Simon Willison

I'd love to hear more opinions on generative AI from people who aren't confident writers

I feel like most of the commentary I see is from people who write with confidence - almost by definition, since writing confidently is an important prerequisite for widely broadcasting your opinions on things

May 9, 2023 at 7:23pmWeb
Show threadSimon WillisonMay 9, 2023

I have a hunch that there are lots of people out there for whom the ability to have a computer help them write is a massively valuable thing, but their stories have so far not attracted much attention in the wider AI discourse

I'd love to upgrade that hunch with actual information

Show threadSimon WillisonMay 9, 2023

It's interesting to compare this to generative images, where I've seen plenty of opinions that people don't "deserve" the ability to produce images of that quality without putting in significant effort first

Trying to apply the same argument to writing feels more callous to me

Show threadPamela FoxMay 9, 2023
@simon yeah interesting. especially since LLM-aided writing could help non-fluent-English speakers overcome discrimination based on non-fluency. it'd be great if we could get LLMs to those folks.
Show threadFrederik ElwertMay 9, 2023
@pamelafox @simon As a non-native English speaker, I really do appreciate tools like this. #DeepLWrite has been tremendously useful for me (although I'm not sure if it necessarily fits under the LLM umbrella).
Show threadErica "digifox" Kovac šŸŒāš›ļøāš”May 9, 2023

@simon I'd argue that having a computer write for you is surrender, not a tool. I don't consider myself a confident writer, but the idea of handing over any of my writing to a computer that isn't tailored to my linguistic and cultural background is uncomfortable, and it should make everyone uncomfortable. Writing is more than just filling space between ideas.

It's not about "deserving" to produce things without effort, it's about the fact that the ensuing production is mostly bland filler without any unique traits that identify it as "yours."

If our society requires that people generate massive amounts of writing where they are OK with their own voice being replaced by the global-mean-internet-immersed-English-speaker voice, then I'd argue we should fix those systems instead.

Show threadzellynMay 9, 2023

@digifox @simon > If our society requires that people generate massive amounts of writing where they are OK with their own voice being replaced by the global-mean-internet-immersed-English-speaker voice, then I'd argue we should fix those systems instead.

It does, a lot. And it's not going to change anytime soon. And if even putting non-white-people-looking names on resumes has a large effect on hiring, imagine how useful generated or auto-improved writing could be.

Show threadzellynMay 9, 2023

@digifox @simon Even as a software engineer, where many argue that good writing is vital, we are asked for a lot of "bland" or "unimportant" writing.

Interestingly, LLMs are quite capable of replacing "bland filler" with something much punchier!

Show threadErica "digifox" Kovac šŸŒāš›ļøāš”May 9, 2023

@zellyn A good design doc cannot be written by an LLM. If you have sufficiently specified the design document for the machine to generate, you've done all the work already. (Or if you've then spent time editing/rewording it afterwards.) Not to mention the act of writing a design doc in and of itself improves your decision-making.

Asking your colleagues to read an LLM-puffed-up design doc, or postmortem, or PRD, or whatever is disrespecting their time.

Show threadzellynMay 9, 2023
@digifox Right, of course an LLM can't (currently) actually create a design. But if I were trying to write one in, say, another language that I speak poorly, it would be worth either using translation or, if I were fluent enough for conversation but not writing, getting my thoughts down in some form and asking an LLM to fix up the grammar, or even summarize.
Show threadErica "digifox" Kovac šŸŒāš›ļøāš”May 9, 2023

@zellyn "fixing up the grammar" might be a useful application of LLMs, but generated whole-cloth from ChatGPT like people frequently propose and do is a real problem.

Summarization might be an interesting use for a tl;dr section, but anything longer than a tl;dr is likely to be a pain in the butt to edit for correctness and flow.

Show threadMudManMay 10, 2023

@digifox @simon As a non-native English speaker working in a global cultural industry I have terrible news for you about that requirement.

For the record, similar concerns have been put forward about many writing technologies before, ranging from autocorrect, text messages and spelling checks to... you know, the printing press.

Oh, and for the record, the current LLMs do alright in non-English languages without further training, although noticeably worse than in English, which is interesting.

Show threadCottonEyedJoMay 9, 2023
@simon I have a disability, and being able to use plain language to tell something how I want my writing changed has been a real accessibility breakthrough for me
Show threadCelesteBancosMay 9, 2023
@simon I think it feels callous because of how our society judges people with a lack of writing ability a lot more harshly than it does those who lack artistic ability.
Show threadMatthew MartinMay 9, 2023

@simon WaPo article leads with story about guy with Dyslexia using ChatGPT to write his messages/clean up the text.

Too early for studies and like you said, these people aren't the people you'd expect to have blogs and post their own experiences.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/12/10/chatgpt-ai-helps-written-communication/

Stumbling with their words, some people let AI do the talking

A machine that talks like a person has long been a science fiction fantasy. Now itā€™s closer to reality than ever before.

The Washington Post
Show threadmarioMay 9, 2023

@mistersql @simon

I'm a dyslexic, and for me it's a game changer!

And I'm not the only one who thinks so :)

https://www.virgin.com/branson-family/richard-branson-blog/ai-aggregates-but-dyslexia-innovates

AI aggregates, but dyslexia innovates | Virgin

AI aggregates, but dyslexia innovates

Virgin.com
Show threadSimon WillisonMay 9, 2023
@mistersql wow, that story is from just ten days after ChatGPT was released - I'd love to see an updated version of that story now ChatGPT is nearly six months old - cc @willoremus
Show threadMatt CampbellMay 9, 2023
@simon Not sure if I qualify for being a less than confident writer. I've been programming for a while, and I can write articles when needed. But about a month ago, I started playing around with using ChatGPT to write fiction. The last time I had written a complete short story was in high school. Now with ChatGPT I can explore a story idea, prompting it to write each scene.
Show threadMatt CampbellMay 9, 2023
@simon Now I'm working on a novella as a side project. I still need to do quite a bit of editing, and some heavy rewriting, but I think ChatGPT made it easier to start playing with writing a story.
Show threadGlyphMay 9, 2023
@simon This feels like one of those things that is aesthetically presented as liberatory but rapidly becomes a stigmatizing class marker, sold only to people who can't tell the difference. Like an MLM. "Finally, the benefit of (owning your own business|confident writing) is available to the masses! It's easy to get started, just pay (your upline|ChatGPT's escalating costs)." But no actual investor is fooled by MLM garbage products and nowhere that requires quality writing will be fooled by LLMs
Show threadMatt CampbellMay 9, 2023
@glyph @simon Re: "ChatGPT's escalating costs", I wonder how much more expensive ChatGPT Plus will get.
Show threadSimon WillisonMay 9, 2023
@glyph sure, but there are SO many situations that don't require quality writing: they need clear, boring, uncreative writing that clearly communicates some information
Show threadErica "digifox" Kovac šŸŒāš›ļøāš”May 9, 2023
@simon @glyph Yep, and those scenarios in most situations should not require enough filler/bridging material to be any longer than the prompt you provide to ChatGPT. If they do, we should fix that.
Show threadSimon WillisonMay 9, 2023
@digifox my hunch is that reqching less confident writers how to use ChatGPT is a lot more realistic than convincing society as a whole to stop requiring formal letters!
Show threadGlyphMay 9, 2023
@simon I guess I share your curiosity here, because I am curious if LLMs *can* provide this, and what experiences this type of user has. I feel like I should withhold details to protect the accused here, but I've had a few interactions where someone has attempted to work around their lack of english skills by pasting LLM output at me and I immediately clocked it because it was full of meandering fluff and the substance itself was confusingly ambiguous, as well as just wrong in places.
Show threadMatt CampbellMay 9, 2023

@simon @glyph Well, the person needing to do that communication is already writing natural language in the form of a prompt, so for the kind of writing you describe, they could just as well write the information itself with no fluff. In an ideal world, anyway.

Yes, I'm playing with ChatGPT for creative writing, and might even publish the (heavily edited and in some places rewritten) result. But some of my original skepticism about the utility of LLMs for non-fiction writing still remains.

Show threadGlyphMay 9, 2023
@matt @simon I have also experimented with it for creative writing prompts and it can be hilarious and inspiring. But this parallels the story I have found about expertise level with programming as well. Experts can gesture vaguely at it and have it spit out wrong and misleading garbage, but the few real clues present in the sludge are enough to make it valuable. Novices give it a prompt and think it has solved their problem, which later embarrasses them horribly.
Show threadGlyphMay 9, 2023
@matt @simon I just used it yesterday to help with a relatively simple X.509 certificate parsing puzzle, and it gave me a hilariously wrong example full of terrible security bugs and outright crashes, *but* it included all the terms I was blanking on and allowed me to quickly correct it into something close to what I wanted. I cannot imagine how a new CS grad would have interacted with this output though.
Show threadSimon WillisonMay 9, 2023
@glyph @matt Maybe that's a self-healing flow then: how does the way a novice uses LLMs change after they've been horribly embarrassed?
Show threadMatt CampbellMay 9, 2023
@simon @glyph I guess that depends on whether we're talking about mere embarrassment or something more high-stakes.
Show threadGlyphMay 9, 2023
@matt @simon my concern is that itā€™s more like the downward spiral of MLMs or PUAs: ā€œI just donā€™t have the right hustle / the right lines / the right promptsā€ where novices lean harder on it because they think its failures are highlighting their own deficiencies (and thus their own need for the tool) rather than identifying it as a problem *with* the tool.
Show threadJens BeyerMay 9, 2023
@simon totally, for me, business emails, reports and such texts are usually horrible to start to write. But with chatgpt (and dolly locally on my laptop now) I can get a starting point easier. Still not game changing, I am not mass advertising now, but a little better.
Show threadMichael McCallisterMay 9, 2023
@simon My son-in-law told me he's been using ChatGPT to help him write email to co-workers and clients. He gets more and better replies as a result, he says.
Show threadheckjMay 9, 2023
@simon FWIW Iā€™ve had several writer friends indicate they never wanted LLMs to ā€œwrite their workā€, but found tremendous value in requesting a critique of their work - acting as a set of suggestions for identifying, common and uncommon writing problems.
Show threadscottmMay 9, 2023
@simon I have a friend whose first language is not English who has had the recent need to write polite but firm letters to landlords, etc., recently. He used ChatGPT to construct letters that used that distinctive sub-dialect of Etiquette English that he wouldnā€™t have been able to write on his own.
Show threadJoseph A di PaolantonioMay 9, 2023
@simon Generative Pre-trained Transformers #GPT and Large Language Models #LLM are useful tools, especially for those who are not, or no longer consider themselves, confident writers. I like open source tools, such as from @huggingface that are transparent about their training sets and models ā€” with the hope of understanding the biases and dangers of the tool. I donā€™t like calling any of these advanced computational statistics and machine learning #ML tools as ā€œartificial intelligenceā€ #AI
Show threadMarc KhouryMay 10, 2023
@jadp @simon @huggingface don't worry, once the next step of AI comes around, we'll stop calling LLMs and GPTs that way. See how we stop calling expert rule-based systems AIs even though we used to.
Show threadJoseph A di PaolantonioMay 10, 2023
@mkhoury @simon @huggingface strong and weak AI became expert systems. Yep, yep.
Show threadTom MorrisMay 9, 2023

@simon Even if one is able to write confidently, generative AI may come in useful for churning out really boring or tiresome written makework that's of minimal value.

Cover letters and personal statements, for instance.

https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/3/8/23618509/chatgpt-generative-ai-cover-letter

AI apps like ChatGPT might finally kill the cover letter

Jobs still require cover letters. Apps like ChatGPT can help.

Vox
Show threadTom ScottMay 9, 2023
@simon similarly I reckon there is something for writers who donā€™t have easy access to an editor eg people who donā€™t work in that sort of company, early career, less socially confident etc.
Show threadIgor Piskunov May 9, 2023

@simon

Hi! I'm not a writer, but recently I've started using ChatGPT to enhance my texts. This doesn't mean that the AI generates my ideas or dictates how I present information, but it's incredibly helpful in refining my sentences and conveying my thoughts effectively.

Midjourney also may assist you with the task at hand, but ultimately, you retain control over the final outcome.

The potential it unlocks is evident to me, especially since this text was produced with the aid of AI.

Show threadAdrian LansdownMay 9, 2023

@simon Battling dyslexia throughout my life, I've relied on the heroic support of word processors, spell check, and eventually Grammarly to rescue my spelling and grammar.
Now, ChatGPT swoops in, empowering me to transform basic text into captivating, laser-focused content for enthralling podcast show notes and electrifying social media posts!

Umm Ok, itā€™s not perfectly me but truely helps me every day

Show threadThomas Buck May 9, 2023
@simon Iā€™m a programmer / data nerd, and write the worldā€™s most boring write ups of otherwise really interesting stats. ChatGPT has made an incredible difference to my day to day work.
Show threadBenMay 9, 2023
@simon I remember stories by twitter bros about how they set up ChatGPT processes for repairmen etc who struggled with customer acquisition due to their bad writing. Would be nice to have more than ads thoughā€¦
Show threadAlex WhiteMay 11, 2023
@simon there was an interesting blog post by @Edent which looked at the progress of spellcheck and grammar check in his lifetime. Worth a look, he makes some interesting points https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2022/11/is-it-cheating-to-use-spell-check/
Is it cheating to use spell check?

When I was a kid, our school had one computer per classroom. Luxury! Teachers had long-since given up on the state of my handwriting. So I got special dispensation to write up some of my work on whatever primitive word processor was installed on the PC. With one caveat: no spell check! Which, even as [ā€¦]

Terence Edenā€™s Blog