Re: https://infosec.exchange/users/lcamtuf/statuses/116901998490591428

I don't find it surprising that people send LLM-generated docs, publish LLM-generated blog posts, etc. Writing is a chore and there's this big button labeled "get it done".

Writing can be many things, but a chore? That's not something I entirely understand. I don't mean to sound like I'm hollering at this single point from this person's post, but it's a sentiment I've seen expressed before and this was a convenient example (and what I say next is in the spirit of and amplifies the further point they make!)

There's an emerging theme in my last few posts today concerning means vs. ends. Science as a production process that spits out knowledge products. Writing as the necessary chore sitting between a person and "having another blog post" or "citation count go up".

Overfocus on the ends can lead one to think of the means as chores. Science is slow and boring, let's use AI to spit out the Good Science Stuff faster. Writing is a chore, let's use the AI to spit out Documents. Heck let's chain them together and have the machine do Good Science Stuff and then spit out Documents about it that we feed back into the machine and hey we can send the Documents to Funding Agencies to get Funding for our Good Science Stuff and spit out even more Documents so that...and...to...so...[infinite random string]. Wait what were we doing again?

Personally I think it's poisonous to focus mostly on ends. The absurdity is a clue. If I believed in souls I'd say it's bad for them. I guess I find the mindset confusing because long ago I came to think that the means are the ends. There are no other ends but the means.

Yes, I well understand there are certain kinds of mandated writing that are tedious and unwanted.

#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #LLMs #writing