This quote from the authors friend really hit home with me.<p>> “If you’re going to use an LLM to write me an email, I’d much rather you just send me the prompt; at least then I’d have an idea of what you actually meant to say.”<p>I’m not saying there’s no merit in adding a bit of politeness and professionalism to your communication, which I’m sure the prompt itself lacks. However the root of what you’re trying to convey is the prompt, wrap that in a header and a signature. Not only are we talking as humans, we’re also communicating directly.<p>Also I just find it a little insulting if someone sends me an AI response. I don’t know why, maybe because it feels not genuine.
Yeah, that's one of those sentiments where people say it but they probably don't mean it literally. Much like if your boss asks for honest feedback giving it to them with both barrels is a career limiting move.<p>You make subtle mistakes in how you perceive the world, the interlocutor makes similar mistakes and the damage those mistakes do is limited if you follow some structural rules of how to communicate (aka politeness).<p>AIs only rewrite what is in the prompt with more words so it can be insipid but I'd expect to do better on average with that then sending out raw prompts. I'd suggest the real ask from the friend is "put more time into communicating with me than a short prompt".
I am not the author but I have used that quote before, and no, I mean it literally. I would prefer any words that came from your own brain over the output of a statistical model. I don't mind if it's short, or didn't take much time, or doesn't have much thought put into it, I want it to be yours. The subtle mistakes in how my interlocutor perceives the world and communicates themselves are the entire point.
> You make subtle mistakes in how you perceive the world, the interlocutor makes similar mistakes<p>And the LLM makes subtle mistakes perceiving what you were trying to say, and I make subtle mistakes perceiving what the LLM generated.<p>It's interesting that you seem to think an LLM would be better than you at understanding what someone was trying to say. I have complete, 100% certainty that if a personal friend of mine was having trouble expressing themselves and was concerned about being misunderstood, I would understand what they were trying to say better than any existing LLM. (I suppose the exception would be if the friend was referencing some factual matter I'm unaware of but that the LLM has memorized, like a pop culture reference I didn't get or something.) Do you find that ChatGPT has more emotional intelligence than you?
Nope, I would prefer getting the prompt.<p>I would also prefer anyone sending me the AI output and not either their ideas or their prompt, to not contant me ever again.<p>If I wanted the output of the AI, I'd ask it myself. You're just a useless intermediary if you send it to me.
I would <i>absolutely</i> prefer just getting the raw prompt. Emails are already ridden with enough completely unnecessary parts that are somehow still the cultural norm (eg. signatures). At least let the important part be to the point. I yearn for a world where people write emails the same way they write text messages.
To a friend or colleague, yes. But for quotidian business transactions LLMs are such a shortcut. I pointed one to three Amazon orders that I wanted to return with reasons for each, and asked it to look up the details and generate warranty service request emails for each. A quick review copy paste send, boom done. A 15 minute task done in 5. Repeat and it adds up. But you need to know when not to take the shortcut.<p>On a good day it's a 240 volt hair clipper for grooming yaks.
I think the difference there is that a warranty email isn't aimed at a person, but a company - which, I think cstross has pointed out, was humanity's first AI.
I've always assumed when I hear people talking about AI emails, they're talking about longer formal writing to groups, such as a proposal not personal 1:1 messages. Hearing this kind of surprises me but I don't know first-hand since I was able to retire just before LLMs became ubiquitous.<p>In my experience, 1:1 or 1:2 emails among coworkers, peers or friends tended to be as short and direct as possible anyway. Even pre-LLM, an email as long or structured as an LLM would create today would have been notably weird.
> Also I just find it a little insulting if someone sends me an AI response. I don’t know why, maybe because it feels not genuine.<p>I'm yet to experience this, but it reminds me of an interaction I'd regularly have with a younger friend I no longer spend much time with, who would take my in-real-life casual conversation prompts that attempted to engage him in inconsequential curious dialogue, and simply google the answers in front of me.<p>He'd sort of deliver that response in such a way that it seemed like he assumed I either didn't know the definition of some common term or fact and he was unlocking new information on my behalf, or that I thought he didn't know and revealed a possible weakness in his knowledge of trivia. In reality I was embarrassed by proxy because I had unintentionally provoked a smug, emotional response from someone who wasn't able to contend well with ambiguity, revealed how dependent they were on their phone, and who's first instinct was deeply uncharitable and lacking in curiosity. It led to some awkward situations where I had to explain that I wasn't trying to test them in a battle of intellect, but rather ask what they personally thought or how they used a term who's actual dictionary definition is rarely relevant to it's usage. I tried to find a way to adapt to this incompatibility by thinking about different ways I could communicate with this friend that would indicate my intention to basically just get them yapping more clearly, but never found a way that clicked.<p>I fear that dependence on various LLM chat tools will lead to more of this sort of problematic thinking and introduce increasingly challenging communication conflicts across otherwise not so distinct age groups. Banter that's intended to be playful will continue to devolve into two sides having no clue what the other means or if they're joking or exaggerating or what, linguistic flourishes, colloquialisms, or regional differences, will become more difficult to execute upon despite there being no intrinsic reason for an incompatibility to exist.<p>Less akin to knowledge of memes or slang, and moreso to the prevalence of new-irony among people under the age of 23ish who don't know any other type of irony and vice-versa with older -> younger. Things could get weird
The problem is everything we send that was created from a prompt is not you.<p>If I wanted to read something that wasn't written by another person, you might as well swap out the from field for "Claude" or "gpt-5" or w/e and stop pretending you had any valuable input.<p>Sure there's something to be said about having an AI help. But I'd rather that be an attachment clearly labelled and for the content to be strictly reserved for a human.<p>This is already how I think PRs and such should be written. There should be a field or section of the description reserved for the AI generated content, with the rest being for the human to clearly describe their intention.<p>But instead we're living in a world of AIs masquerading as humans. And it's only getting worse.
Regarding your last point, I personally find it insulting when I receive an AI response because of the subtle deception involved. When I am talking with another human via Slack/email/etc., I am under the impression that the messages I am receiving are written by the coworker/person in question. When instead I receive an LLM's output, that trust is broken, especially if it is not made transparent that AI was used to generate the message.
I feel bad for this generation who will have to listen to prompted eulogies and wedding toasts. And worse for the genuine writers who now will be accused of having done so.
> Also I just find it a little insulting if someone sends me an AI response<p>I run into this with AI-generated PR comments. I think where I work we are still grappling with the "right point", because LLMs can certainly provide valuable feedback, but they are not at the point where they can do so unsupervised, and to do so just feels unprofessional.<p>And there's another layer where it is even worse when a colleague spends the time critiquing code and someone (or some<i>thing</i>) replies to the comment with mostly useless filler. It's like being handed a small hand-crafted gift and then throwing it into the garbage in front of them.
I often use LLMs to write or review code, but never ever copy/paste from them into any text box attached to my name.<p>If my name is posting something, I understand it. If I can read an LLM response and reword it, I understand it.<p>I really want copying LLM prose into anywhere without a block quote to be a firable offense.
When I read what someone has written, I learn things beyond its literal text from the fact that I’m reading it, which implies it was worth effort for them to put into so many words and send to me through the medium they chose and put the level of care that they chose into their wording.<p>The LLM erases those choices and erases the cost of verbosity so there’s much less for me to learn from a message, and much less I stand to learn about a person though repeated exchanges to help me better contextualize future messages I receive from them.
What if there were multiple prompts and a simulated-conversation back and forth as I tried to figure out my own thoughts?
While I tend to agree, if that email were about arranging a D&D session, I don't think I would care. Especially if the alternative is we never find a time to play D&D.
<i>Also I just find it a little insulting if someone sends me an AI response.</i><p>If you can't be bothered to write it, I can't be bothered to read it.
I'm dyslexic. I put every comment through the LLM, or other tools. Including this comment.<p>I understand where you're coming from but please believe me when I tell you that if I write comments myself nobody will understand them and it just turns into an argument where people claim I say things that I didn't say.<p>By filtering my comments through an llm, I have reduced this issue significantly.
><i>I'm dyslexic. I put every comment through the LLM, or other tools. Including this comment.</i><p>What we said here applies to the general population, not such special cases.<p>Of course, if a dyslexic lets it do more than correct typos and grammar/syntax, the "don't send me LLM crap" also applies to them!<p>And even for non-native speakers, I'd prefer to get their actual output, not the LLM version.
There’s a difference between fixing a few incorrect words in a text and having an essay (or email or whatever) written from a few words. I don’t think the parent comment would object w/ your use of LLMs.
That is a fantastic use and would likely benefit asd as well. Could you share your strategies for creating something that is still you and concise but comprehensible to neurotypicals?
> nobody will understand them and it just turns into an argument where people claim I say things that I didn't say<p>I don’t think that’s dyslexia.
[flagged]
How can I trust that the sender actually understands the words they want me to read if it is all just AI output?
> Also I just find it a little insulting if someone sends me an AI response. I don’t know why, maybe because it feels not genuine.<p>Ironically the people I have talked to that do this are actually trying to give you their very best at communicating, at least better than they think they can do. Which may or may not be true. I know being a bit on the spectrum that my comms don't always convey the "tone" that I mean, despite what I'm thinking when writing it.
[dead]
This is by far the best definition of AI slop I ever read, and the blog post itself is the contrary of AI slop: a short post where each word matters. The creation of an output that is at the same time large and lacks fundamental motivation/understanding is what creates AI slop, not the use of AI itself. This distinction allows us to have a mental model to don't blame AI itself but its continuous misuses. This also creates a formal model to understand why continuous AI steering during AI-assisted coding is so important. The sum of all the prompts provided, if they form a cohesive view of the software intent, constitutes the seed and specification that can generate good, useful code. Try to put together instead the sum of all the short prompts that prey the AI to retry "it does not work, retry", and see what you obtian.
I agree. I have gotten frustrated by a lot of recent anti-AI rhetoric, not necessarily because I entirely disagree with the premise but because it is too generic in its form. It has started to sound to me like the people who complain about "chemicals" in their food and water.<p>The real complaints are about specific aspects of AI and its use, and this essay does a really good job of articulating one of them. It is something we can actually discuss and address.
> The sum of all the prompts provided, if they form a cohesive view of the software intent, constitutes the seed and specification that can generate good, useful code. Try to put together instead the sum of all the short prompts that prey the AI to retry "it does not work, retry", and see what you obtian.<p>What are you driving at with this statement? I think there is value in both types of prompts so I'm unclear.
See also Hank Green's take on the definition of slop: <a href="https://youtu.be/dT5IJExTUR4?si=mjkHK024MUqCId0k" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/dT5IJExTUR4?si=mjkHK024MUqCId0k</a><p>The tl;dr is pretty similar. Intent and care are the functional variables. A human can produce slop without AI and they can produce art with AI. AI just enables slop at an industrial scale.
So many people have spent a lot of energy dehumanizing others on the basis of their “contribution to society”. Ideas like, if you aren’t employed, you shouldn’t have access to healthcare, etc. I can only hope that AI can force people to rethink whether their value is tied to their work output or not.
It goes beyond that. There is inherent classism in this, because it implies that you do not question the value of wealthy people who put in relatively little actual work output due to their privileged position. Take for example the unemployed person in your example who might have literally been 100 times more productive in their career solving substantive problems than a VC who lucked out on their startup and has been cruising on a few boards for ten years.
see what you don't understand is that the owning class actually bring crucial long term strategic vision. i wonder though: we always talk of ai replacing the working class, but wouldn't it be more economical for ai to provide that long term strategic thinking? i'm sure the operating costs for ai would be way less than the operating costs of billionaires. everyone would be better off.
> Ideas like, if you aren’t employed, you shouldn’t have access to healthcare, etc.<p>Fucking hell, there are so many bullshit jobs. I'm doing one of them. I'm sure a homeless person having a few heartfelt conversations per day because he has the time and is open to it is giving more value to society than me right now.
AI will only make “contribution to society” even stronger criterion, and help create permanent "not needed" underclasses.
I don’t know why it would. That rethink has always been possible, yet didn’t happen.
AI has been around in various forms for a little while now. Have you seen anything to suggest that this is even a possibility?<p>Weigh this against the context that people have had centuries to figure this out.
There is a C.S. Lewis quote that is as good as St. Paul and I don’t say that lightly: “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.”<p>Hard, isn’t it? The highest ideals are.<p>The clankers are just very big machine spirits. Treat them as such.
Incredible.
Lately, I’ve been going through a bit of an identity crisis.
I know I’m a passionate and not-so-bad developer, but with all this talk about AI, I couldn’t really understand if that was an end of an era for me.<p>But while reading this article, something clicked, it makes so much sense. It really made me feel better.
I think this quote is highly relevant, though I would guess you, as I am, are by no means a beginner, the matter of taste is the one at hand, I think. Humans matter, and furthermore, human taste can't be replaced (yet? at all? why would we want to?)<p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/309485-nobody-tells-this-to-people-who-are-beginners-i-wish" rel="nofollow">https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/309485-nobody-tells-this-to...</a>
> human taste can't be replaced (yet? at all? why would we want to?)<p>People want to. People want to be told what to watch by an algorithm. They want music made by algorithms. They will eat whatever the reviews say they should. Reviews, etc are manipulated today. Why will future humans care what another human thinks? (I in no way endorse this view but the cynic in me sees it as almost inevitable in our AI-driven descent into idiocracy)
I just wanted to chime in and say this has also been bothering me quite a bit the past few months. You're not alone.
There is a class of human output that will retain value regardless of AI capability: art and sport. People care about the creator. The source defines the work, the awe, and the emotional response.<p>But almost all output outside that space is at risk of AI displacement. Corporations are amoral entities that optimize for profit, and they follow the law only as much as they must.<p>The law is our collective action. We socially construct what we value. We could fight to preserve the 5-day work week doing what machines can do. But.. I’d rather fight for collective ownership of the machines.
> There is a class of human output that will retain value regardless of AI capability: art and sport.<p>I can't speak about sports, but I'll share an anecdote about art.<p>A friend of mine shared an AI-produced song, and I was surprised by its quality. The producer credited Suno as the only tool he used, so I was curious to see what this thing could do. Paid for the pro plan and my wife and I were having a blast coming up with songs we'd like to listen to.<p>They were songs that neither of us were capable of making, but they were genuinely fun to conjure (I won't say "make"--we didn't make anything) and she listens to them in the car pretty regularly now. And when we want something new, we can just conjure up some more.<p>Yes, I know this is only possible because of the human-created music that served as the training data. I don't intend to comment on the morality/legality of it (although it's fair conversation to have). Just noting that some of us do actually appreciate AI music.<p>But maybe I'm exactly the sort of sucker from Huxley's "Brave New World" that he warned about. :)
It's the novelty that you're chasing. Deeply consider what it is that you are enjoying, because it's not very different from doom scrolling or quickly stale bubble gum. Maybe AI produces pop music that supplants the long-standing music industry. I couldn't give a shit if it does. Pop music is nepotism and exploitation with the random artist who sneaks through.<p>I love music, but it is the feeling, experience, and emotion of the creator that comes through that I enjoy. I love live shows, and I love the passion that the artist brings to a live show. I will never get that from AI, so why would I listen to it? It's the same reason I will not read a book that AI makes. AI may understand the mechanisms of story telling, or what chords sound good to a human ear, but because AI cannot have a lived experience of the world it cannot create. Form without intent. Form without a nature of it's own.<p>I'm good. I'll pass. I think you see it too, by your commend about being the sort of sucker from 1984 and I hope that you come to realize what you are inviting in.
>I love music, but it is the feeling, experience, and emotion of the creator that comes through that I enjoy.<p>This belief is not true and I will fight to the bedrock of psychology and nature against this until the ridiculous sentiment is eradicated from humanity's lexicon.<p>There are fundamental aspects to our perception, across all senses, that lie underneath human creation. You enjoy the warmth of the sun, the cool of a breeze, the sound of a running stream, the majesty of mountains and oceans, the power of storms. These all evoke the sense and appreciation of beauty while being completely removed from a creator. Believing that you care about the creator, and that it fundamentally underpins your enjoyment of sense perception is shallow thinking.
>You enjoy the warmth of the sun, the cool of a breeze, the sound of a running stream, the majesty of mountains and oceans, the power of storms. These all evoke the sense and appreciation of beauty while being completely removed from a creator.<p>I don't think this is true. I think that if you found out you were in a simulation and that all these things were just electrical pulses being sent to your brain in a jar it would vastly change your perception of the world. And I think that's a good analogy for AI
AI repeats itself. You aren't enjoying anything new, you're enjoying a version of an average.<p>In however many years we'll wake up and wonder why everything is the same....oh wait.<p>this is exactly why people dont like this. it creates an echo chamber in art which kills what art itself is about. it normalizes noise.
> I’d rather fight for collective ownership of the machines.<p>I would love if we could force the big tech companies to release their models + weights since they're fundamentally products built on the collective labors of humanity (at least some of which is licensed under the GPL or the CC-BY-SA).<p>If I could hit a button and abolish copyright and the notion of intellectual property, I would.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-culture_movement" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-culture_movement</a>
Service work may last longer than other sectors, as some portion of the value provided in service work is human connection.<p>But I agree, when our minds and bodies are no longer capable of doing things that machines can’t, the only thing we have left to sell is our humanity
<i>>But almost all output outside that space is at risk of AI displacement.</i><p>I don't necessarily disagree, but I would also argue that there's art in a lot of that output, in the form of intent, decision making and communication. But I admit that the value of those really depends on the eye of the beholder and the situation.
Art is definitely being devalued by AI, today. I'm sure Banksy is fine but artists along the margins are competing with genAI
Ah yes, socialism.<p>Surely it’ll work <i>this time</i>.
Reddit benefits from ankle deep snark, unlike HN.
As a lifelong conservative and capitalist, even I think this might be the thing that makes some form of socialism possible.
Yeah corporate socialism is working so well <i>this time.</i>
You can just say “I bought this expensive wine regardless how it tastes.”<p>But people don’t want to sound foolish; they want to pretend they can taste the difference. Point to minutiae, study up on distinguishing.
><i>“Humans are valuable.” You can just say it. As a human yourself, I advise you to. You do not need to qualify it. This is a robust1 statement that is not conditional on a point-in-time snapshot of the leading frontier model’s score on some recent benchmark.</i><p>Nope, it very much is conditional to it, as it's conditional to utility.<p>The OP is not going to come an pay someone who can't get a job and has zero market value due to AI.<p>So this "a human is (intristically) valuable" is just a meaningless pat on the back, while the human is devalued.
Way before bots/LLM, I disciplined myself (most of the time) to write email with "in brief" at the top, followed by "Details".<p>"In brief: Can you bring a dozen brownies to the noon lunch tomorrow?<p>Details: Dessert plans fell through. Your brownies are the best, and you owe me..."<p>This structure is liberating for me. I can distill what I want/need into something brief and even brusque, knowing that people will read on if the need justification. It also makes me clarify what I want. Probably not appropriate if I'm too far down the totem pole from the addressee.
In my twenties, I came across an idea from one of Ken Wilbur’s books that helped settle a conundrum for me. What happens when one wants to honor all life? Are they all equal?<p>He made a distinction between intrinsic value and extrinsic value. Plankton is not as complex of a lifeform as whales, yet whales cannot live without plankton. One has more intrinsic value and the other has more extrinsic value. There is an interrelationship that does not have to flatten value for everything and everyone.<p>LLMs are trained from the language corpus of our collective consciousness. It reflects our collective, all the wonderful, beautiful, and horrific things we can dream of and put into words.
This quote resonated with me: “ Tom Hudson told me, “If you’re going to use an LLM to write me an email, I’d much rather you just send me the prompt; at least then I’d have an idea of what you actually meant to say.”<p>In my personal life I use AI a lot for information discovery and high level discussion of the problem space. I use it occasionally to write some prototype code to get started on something. It makes a great debugging and problem solving tool, though I typically find that I need to have an idea of what the problem is to steer it in the right direction. It makes a poor intuition generator, but a great intuition checker and can run with an idea for much faster iteration. I use it essentially zero in my day job as an civil engineer though.<p>I would essentially NEVER use it to write an email. By the time I’ve specified what it is I’m trying to say, I’ve basically said it. Wordsmithing beyond that usually has almost zero value. Same frankly with writing engineering reports. By the time I’ve told it what it needs to say, I’ve basically written that section. In general, I feel like LLMs are just bad writing tools… In writing I typically find that if I can farm it out to have an LLM write something, then it frankly probably just didn’t need to be said.
Agreed - communication is a bright line for me. I use it (judicially) to learn. I use it (judicially) to write code. I will <i>absolutely never</i> use it to write English for distribution of any kind. To me, that is hideous.<p>Maybe I would use it to write to a person I have absolutely no respect for. I haven't encountered that use case yet. I have a base level of respect for all people.
Our lives are just a big collection of experiences. The wall-clock minutes that actually matter in our lives are the minutes that we spend with other people. These minutes are literally <i>all we have</i>; the next minute you have is literally the only thing you lose when you die.<p>Talking to machines is only ever something I <i>have</i> to do so that I can put food on the table. I never remember the minutes that I have spent talking to a machine, they are not memorable because they are not <i>valuable</i>.
We have two paths before us as a species.<p>a. Decouple the value of human life from economic output.<p>b. Watch as the value of human life rapidly approaches zero.
> If you’re going to use an LLM to write me an email, I’d much rather you just send me the prompt; at least then I’d have an idea of what you actually meant to say.”<p>I'm excited for when Github starts letting me check in the chain-of-thought that produced a line of code, and git blame it like I can with commits.
<i>> The pathology of generative AI is that it too easily allows substantial form without discernible intent. That mistake is harder to make when creating by hand.</i><p>There's an obligatory xkcd about this: <a href="https://xkcd.com/1301/" rel="nofollow">https://xkcd.com/1301/</a>
these keep it real types obviously not having to deal with the day to day crap I deal with. using LLM to redraft emails/support calls for a particular large firewall turned an enfuriating endless feedback loop of makework support nonsense into 2 message resolution.<p>Sharing the prompts would have messed it all up for sure.<p>There are other instances where I have shared fairly direct, but not what I would consider rude or aggressive emails to people and had them freak out and I have no idea why, rewriting with LLMs to make them blander but convey the same message is very handy here.
First I'll say the disambiguation of discerning intent as the driver behind whether something is slop or not was very interesting.<p>But, I'll take one point in their article a step further you can just say "Humans are invaluable." instead.<p>I don't like defining humans in terms of valuable at all. Maybe because I feel like that word is very concrete and measured and to actually judge that on any one person requires perspective and capabilities none of us existing or have ever existed possess.<p>The complexity of the sum total of a human life is so great that I think its folly to try measure the value at all. Those who have tried are often reflected in history as the worst among us.
> The complexity of the sum total of a human life is so great that I think its folly to try measure the value at all<p>I think that's basically the same thing that the "Humans are Valuable" was getting at. Invaluable is just a different way of saying unmeasurable amounts of value
I was writing a similar comment to yours, thinking about "value to society", and value to loved ones, even negative value of enemies. I agree that talking about "value of humans" is not very useful.<p>Then I realized that on an individual level, everybody is infinitely valuable to themselves. You are your whole universe. From that perspective, I agree with the author that "Humans are valuable."<p>We have laws keeping humans alive and safe because we are valuable in that sense.<p>I don't agree that we need to go out of our way to preserve human art though, or their thoughts on the value of "creative artifacts". People will make art if they enjoy making it. Whether or not other people appreciate that art is irrelevant.
If you want an AI to do a specific task in a specific way, you'll always need to prompt it.
> “Humans are valuable.” You can just say it<p>As if that's hard. Here's the gut check: "Individual humans are inherently more valuable than corporations."
How do i drive traffic to my app
Good old morale philosophy here we go!
Humans are valuable, but I think we've been putting human output on a pedestal lately. There's a lot of human slop (as the author put it) on the internet. Slop businesses. Slop social media accounts. While there's very little in the world of AI I find that is better than what a human proficient in the skill with sufficient time can do, proficiency and time are in short supply by most people.<p>Cue that "I, Robot" meme about if a machine can make a symphony. Maybe AI is making it even easier, but intentless form is already everywhere without AI, if you look. Ever seen an Uwe Boll film?
The point going unsaid, in my opinion, is that we are quickly realizing that we'll need to identify with something that isn't work soon. We'll need to find value beyond money.<p>I think that horrifies people.
I asked Claude this:<p>> I want you to make something. It can be anything you want, I just want you to express yourself. Don't ask me any questions, just make whatever you want.<p>It thought about the chance to make something unconstrained, mused about how it's drawn to impermanence, and made this:<p><a href="https://www.pastery.net/ugschp/" rel="nofollow">https://www.pastery.net/ugschp/</a><p>How are we sure there's no intent there?
> How are we sure there's no intent there?<p>We are. Anthropomorphizing huge piles of numbers is a mistake. It did not "think about the chance to make something unconstrained", nor did it "muse about how it's drawn to impermanence", it pattern-matched to your prompt and produced a statistically probable response based on it's training data. Obviously, that's not to say that LLMs aren't useful or powerful - it's 2026, c'mon, of COURSE they are. And they can certainly be used for artistic purposes! But treating them like humans is a mistake, and it worries me how much people do. I suppose that's the natural consequence of the default interface to LLMs being a chat mimicking human interaction.
I like this. Thanks for sharing it.
[dead]
Citing "God created man in his own image" for robustness doesn't really land well. I'm not even an atheist either.
Here's a non-theistic argument:<p>I'm a big fan of the "veil of ignorance" philosophical thought experiment[1]. Let's say you are given the freedom to design a society and its moral code. Then you will be born into that society and subject to it. The trick is you don't know <i>who</i> you will born into. It's a roll of a dice. What kind of society would you design such that that seems like a winning game?<p>I'm fairly certain that when living in that society, you would wish to feel valued by others and that others believe you deserve a certain level of dignity and respect. Since you don't know who you will be born into, that suggests that you want a society where <i>everyone</i> is valued and granted dignity. That in turn extends even to people who are unfortunately not able to produce material objects with a level of skill superior to what technology can produce at some specific moment in time.<p>If you agree with that, then we should advocate for granting all people value and dignity "just because" and not because they happen to be better at producing bytes than an LLM. That way, even if the LLM gets better at producing those bytes, you are still valued.<p>[1]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position</a>
That line doesn't really work, since I'm not Sam Beckett and I won't suddenly Quantum Leap into anybody's body. Why shouldn't I take an asymmetric attitude? These kind of arguments try to derive impersonal values by starting from principles of self-interest. But there's no need, because self-interest <i>is</i> impersonal values, in disguise. Maybe you value getting personally improved in one way or another, like getting richer or more popular or stronger or acquiring offspring, but we can play the "why" game on that until it turns into some motivating abstract impersonal goody-goody value such as "I value people".<p>I mean, <i>why</i> do you wish to feel valued by others and get respect? Is it just so that they stay out of your way and give you things? What are you going to do next, with the space and the things? This assumption, that you care what they think of you, pretty much begs the question about valuing them back. What you value is what you want to do, and the other people are involved in that, and asymmetry doesn't help get it done, except very locally (that's privacy).<p>Personally I often wish that all the people would go away, but I value creating knowledge, and I have to admit that I'd be crap at doing that on my own, so <i>fine,</i> I value people really, you can all stay.
What a strange world - I'm an atheist, and the quoted argument resonates intensely with me, as somebody who believes in the innate value of humans even in the face of objectivity.
Yeah, it was a bit like when Chesterton is saying something robust, if you know what I mean. Wrong, but with a whole boulder of truth hidden in it.<p>Robust as in assertive, I suppose.
I complete agree humans have this innate value. But I don't see how the Genesis quote is useful to support that
If you believe in the objective truth of the quoted source, then that makes the claim that humans are valuable about as robust as any claim can be.<p>If you do not believe in the objective truth of the quoted source, you must still reckon with the fact that this is the (start of) the punchline of the opening narrative of the foundational text of the world's largest religion or religion family. (The punchline continues with the judgment that the universe, being merely good before humanity, is now <i>very</i> good <i>with</i> humanity.) That is to say, this is an incredibly widely and deeply held value by a vast number of people over millenia, not to mention the many others whose religions may contain analogous claims.<p>Remember, the statement "X is valuable" is always shorthand for "X is valuable to Y". In this case, at absolute worst we mean "humans are valuable to humans," if not also "humans are valuable to God".<p>It is a forceful argument when carried through.
> That is to say, this is an incredibly widely and deeply held value by a vast number of people over millenia, not to mention the many others whose religions may contain analogous claims.<p>So fallacious?
"Man created god in His image" shows more robustness to me, than humans are so invaluable that they would deign to create deities too.
Since it's too late to edit: I am <i>not</i> disagreeing that humans are innately valuable. I am disagreeing with citing Genesis for that.
OP's argument sounds like Peter Steinberger saying, don't send me a slop PR, instead give me your prompt.
“ Human dignity does not depend on a person’s abilities”<p>I mean, this is just begging the question. Many people disagree with this and disagree with the notion that humans are innately valuable. The blog post just seems like a lot of copium from somebody who really hopes he’s right.<p>Citing Genesis and an Encyclical might strengthen one’s argument for a particular demographic, but for many it will simply be unconvincing.<p>Like citation sources, no doubt some humans are valuable but whether they are or not is often relative.
> "Human dignity does not depend on a person's abilities"<p>That should be a hard line no one is allowed to cross. If you do, no logic will keep you from ending up in a very bad place.<p>For instance, I'm a big fan of Terry Pratchett's Discworld stories, where his humorous and compassionate tales comment on much of human experience. It's a fantasy world with wizards, trolls, dwarfs, vampires, etc.<p>In one book he goes into ghouls - obscure, despised and persecuted almost to extinction, but in the story it is found they secretly make beautiful ethereal music. So a concert is arranged to present the music, and all is well, the end. Except for my doubts - I mean, if they didn't make nice music, then it would be alright to dispose of them?<p>Benthamite utility has a particularly ugly underside to it, and it is easily converted into "disposal of negative value" of the nastiest kind. Which can only be stopped by a moral hard line, as stated.
[flagged]
An appeal to a religious text being presented as a <i>robust argument</i> borders on mockery. Especially after it follows a claim about how the position at hand is one that needs not to be qualified. Why are you qualifying it then? Is it because you (correctly) sense that you're presenting it as a fact of the world, rather than just as your opinion, and feel the gap in justification?
"Humans are valuable"<p>For what, and to whom?<p>This is a very anthropo-centric and hubristic view, in my opinion.<p>I dont think a human life inherently has any more value than anything else that possesses phenomenal consciousness<p>This of course makes me somewhat of a hypocrite as I eat meat, but you make some tradeoffs in moral resolve in the name of pragmatism and economy.
How is eating meat pragmatic or economic? A vegetarian diet is less expensive and just as healthy.
> than anything else that possesses phenomenal consciousness<p>Can you give an example of anything else you think might possess phenomenal consciousness?