesn’t mean that every individual Catholic understands and executes it properly.