This is hardly a requiem for writing alone. There is nothing uniquely tragic about the demise of wordsmithery. Homogeneity comes for us all.
When everyone wants to "democratise skills", there is this insidious assumption that this development constitutes a monotonic improvement. It doesn't -- why are we so blind to horseshoes? But these are the loud voices of a bunch of petulant chicks with their beaks open demanding food, without concerning themselves with how it is procured.
It's an apocalypse very much of our own invention -- or rather, of our maladaptive strive for convenience.
Interesting as always but the worry in a case like yours strikes me as a bit overblown, at least for the time being, absent some breakthrough where we get artificial but really interesting people. Your stuff has always been niche, and maybe there are some "midwits" propping up the numbers but they aren't your raison d'etre. I do see the worry of Substack as a whole having a reputation for being all slop but there is existing knowledge of particular accounts that are good and that won't just go away. There may be a case for moving platform if Substack gets overly associated with slop though I guess.
Anyway, I know you get a bit down sometimes and what you do can sometimes feel futile or underrewarded, but don't let that make you overly pessimistic.
I was finding this convincing until you started talking about how people like LinkedIn. It's been a byword for over-inflated dullness ever since it started. I just saw another meme on this yesterday, with a totally mundane fact (something like "I cleaned the toilet") puffed up into a LinkedIn post "I'm thrilled to share my latest achievement with you ..."
I was still waking up from sleep when I read this so I somehow missed the big header announcing that the second half of the article was AI. But by about a third of the way reading through that segment I thought it was so poorly written and unlike you that I just gave up and scrolled to the comments. So I guess at least for now, you’re still winning out against the AI writing.
I really enjoy your writing and it inspired me to start posting on here as well. As someone who works in the AI field, I'm considerably more bearish than you on AI writing.
The main reason is that I read primarily to connect with other humans. There's nothing more thrilling to me than reading an excellent blog post and finding a typo, and I would happily pay $1,000 a year to permanently excise all forms of AI slop from my feed.
In my opinion, it's less about the quality and more about the fact that AI slop is untethered to reality. Even when I'm reading something as impersonal as a research paper or model system card, I want to know: What's top of mind for top researchers? What's not? What sections did they include and omit? How did they frame the fact that the model is literally evaluating itself?
I'm terrified of a world where important questions like these are obscured by a deluge of generic, unmotivated LLM slop. And I think discerning readers will be increasingly willing to pay for genuine human writing - I know that I certainly am.
Insightful. Your point about Substack being untimely, not early but late, really hit home. It makes you consider how fast the tech landscape changes. AI saturation is a very real threat to human-generated content spaces. A somber but neccessary read.
A VERY very good peace, but as with book I never know when the next will be, what happened to author will there be more content, if you some people just put a tip bar at the bottom by providing there bank details, it is also not a solution. A good book can cost like a 3$ also there are subscriptions services in russia that are just fabrics of content, and I love that, quality reader by a famous voice actor (ad they also will be emulated in the end game) and everythin, and even there I already have too many books, too many youtube videos to watch, but I came back for them. There are even old famuos recordings of a very well writen and narreted peaces. Strengh to you my brother!
This is hardly a requiem for writing alone. There is nothing uniquely tragic about the demise of wordsmithery. Homogeneity comes for us all.
When everyone wants to "democratise skills", there is this insidious assumption that this development constitutes a monotonic improvement. It doesn't -- why are we so blind to horseshoes? But these are the loud voices of a bunch of petulant chicks with their beaks open demanding food, without concerning themselves with how it is procured.
It's an apocalypse very much of our own invention -- or rather, of our maladaptive strive for convenience.
Ironically, the AI’s take in the latter half is almost unreadable.
Interesting as always but the worry in a case like yours strikes me as a bit overblown, at least for the time being, absent some breakthrough where we get artificial but really interesting people. Your stuff has always been niche, and maybe there are some "midwits" propping up the numbers but they aren't your raison d'etre. I do see the worry of Substack as a whole having a reputation for being all slop but there is existing knowledge of particular accounts that are good and that won't just go away. There may be a case for moving platform if Substack gets overly associated with slop though I guess.
Anyway, I know you get a bit down sometimes and what you do can sometimes feel futile or underrewarded, but don't let that make you overly pessimistic.
I was finding this convincing until you started talking about how people like LinkedIn. It's been a byword for over-inflated dullness ever since it started. I just saw another meme on this yesterday, with a totally mundane fact (something like "I cleaned the toilet") puffed up into a LinkedIn post "I'm thrilled to share my latest achievement with you ..."
I was still waking up from sleep when I read this so I somehow missed the big header announcing that the second half of the article was AI. But by about a third of the way reading through that segment I thought it was so poorly written and unlike you that I just gave up and scrolled to the comments. So I guess at least for now, you’re still winning out against the AI writing.
"The lone and level sands stretch far away."
I really enjoy your writing and it inspired me to start posting on here as well. As someone who works in the AI field, I'm considerably more bearish than you on AI writing.
The main reason is that I read primarily to connect with other humans. There's nothing more thrilling to me than reading an excellent blog post and finding a typo, and I would happily pay $1,000 a year to permanently excise all forms of AI slop from my feed.
In my opinion, it's less about the quality and more about the fact that AI slop is untethered to reality. Even when I'm reading something as impersonal as a research paper or model system card, I want to know: What's top of mind for top researchers? What's not? What sections did they include and omit? How did they frame the fact that the model is literally evaluating itself?
I'm terrified of a world where important questions like these are obscured by a deluge of generic, unmotivated LLM slop. And I think discerning readers will be increasingly willing to pay for genuine human writing - I know that I certainly am.
Insightful. Your point about Substack being untimely, not early but late, really hit home. It makes you consider how fast the tech landscape changes. AI saturation is a very real threat to human-generated content spaces. A somber but neccessary read.
A VERY very good peace, but as with book I never know when the next will be, what happened to author will there be more content, if you some people just put a tip bar at the bottom by providing there bank details, it is also not a solution. A good book can cost like a 3$ also there are subscriptions services in russia that are just fabrics of content, and I love that, quality reader by a famous voice actor (ad they also will be emulated in the end game) and everythin, and even there I already have too many books, too many youtube videos to watch, but I came back for them. There are even old famuos recordings of a very well writen and narreted peaces. Strengh to you my brother!