alt Hacker NewsI hate when people hijack progressive language - like in your case the language of accessibility - for cheap marketing and hype.
Writing is one of the most accessible forms of expression. We were living in a world where even publishing was as easy as imaginable - sure, not actually selling/profiting, but here’s a secret, even most bestselling authors have either at least one other job, or intense support from their close social circle.
What you do to write good is you start by writing bad. And you do it for ages. LLMs not only don’t help here, they ruin it. And they don’t help people write because they’re still not writing. It just derails people who might, otherwise, maybe start actually writing.
Framing your expensive toy that ruins everything as an accessibility device is absurd.
Replies
It's probably true that it reduces the barrier to entry, you don't refute that point in your post. You just call it cheap marketing and hype.
It basically boils down to "I want the external validation of being seen as a good writer, without any of the internal growth and struggle needed to get there."
I'm anon, but also the farthest thing from a progressive, so I find this post amusing.
I don't disagree with a lot of what you're saying but I also have a different frame.
Even if we take your claim that LLMs don't make people better writers as true (which I think there's plenty to argue with), that's not the point at all.
What I'm saying is people are communicating better. For most ideas, writing is just a transport vessel for ideas. And people now have tools to communicate better than they would have been.
Most people aren't trying to become good writers. That's true before, and true now.
On the other hand, this argument probably isn't worth having. If your frame is that LLMs are expensive toys that ruin everything -- well, that's quite an aggressive posture to start with and is both unlikely to bear a useful conversation or a particularly delightful future for you.