The AI<->writing convo will continue until morale improves

The role of editors/human writers is increasingly becoming tastemakers

, also; having fine judgment as to what is and isn't good. Incidentally what some of us have spent a lifetime perfecting. 

WRITING IS HARD. For Franz Kafka, putting words on the page was a process of “unending torments”. George Orwell said it felt like “a long bout of some painful illness”. Hunter S. Thompson, a journalist, saw it as the opposite of sex: “only good when it’s over”.

"For human writers this is a blessing and a curse."

 curse? "If you claim to be an author but use AI, you look like a fraud." ALSO:

Sifting through today’s slop is a drain on your brain and your time.

We compared the outputs of LLMs to prose we know is produced by humans: our own. We asked 14 variants of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Grok released since 2024 to write versions of our articles without consulting the web. We compared our corpus across 55,940 sentences and 1.2m words, and checked our results against other newspapers and hit fiction books. We found that some of AI’s former tricks—using lots of em-dashes, for instance, or words like “leveraging”—are no longer leveraged much in its writing. (Yes, fr yesterday's post: 

hear, hear -- totally talking my book here, but whatever:

If LLMs keep improving, in a few years they could be as good as professional wordsmiths. In the meantime, though, 

their baggy prose puts a premium on editing skills.

 After all, even the best writers need a good editor to keep them sharp.

the job of editors is to “clip the wings” of writers, and “tell them in which direction to fly”.

 When it comes to LLMs, that means giving clear instructions about exactly what you want, and asking them to refine their output as many times as necessary. You’ll get 

"Mr Martin said editors were “the writer’s natural enemy”; AI would probably say “great observation!” and “love the enemy analogy!”"

"The editor is an intermediary between writer and reader. LLMs are sycophants and their smarmy tone is often off-key"

Infinite generation and inexhaustable supply etc, meets 

 and scarce consumption wants. We (well, 

econ

BooksAndArticles

*The AI<->writing convo will continue until morale improves* https://stacker.news/items/1536470

***The role of editors/human writers is increasingly becoming tastemakers**\*\**, also; having fine judgment as to what is and isn't good. Incidentally what some of us have spent a lifetime perfecting. *Muhaaaa-haaa!*

> WRITING IS HARD. For Franz Kafka, putting words on the page was a process of “unending torments”. George Orwell said it felt like “a long bout of some painful illness”. Hunter S. Thompson, a journalist, saw it as the opposite of sex: “only good when it’s over”.

lol, these quotes -.-

## "For human writers this is a blessing and a curse."

blessing *or* curse? "If you claim to be an author but use AI, you look like a fraud." ALSO:

> Sifting through today’s slop is a drain on your brain and your time.

> We compared the outputs of LLMs to prose we know is produced by humans: our own. We asked 14 variants of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Grok released since 2024 to write versions of our articles without consulting the web. We compared our corpus across 55,940 sentences and 1.2m words, and checked our results against other newspapers and hit fiction books. We found that some of AI’s former tricks—using lots of em-dashes, for instance, or words like “leveraging”—are no longer leveraged much in its writing. (Yes, fr yesterday's post: https://stacker.news/items/1536470)

## hear, hear -- totally talking my book here, but whatever:

> If LLMs keep improving, in a few years they could be as good as professional wordsmiths. In the meantime, though, **their baggy prose puts a premium on editing skills.** After all, even the best writers need a good editor to keep them sharp.
> George R.R. Martin once said **the job of editors is to “clip the wings” of writers, and “tell them in which direction to fly”.** When it comes to LLMs, that means giving clear instructions about exactly what you want, and asking them to refine their output as many times as necessary. You’ll get **less pushback from machines than men.**

## "Mr Martin said editors were “the writer’s natural enemy”; AI would probably say “great observation!” and “love the enemy analogy!”"

AAAAND, finally:

## "The editor is an intermediary between writer and reader. LLMs are sycophants and their smarmy tone is often off-key"

Infinite generation and inexhaustable supply etc, meets *very limited attention* and scarce consumption wants. We (well, *I...*) talk about this at \~econ all the time — *inexhaustibly*, one might say. Please join us https://stacker.news/items/1467035, https://stacker.news/items/1449095

***

archive: [https://archive.md/tYMD7](https://archive.md/tYMD7)