Finally, LLM-generated prose undermines a social contract of sorts: absent LLMs, it is presumed that of the reader and the writer, it is the writer that has undertaken the greater intellectual exertion. (That is, it is more work to write than to read!) For the reader, this is important: should they struggle with an idea, they can reasonably assume that the writer themselves understands it — and it is the least a reader can do to labor to make sense of it.

So our guideline is to generally not use LLMs to write, but this shouldn’t be thought of as an absolute — and it doesn’t mean that an LLM can’t be used as part of the writing process. Just please: consider your responsibility to yourself, to your own ideas — and to the reader.

http://rfd.shared.oxide.computer/rfd/0576

I find the above quote so wonderful, and if you have time I cannot recommend enough that you read the entire post from Oxide.

Last week, I received my first LLM generated email response.

I cannot know for sure it was LLM generated, but there were hints in the prose, content and timing. A large portion of the email was written in markdown – which is something no human does in an email, and then there was the “You’re absolutely right!! … " response we’ve all seen in our chats. Finally, it was also filled with a general level of ’excitement’ most humans never have, and the entire email lacked a ‘soul’.

I had stopped responding to this person. I had lost any respect I had for the sender. If I wanted to get a response from Gemini, I would go to Gemini myself.

If you’re unwilling to expend effort in communicating your thoughts, don’t expect someone else to expend effort trying to digest them. It’s both disrespectful to the user and to you as a writer.

Writing is thinking clearly.

If you abdicate this to an LLM, you’ve stopped thinking, and your ‘content’ does not deserve anyone’s time. With code this is even more pronounced. A pull-request, even a badly written one, if created by a human, is deserving of at least a review – but a pull-request written automatically by AI in seconds, with minimal effort is deserving of nothing!

This article further crystallized it for me.

Amazon’s writing culture was a remarkable thing, a culture that is now being eaten alive by GenAI slop (apparently!). Writing is a wonderful thing; you can bluff your way through a slide-deck or a verbal presentation, but it’s impossible to bluff your way through a written 6-page document.

A well-written article is a sign of clarity. If you’re unable to write one, it just means you haven’t thought things through yet. Writing (and rewriting) your thoughts over and over again clarifies the thoughts in your mind and solidifies your understanding.

So if you send me AI slop, I will disregard it. I will not expend my energies on something you yourself did not feel worthy of your attention. I suspect many others feel the same way – so think wisely before you allow a bot to send your emails.