AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)

Its a bit lame in 2026, to attack the messenger instead of the content of the message.

Its awfully similiar to bitching about reading mails on a computer and attacking the sender.

The virtue signaling is beyond me. I dont care about AI;DR or TL;DR.

Give me good content. And I will read it.

It's now faster to write than to read. A first in human history

The irony here is that his very own post reads (to me) as AI slop. Take this line:

> I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Why? Because there is growing grumbling among everyone about AI writing. And it’s not just others; it’s me!

Classic AI "its not just, its..."

Not to be confused with Aider.

> TL;DR (too long; didn’t read) was the solution for social media.

> AI;DR (AI; didn’t read) is the solution for AI slop.

Maybe I'm the odd one out here and didn't plumb the worse-depths of social media, but I feel I need to defend good old TLDR as a slightly different, and less-hostile animal.

It can be a moral condemnation of the poster, where they're disrespecting everyone else's time by posting something big and vague... But it usually isn't. At least half the time TLDR is someone providing a summary because they think it'd be useful (even of it's sometimes a hostile interpretation.)

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This is HW;DR: human-written, did read

I'll probably be downvoted to the bottom of the ocean, but I feel this needs to be said:

- Why does it matter who or what wrote a thing? And how would you know if the /content/ is worthwhile, unless you read it...

- The ability to "detect AI" is imperfect at best. 90% AI written? 5%? How would you know, unless you read it....

- If you didn't read it, then why brag about it with an "AI;DR"?

- If you are wrong, and you announce it to the world, how would it feel to someone who spent a lot of time and energy writing?

I submit pretty much the opposite of this, but it didn't gain any traction: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49332291

Eventually, AI will be a far better writer than a human is, and then nobody will want to read the human generated subpar writing.

AI writing is rapidly improving. Human writing, on average not so much.

>However, I have a new policy.

>If you’re not bothered enough to review and edit it...

>...then I’m not going to bother reading it.

Just playing Devil's Advocate here, but we've had copywriters and editors for generations now. Not reading something because AI did the post-writing work feels kinda weak. Skip stuff started from AI, fine, but this is just because it's AI, not because the author didn't do the task. And I do get the point is that if an AI did /most/ of the work, ok to that, too, but not post-write processing alone.

It's an ego issue for most people. For one, part of it comes from genuine intimidation or fear, the notion that a machine can be smarter than you, or at least produce answers that are more knowledgeable than you could. But I think the more striking issue is what LLMs do to the perceived value of expertise. Especially in engineering there's this weird pecking order hierarchy, where someone should be listened to just "because they have the YOE/Experience/Other meaningless metrics" under their belt. Now all of a sudden, someone with relatively little (or no) background in a given subject is capable of just entering a prompt and within seconds obtaining an answer that is expert or near expert level. (You can see the results of this with engineers just hopping between different fields with ease)

The implication is that expertise is being devalued in real time, and in a sense it really is, but I think that most people really do need to face the reality of their emotions and where it comes from. For myself personally, I have no qualms about reading or even engaging with AI content, as long as the content itself is of quality and truthful.