On AI writing (bolkunov.com)

63 pointsby dbolkunov2 hours ago25 comments

jimbokun 2 hours ago

The painting at the bottom of the post is actually a really good representation of what is lost with readers and writers both using AI.

caaqil 36 minutes ago

It's baffling why that painting is there at all (symbolism blah blah, I get it). We should be happy to lose such things to AI slop. It's grotesque (duh).

bayindirh 29 minutes ago

Honestly asking, are you serious? If yes, can you elaborate on it?

sho_hn 27 minutes ago

It's a quite famous painting called The Lovers by Magritte, and it's usually interpreted either as meaning that you can never truly know even the people you love, or just some other kind of frustration over being unable to connect.

I would say putting it in this context makes for an interesting reinterpretation.

Well-known paintings are sometimes used as metaphors and shorthand. I think it's fun.

I'd say that you get a strong emotional or visceral reaction out of it (it's grotesque, you don't like it, etc.) may speak to its power. It was perhaps drawn out of an emotion you are simply recognizing.

caaqil 8 minutes ago

This falls under "symbolism blah blah, I get it" so it's semantically null.

On a side note, I do love the art cope: not only are you sophisticated and therefore can congratulate yourself if you "get it", even if others "hate it", it still accomplished its goal because it got "reaction" . It's immune to falsifiability so it's just a good gambit; no one can resist it.

bunderbunder 4 minutes ago

Say you don't like art without saying you don't like art.

999900000999 20 minutes ago

I just wish AI was brief.

Don’t add filler words. Be straight to the point.

dbolkunov 14 minutes ago

I think to be brief you need to be precise and it's hard for AI as it's not sure

bunderbunder 7 minutes ago

LLMs are still just next token predictors. Blasting out words in a forward-only way is how you write a first draft. It's a form of thinking out loud. The ideas are still forming while you generate the text. Generating the text forms the ideas.

Communicating well requires editing. Editing requires going backwards, not just forwards. It requires turning things over in your head. It requires rethinking connections. It requires knowing when one word says more than an entire sentence. It requires remembering what you were trying to say. It requires working memory.

LLMs don't have much of that. They can mimic some bits with loops, but usually not very well.

fxwin an hour ago

> When you know the writer personally, it becomes harder to see the text from the author’s perspective if you know it’s not her style.

I think this is why I absolutely hate reading AI-generated PR descriptions, Readmes or wiki entries at work. I work with these people every day, we talk to each other in meetings, but then I read perfectly formatted Slop in the freshly opened PR that has your name and picture attached to it, yet it's almost impossible for me to care about it because (subconsciously or not) i can't bring myself to see it as yours. Same or even worse for reviews.

dbolkunov an hour ago

For me long texts (internal docs) were definitely the hardest part. However, my colleagues were nice and all agreed to limit AI usage for writing docs that are for other people to read (and not for agents).

stingraycharles an hour ago

We agreed not to use AI-based communication internally, including PR descriptions. I’d rather not have a description at all than an AI-based one.

I don’t understand how people aren’t embarrassed putting those kind of PRs online tbh.

paulpauper 24 minutes ago

AI assisted writing is so popular despite being inferior, because writing well is inherently hard. Good writing requires research, organization, style/grammar and other aspects like "turn of phrase", and all have to work together. Sit down to write something and it can feel overwhelming looking at the blank page and not knowing what to do.

verdverm 2 hours ago

Interesting perspectives, a couple of questions that I've been pondering, and am currently curious of your perspectives on

1. It seems we are starting to see more people write like ai, is this something you have measured yet? (I never used em-dash (big fan of the parens), and I resisted for a while, re: ai, but now am trying to use them appropriately)

2. I've been reading from paper again, and my own writing style is evolving, is this too something you can/have measured?

tunesmith 2 hours ago

I think someone "writing like ai" is not really the same thing as the flaws we see from ai. "Writing like ai" might mean we adopt certain conventions in how we communicate or frame ideas, but the ai flaws are more along the lines of weasel words or bullshittery; avoiding incisive ideas in favor of fluffiness, or in favor of pithy-sounding phrases that communicate nothing. That's a problem that humans have had long before AI.

verdverm 2 hours ago

Indeed, I'm currently reading Gravitas: Communicate with Confidence, Influence, and Authority by Caroline Goyder. It's phenomenal and I highly recommend it.

boomlinde an hour ago

> (I never used em-dash (big fan of the parens), and I resisted for a while, re: ai, but now am trying to use them appropriately)

I started using the emdash after learning of the compose key feature of X11. Not tuning the emdash dial to 11 or anything, but occasionally. Now I avoid it to spare myself the indignity of someone confusing me for a chatbot. In general I prefer a more vulgar style of writing as a direct response to those chatbot tics.

Of course, that now distinct LLM style was kind of a thing before, too, but if you weren't writing some bullshit on SEO on Medium or congratulating yourself for your achievements on LinkedIn, using elements of that style wasn't such a source of confusion. Now the chatbots will frame everything as though it's an insight on B2B sales strategies that struck them when they tripped on a dog leash while jogging to work.

verdverm an hour ago

your comment was a pleasure to read :]

epihelix 19 minutes ago

Some of us old enough to learn to type on keyboards without compose keys (and OSes pre unicode) learnt to use multiple dashes for en- and em-dashes -- like this. Like two spaces after a period, this is ingrained muscle memory that I don't consciously think about when typing.

I'm very glad of this now, because it means that I can still write with en- and em-dashes, while also demonstrating that my writing is not LLM-generated.

dbolkunov an hour ago

Definitely noticed influence of AI on my writing (and probably on my speaking as well). I probably do not like most things I pick up from it unconsciously. However, when I use AI to critique or spellcheck me - I find it's much more useful and that I've learnt something. Though it's not exactly AI writing then.

paulpauper 24 minutes ago

It is interesting how despite huge and rapid advances in coding or math, AI still sucks at writing and is (mostly) obvious, at least if people are trying to pay attention. it cannot fool pangram, even though it's not clear exactly what it flags as being AI. Maybe one day AI will close the gap.

sho_hn 21 minutes ago

I've had some similar thoughts, I find it super fascinating how easy it is for most people to identify AI writing.

In the past two decades of CG etc. untold numbers of words have been spilt on the subject of the Uncanny Valley and you always get this explanation of how the brain has dedicated pattern matching circuitry and can easily flag when faces feel "off".

How interesting that the same is true for language. Turns out we're not just visual-heavy animals, but also very symbolic ones.

zemo 19 minutes ago

i don't see the value in AI closing that gap any more than i see the value in AI closing the gap on talking to my friends for me, or closing the gap on watching a movie for me, or closing the gap on taking a walk on the beach for me, etc, etc, etc; the document is the artifact of having written but the artifact is not the value

dbolkunov 11 minutes ago

I think in coding and math you have a formal system to say what is good and what is bad, while with writing it's much more subjective and thus harder to optimise. Also I believe many of AI advancement in 2026 are linked more to the agents than to models and agents benefit a lot from having environment with clear reward functions

hungryhobbit an hour ago

Claude resay that as if I was a mentally challenged child (but without your dumb metaphors) using as few words as possible in your best imitation of a Human speaking casually without jargon and ...

(What it feels like to try and get a decent sentence out of my AI.)