Writing with LLM is not a shame

I think it's fair to use AI as an editor, to get feedback about how your ideas are packaged.

It's also fair to use it as a clever dictionary, to find the right expressions, or to use correct grammar and spelling. (This post could really use a round of corrections.)

But in the end, the message and the reasoning should be yours, and any facts that come from the LLM should be verified. Expecting people to read unverified machine output is rude.

Just got a few recommendations by my colleagues on LinkedIn that were clearly written by an LLM, the long emdash was even present. But then again, the message was tuned to specific things I did. Also they were from Eastern Europe, so I imagine they just fixed their input.

If you call yourself a writer, having tell tale LLM signs is bad. But for people who's work doesn't involve having a personal voice in written language, it might help them getting them to express things in a better way than before.

It's good for what all other LLMs are good for: semantic search, where the output can be generated texts to help you. But never get wrapped into the illusion that there is actual causal thinking. The thinking is still your responsibility, LLMs are just newer discovery/browsing engines.

I would rewrite the title as "There's no shame in writing with LLMs", or, "Writing with LLMs is nothing to be ashamed of".

Of course, there’s no shame in using tools that are available to us. We’re a tool-using species. We’re just a bunch of stupid monkeys without tools. A lot of what we do is about using tools to free up time to do more interesting things than doing things the tools already do better than us.

Like it or not, people are using LLMs a lot. The output isn’t universally good. It depends on what you ask for and how you criticize what comes back. But the simple reality is that the tools are pretty good these days. And not using them is a bit of a mistake.

You can use LLMs to fix simple grammar and style issues, to fact-check argumentation, and to criticize and identify weaknesses. You can also task LLMs with doing background research, double-checking sources, and more.

I’m not a fan of letting LLMs rewrite my text into something completely different. But when I'm in a hurry or in a business context, I sometimes let LLMs do the heavy lifting for my writing anyway.

Ironically, a good example is this article which makes a few nice points. But it’s also full of grammar and style issues that are easily remedied with LLMs without really affecting the tone or line of argumentation (though IMHO that needs work as well). Clearly, this is not a native speaker. But that’s no excuse these days to publish poorly written text. It's sloppy and doesn't look good. And we have tools that can fix it now.

And yes, LLMS were used to refine this comment. But I wrote the comment.

Consumers have a right to know what the source is of the content they are ingesting into their minds, and specifically if that content originated in another actual human mind or if it's the slop generated by a synthetic text extruder.

It's really a pretty straightforward proposition to understand, and disclosure is absolutely the key so that consumers, if they choose as I do to boycott such output, can make informed decisions.

> One argument to not disclaim it: people do not disclaim if they Photoshop a picture after publishing it and we are surrounded by a lot of edited pictures.

That is both a false equivalence and a form of whataboutism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

It is a poor argument in general, and a sure-fire way to increase shittiness in the world: “Well, everyone else is doing this wrong thing, so I can too”. No. Whenever you mention the status quo as an excuse to justify your own behaviour, you should look inward and reflect on your actions. Do you really believe what you’re doing is the right thing? If it is, fine; but if it is not, either don’t mention it or (ideally) do something about it.

> why don’t we see people mentioning they used specific tools to proofread before AI apparition?

Whenever I see this argument, I have a hard time believe it is made in good faith. Can you truly not see the difference between using a tool to fix mistakes in your work or to do the work for you?

> It feels like an obligation we have to respect in a way.

This was obvious from the beginning of the post. Throughout I never got the feeling you were struggling with the question intrinsically, for yourself, but always in a sense of how others would judge your actions. You quote opinion after opinion and it felt you were in search of absolution—not truth—for something you had already decided you did not want to do.

It's very similar to the Stack Overflow debate of the previous decade. Bad developers would copy paste without understanding. It's the same here. Without understanding, you just can't build very sophisticated things, or debug hard issues. And even if AI got better at this, anyone else can do it too, so you'll be a dime a dozen engineer.

Those who don't compromise on understanding will benefit from an extra tool under their belt. Those who actively leverage the tool to improve their understanding will do even better.

Those who want shortcuts and not bother understanding are like cheating in school – not in a morally wrong way, but rather in a they missed the entire point way.

If you don't have time to write it I'm not going to make time to read it.

Writing with LLMs is not a shame

Or

Writing with an LLM is not a shame

I use Claude Code almost daily now, and I think I’d rather cut off my own arm than go without it, but I don’t delude myself into thinking that current gen tools don’t have significant limitations and that it is my job to manage those limitations.

So just like any other tool really.

I have discovered this week that Claude is really good at redteaming code (and specs, and ADRs, and test plans), much better than most human devs who don’t like doing it because it’s thankless work and don’t want to be “mean” to colleagues by being overly critical.

Riding a bike with training wheels is also not a shame. If you need the training wheels, by all means feel free to use them.

But LLMs are training wheels being forced on everyone, including experienced developers and we are being gaslit that if we don't use them, we are getting behind. In reality, however, the only study up to date shows 19% decline in productivity for experienced devs using LLMs.

I don't mind folks using crutches if they help them. The cognitive decline and reasoning skills of people using LLMs is not yet studied well but preliminary results show its a thing. I gotta ask: why are you guys doing that to yourselves?

At this point, it would be shameful to not write with LLMs. I don't want to spend time reading plain human text when improved AI text is an option.