Upon telling a new friend that I write blog posts, he asked me if I ever use LLMs to assist my writing.
I answered, “No, I don’t use it for any part of my writing process whatsoever.”
“But why not? Wouldn’t it make tedious things like checking for grammar a lot easier?”
“Why would I want that to be any easier? The reason I write is to challenge my brain to think more clearly. Even with grammar, were I to delegate that task to AI, I’m effectively saying, ‘I no longer need to think about grammar or care about having my ideas flow smoothly.’ But that’s the whole point of writing: to polish something over and over and over until it reads like smooth butter.”
I wonder if we’ll look back on the people (like me) who solely use their biological brains to produce writing and view them as luddites compared to everyone else using LLMs. Am I basically a grumpy old scribe complaining about the newfangled Gutenberg Press? Or will my steadfast refusal to let go of a fading art form be seen as the death throes of a generation that’s more than happy to slide into the warm comfort of brain rot.
I think Plato’s surving writings contain a screed against written language, with one complaint being that you can’t argue with a textbook and get a response back the way you can with a human teacher.
I keep spellcheck turned on. I don’t think it significantly influences the way I write.
I suppose, from a grammar perspective, spellcheck is the equivalent of using the bumpers while bowling—using them won’t allow for any gutter balls (ie: egregious spelling errors), but they won’t teach you how to be good at the game (ie: write a coherent essay).
The AI tool Grammarly “goes beyond basic spellcheck to improve grammar, punctuation, clarity, tone, and conciseness.” This would be like having bumpers turned on for bowling, and also having a slight auto-tracking feature inside of the bowling ball that curves the ball once thrown to promote strikes. Are you even bowling at that point? Or is the machine doing most of the work?
I think not using it for grammar checking is going too far. If you follow that reasoning logically then human editors, proofreaders and reviewers should also be shunned.
For me it comes down to temptation. It’s so easy to ask an LLM to check my grammar. But then maybe also check my wording for specific paragraphs, and word choice, and checking my ideas for an essay… Until eventually I’m exporting some of my thinking to it which is making me a lazier writer.
A human editor simply doesn’t have the time to rewrite everything for me. And humans aren’t instantly available all the time like LLMs.
If you have the self-control to draw a clear line in the sand for LLM use and abide to it, more power to you. For me, however, LLMs are too tempting and I know that if I allowed an inch that I would take a mile.
I think we’re drifting a bit in this discussion. Grammarly as a product contains an AI assistant and will rewrite your sentences automatically (I haven’t used grammarly, but it looks to be the case). That’s more like a chatbot than traditional spell check or a rule-based grammar checker.
On AI-use in writing
Upon telling a new friend that I write blog posts, he asked me if I ever use LLMs to assist my writing.
I answered, “No, I don’t use it for any part of my writing process whatsoever.”
“But why not? Wouldn’t it make tedious things like checking for grammar a lot easier?”
“Why would I want that to be any easier? The reason I write is to challenge my brain to think more clearly. Even with grammar, were I to delegate that task to AI, I’m effectively saying, ‘I no longer need to think about grammar or care about having my ideas flow smoothly.’ But that’s the whole point of writing: to polish something over and over and over until it reads like smooth butter.”
In my post called “Will LLMs supplant the field of creative writing?”, I wrote the following (which is, in my opinion, one of the coolest things my wet brain has ever come up with):
I think Plato’s surving writings contain a screed against written language, with one complaint being that you can’t argue with a textbook and get a response back the way you can with a human teacher.
How long would it have taken Socrates to learn “Don’t read the comments section”? ;)
This is amazing.
And now you can!
do you use spellcheck? Or do you turn it off on Google Docs/ MS Word/your favorite word checker?
I keep spellcheck turned on. I don’t think it significantly influences the way I write.
I suppose, from a grammar perspective, spellcheck is the equivalent of using the bumpers while bowling—using them won’t allow for any gutter balls (ie: egregious spelling errors), but they won’t teach you how to be good at the game (ie: write a coherent essay).
The AI tool Grammarly “goes beyond basic spellcheck to improve grammar, punctuation, clarity, tone, and conciseness.” This would be like having bumpers turned on for bowling, and also having a slight auto-tracking feature inside of the bowling ball that curves the ball once thrown to promote strikes. Are you even bowling at that point? Or is the machine doing most of the work?
I think not using it for grammar checking is going too far. If you follow that reasoning logically then human editors, proofreaders and reviewers should also be shunned.
For me it comes down to temptation. It’s so easy to ask an LLM to check my grammar. But then maybe also check my wording for specific paragraphs, and word choice, and checking my ideas for an essay… Until eventually I’m exporting some of my thinking to it which is making me a lazier writer.
A human editor simply doesn’t have the time to rewrite everything for me. And humans aren’t instantly available all the time like LLMs.
If you have the self-control to draw a clear line in the sand for LLM use and abide to it, more power to you. For me, however, LLMs are too tempting and I know that if I allowed an inch that I would take a mile.
Installing grammarly is about letting an LLM check your grammar. I don’t think it takes much self control to keep that separate from Chatbots.
I think we’re drifting a bit in this discussion. Grammarly as a product contains an AI assistant and will rewrite your sentences automatically (I haven’t used grammarly, but it looks to be the case). That’s more like a chatbot than traditional spell check or a rule-based grammar checker.
The question is what done by an LLM. Grammarly is LLM powered. LLMs are a specific technology. The term is not synonymous with chatbot.
If someone want to claim that you don’t use LLMs but they actually do, that matters.