I just published an article in UnHerd about why AI makes me optimistic about the possibility of beginning to counteract some of the negative political impacts of social media. The idea is that as more and more people inclined to conspiracy theories and populism are outsourcing their thinking to LLMs – which evidence suggests is happening – they will get better information and logical reasoning than they could expect from major influencers or trying to “do their own research.” But I’m also optimistic about the smartest writers, journalists, and academics producing much improved work based on this technology. People’s moral intuitions about writers using AI somehow behaving unethically for the most part simply don’t make much sense to me.
I can put it this way: For people who tend to think illogically and get their facts wrong, AI is better than what they have traditionally used to develop their worldviews. For those who are smart, based in reality, and diligent about getting things correct, LLMs are also a plus. We should therefore expect AI to make society smarter nearly across the board. This is unlike the internet, which I have argued has been good for some people and bad for others. The table below reflects my views.
Here I want to focus on the right side of the bell curve. More specifically, what kind of relationships should writers have with AI?
Note that I’m using “writer” here very broadly, to refer to not only essayists but also journalists and academics.
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Richard you're getting increasingly long-winded, repetitive, and redundant in the points you are making. You also repeat yourself and say the same thing twice and then it's repetitive and redundant.
Another thing you do is repeat the same argument essentially in a subsequent paragraph. But the topic of that paragraph is the same as the first one.
I don't think it's a coincidence this is happening more with your increased use of AI to coauthor stuff. Actually reading the whole piece becomes a slog. The AI is making you boring.
Imagine how cool it will be when AI can not only write well but come up with ideas all by itself. Writers won't have to do anything!