alt Hacker NewsI feel for the author. Until recently it used to be that writing was a way for humans to project their thought into time and space for anyone to witness, or even to have a conversation. Oh how I miss that dead art of having a good one.
It used to be that you knew where you stand with colleagues just from how they write and how they speak. Had this Slack memo been written by someone who just learned enough English to get their first job? Or had it been crafted with the skill and precision of your Creative Writing college professor's wet nightmare muse?
But now that's all been strangely devalued and put into question.
LLMs are having conversations with each other thanks to the effort of countless human beings in between.
God created men, Sam Colt (and Altman) made them equal.
I have a vision of some future advertisement going more-or-less like so:
Exec A: Computer, write an email to Exec B, to let them know that we will meet our projections this month. Also mention that the two of us should get together for lunch soon.
AI: Okay, here is an email that...[120 words]
[later]
Exec B: Computer, summarize my emails
AI: Exec A says that they will meet their projections this month. He also wants to get together for lunch soon.
In my vision, they are presenting this unironically as a good thing. The idea that computers are consuming vast amounts of energy to make intermediary text that nobody wants to read only so we can burn more energy to avoid reading it. All while voice dictation of text messages has existed since the 2010s.
It gets to the basic question... what is the real point of communication?