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It is not a zero sum game.

I have always had a very idiosyncratic way of expressing myself, one that many people do not understand. Just as having a smartphone has changed my relationship to appointments - turning me into a prompt and reliable "cyborg" - LLMs have made it possible for me to communicate with a broader cross section of people.

I write what I have to say, I ask LLMs for editing and suggestions for improvement, and then I send that. So here is the challenge for you: did I follow that process this time?

I promise to tell the truth.





I think there's a difference between using an LLM as an editor and asking the LLM to write something for you. The output in the former I find to still have a far clearer tonal fingerprint than the latter.

And whose to say your idiosyncratic expressions wouldn't find an audience as it changes over time? Just you saying that makes me curious to read something you wrote.


Not the GP, but I'm a millennial who leans on cultural references and has a bit of verbal flourish that I think comes from a diet of ironic, quirky, dialogue-heavy media in the early 2000s, stuff like Firefly, Veronica Mars, and Pushing Daisies, not to mention 90s Tarantino, John Cusack films, and so on.

I've never given it too much thought, it's just... the way I communicate, and most people in my life don't give much thought to it either. But I recently switched jobs, and a few people there remarked on it, and I've also recently been corresponding with someone overseas who is an intermediate-level English speaker and says I sometimes hurt their brain.

Not making a value judgment either way on whether it's "sophisticated" or whatever, but it is I think part of my personality, and if I used LLM editing/translation I would want it to be only in the short term, and certainly not as something


Transformation seems reasonable for that purpose. And if we were friends, I'd rather read your idiosyncratic raw output.

At some point, generation breaks a social contract that I'm using my energy and attention consuming something that another human spent their energy and attention creating.

In that case I'd rather read the prompt the human brain wrote, or if I have to consume it, have an LLM consolidate it for me.


I should probably do that too. I once wrote an email that to me was just filled with impersonal information. The receiver was somebody I did not personally know. I later learned I made that person cry. Which I obviously did not intend. I did not swear or call anyone names. I basically described what I believe they did, what is wrong about that and what they should do instead.

If someone cries about an email you sent, the problem isn’t with you.

I would be interested to see an example of a before and after on this. I do think LLMs as editors and rewriters can be useful sometimes, but I usually only ever see them used as a means to puff out an idea into longer prose which is really mostly counterproductive.

I think it can be useful as a tone-check sometimes, like show me how a frustrated or adversarial reader is going to interpret this thing I'm about to send/post.

Here's my guess- your post reflects your honest opinion on the matter, with some LLM help. It elaborated on your smartphone analogy, and may have tightened up the text overall.

LLMs have now robbed you of the opportunity to make your communication clearer

I don't see signs of LLM writing in your comment so I'll have to guess no.

If you didn't intentionally try and trick us, then yes, you used an LLM.

Please share what you told the LLM! I can't be the only curious one.

You didn't, but you've learned.



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