You're right of course that incentives are at the root of how we use the tools we have access to. Still, it seems to me that the ability to produce infinite bullshit for zero marginal cost is far from a non-event, or any kind of continuity. It's probably fair to say, if a tad cynical, that profit motives have always prevailed over the love of truth and good prose; but the idea of reducing to nothing the friction involved in the production of useless slop makes me yearn for the impossible peak that would stand above the oncoming bullshit tsunami I smell on the wind.
> Not because of some “natural” superiority or excellence, but because they follow so directly from the logic of the system out of which they emerge. In this sense A.I. is “inevitable” precisely because it’s not revolutionary.
Is there not a natural superiority in having a tool that can catch contradictions or basic falsehoods, both of which existed in droves in the pre-AI blogspam you mentioned? Yes, this necessitates the writer to *ask* for these contradictions to be caught, and while I really have no interest in reading writing that was one-shotted with AI, I’d much rather read a good writer who refined several revisions using AI than a bad writer who sloppily wrote everything themselves. Put a different way, I think historically some writers in the past decade may have *needed* AI to reach the quality bar of more discerning readers.
My newfound fear is whether this kind of assistance will allow bad ideas to flourish more easily as people assign false credibility to decent writing. But maybe that doesn’t matter as we’ve always been fully capable of letting bad ideas flourish.
"False Binary" is a great way to describe AI - as in, it's a bunch of sycophantic 1's and 0's that's been presented as somehow greater than the sum of its parts.
Thank you, Max. I absolutely love this nuanced take. I really think that AI is in many ways just a catalyst for good or for ill. As you say, sloppy journalism as well as ghostwritten columns have existed for decades, if not centuries. I really like Alex Heath's work, though, because he's honest about his process, and I think that's what most readers are interested in: transparency with how AI has been used in the creative process.
Exactly, a catalyst as you said, or amplifier. It is terribly sad to see people write one sentence comments with AI though, or even their social media posts. I have no clue how they not realise it’s visible even to a blind man that they write AJ slop
I've personally never worn a pair of handmade shoes. I'll bet they are great. But I don't know because while I've had poor shoes, good shoes and great shoes--they were all made by a modern process that excluded the cobbler many decades ago.
Will I feel any differently about a story generated by a (mostly) automated process? We'll see.
The cobbler died broke in Galsworthy's story, which lends a bleak prospect to the discussion.
Platform economics did this, not AI. That's what I keep coming back to when this debate comes up.
The Fortune editor producing 600 AI-assisted stories at 20% of web traffic tells you exactly what gets rewarded. The fact it worked means readers didn't reject it. Or didn't notice. Either outcome is bad.
I write a newsletter manually. Not out of principle - because what I'm selling is a specific perspective, and you can't outsource perspective. But that's a niche value proposition, not a universal defense against what you're describing.
"Inevitable" is probably right. Whether it's good is a completely different question.
One of the articles I saw about Shy Girl claimed that all NOVELISTS will one day use AI, which to my ear is as strange and obviously untrue as saying the same of visual artists. Writers like to write! They like to put words down with intent and purpose!
Can you think of any good reasons for why some writers incorporate AI into their workflow? Can you offer suggestions for guidelines for the use of AI into the workflow?
Very true. AI feels like the latest “quick hack” in the race to total hackery. One thing I can’t stand about AI "writing', which is everywhere now, is its robotic cadence. It’s not that different from pre-AI slop, like you say, but moreso.
The spaced-out, one-line paragraphs trying to make something banal sound profound (very NPR/Michael Barbaro) lean hard on fake “clarity” through contrast, like:
“the first time I felt this, it was a blah.
But it wasn’t just blah.
It was blahblah.”
Writers who rely on AI, or don’t know how to use it (like Prince siad: “It’s cool to use the computer, don’t let the computer use you”), end up killing the rhythm and cadence that can make writing efficient, effective and felt, instead of just washing over the reader in a banal slopwave. They save their own time to waste ours, which feels scammy and gross.
When I read this stuff my brain goes:
“I’m reading these words.
But this isn’t writing.
It’s slop.”
That gives me hope, because even as AI gets better at mimicking humans, people still crave the real.
Nope. I am never going to knowingly use the stochastic parrot for writing, or anything else. I know it will wheedle its way into my life somehow, but I will fight this intrusion every step of the way.
Great piece. I think the question "Is A.I. transforming this system, or supercharging it?" is something that people should be asking on a daily basis, but somehow rarely gets mentioned.
It's a bit of a tangent but I was recently reading thru https://gradual-disempowerment.ai/ and can't help but fear they're right. You and I (humans) both want the internet to be full of "good things that enrich our lives". But the internet wants something else, it is a machine onto itself. Mostly it wants profits, but AI is going to become ever better at figuring out what content will fill the incentive structure. And us humans are going to be less and less important in building that structure. I assume the next generation will deliver lots of dopamine hits, but it seems really unlikely that it will deliver on the things human beings have been evolved to truly need over the last 100,000 years.
Thanks, I hate it.
You're right of course that incentives are at the root of how we use the tools we have access to. Still, it seems to me that the ability to produce infinite bullshit for zero marginal cost is far from a non-event, or any kind of continuity. It's probably fair to say, if a tad cynical, that profit motives have always prevailed over the love of truth and good prose; but the idea of reducing to nothing the friction involved in the production of useless slop makes me yearn for the impossible peak that would stand above the oncoming bullshit tsunami I smell on the wind.
The bullshit is already infinite! It’s real! The bullshit has flowed like a river since writing began!
People do seem to forget that slop predates AI
The readers of Shy Girl were the ones who pointed out that it was AI which prompted the investigation, not the other way around.
> Not because of some “natural” superiority or excellence, but because they follow so directly from the logic of the system out of which they emerge. In this sense A.I. is “inevitable” precisely because it’s not revolutionary.
Is there not a natural superiority in having a tool that can catch contradictions or basic falsehoods, both of which existed in droves in the pre-AI blogspam you mentioned? Yes, this necessitates the writer to *ask* for these contradictions to be caught, and while I really have no interest in reading writing that was one-shotted with AI, I’d much rather read a good writer who refined several revisions using AI than a bad writer who sloppily wrote everything themselves. Put a different way, I think historically some writers in the past decade may have *needed* AI to reach the quality bar of more discerning readers.
My newfound fear is whether this kind of assistance will allow bad ideas to flourish more easily as people assign false credibility to decent writing. But maybe that doesn’t matter as we’ve always been fully capable of letting bad ideas flourish.
What about the power costs though.
I think that's the main thing that's going to kill it.
"False Binary" is a great way to describe AI - as in, it's a bunch of sycophantic 1's and 0's that's been presented as somehow greater than the sum of its parts.
Thank you, Max. I absolutely love this nuanced take. I really think that AI is in many ways just a catalyst for good or for ill. As you say, sloppy journalism as well as ghostwritten columns have existed for decades, if not centuries. I really like Alex Heath's work, though, because he's honest about his process, and I think that's what most readers are interested in: transparency with how AI has been used in the creative process.
Exactly, a catalyst as you said, or amplifier. It is terribly sad to see people write one sentence comments with AI though, or even their social media posts. I have no clue how they not realise it’s visible even to a blind man that they write AJ slop
Bad writing is bad writing. Manual or automated, some writing sucks.
I find the question: "What if AI produces average or even better results?" to be telling.
I think about John Galsworthy's story "Quality" where a traditional cobbler is being squeezed out by automated shoe making. (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2904/pg2904-images.html)
I've personally never worn a pair of handmade shoes. I'll bet they are great. But I don't know because while I've had poor shoes, good shoes and great shoes--they were all made by a modern process that excluded the cobbler many decades ago.
Will I feel any differently about a story generated by a (mostly) automated process? We'll see.
The cobbler died broke in Galsworthy's story, which lends a bleak prospect to the discussion.
Platform economics did this, not AI. That's what I keep coming back to when this debate comes up.
The Fortune editor producing 600 AI-assisted stories at 20% of web traffic tells you exactly what gets rewarded. The fact it worked means readers didn't reject it. Or didn't notice. Either outcome is bad.
I write a newsletter manually. Not out of principle - because what I'm selling is a specific perspective, and you can't outsource perspective. But that's a niche value proposition, not a universal defense against what you're describing.
"Inevitable" is probably right. Whether it's good is a completely different question.
One of the articles I saw about Shy Girl claimed that all NOVELISTS will one day use AI, which to my ear is as strange and obviously untrue as saying the same of visual artists. Writers like to write! They like to put words down with intent and purpose!
Can you think of any good reasons for why some writers incorporate AI into their workflow? Can you offer suggestions for guidelines for the use of AI into the workflow?
Very true. AI feels like the latest “quick hack” in the race to total hackery. One thing I can’t stand about AI "writing', which is everywhere now, is its robotic cadence. It’s not that different from pre-AI slop, like you say, but moreso.
The spaced-out, one-line paragraphs trying to make something banal sound profound (very NPR/Michael Barbaro) lean hard on fake “clarity” through contrast, like:
“the first time I felt this, it was a blah.
But it wasn’t just blah.
It was blahblah.”
Writers who rely on AI, or don’t know how to use it (like Prince siad: “It’s cool to use the computer, don’t let the computer use you”), end up killing the rhythm and cadence that can make writing efficient, effective and felt, instead of just washing over the reader in a banal slopwave. They save their own time to waste ours, which feels scammy and gross.
When I read this stuff my brain goes:
“I’m reading these words.
But this isn’t writing.
It’s slop.”
That gives me hope, because even as AI gets better at mimicking humans, people still crave the real.
Nope. I am never going to knowingly use the stochastic parrot for writing, or anything else. I know it will wheedle its way into my life somehow, but I will fight this intrusion every step of the way.
I got a little melodramatic towards the end, but I couldn't really get this out of my head the last 48 hours so I had to put it down somewhere:
https://minnesotaconfluence.substack.com/p/the-humanist-manifesto
Great piece. I think the question "Is A.I. transforming this system, or supercharging it?" is something that people should be asking on a daily basis, but somehow rarely gets mentioned.
It's a bit of a tangent but I was recently reading thru https://gradual-disempowerment.ai/ and can't help but fear they're right. You and I (humans) both want the internet to be full of "good things that enrich our lives". But the internet wants something else, it is a machine onto itself. Mostly it wants profits, but AI is going to become ever better at figuring out what content will fill the incentive structure. And us humans are going to be less and less important in building that structure. I assume the next generation will deliver lots of dopamine hits, but it seems really unlikely that it will deliver on the things human beings have been evolved to truly need over the last 100,000 years.