I’ve been having an internal debate with myself about whether or not to leave a comment, because I’m struggling to find anything positive to say. I love weekend projects and don't ever want to discourage people from doing them.<p>But the other side of that debate in my head comes from the way I feel about this idea relative to blogging. I read blogs because I want to hear directly from another human. I also care about the subject matter they’re writing about, but part of the reason I care is because it’s a slice of someone’s perspective. Their life experiences. How a particular subject relates to them personally. How they solved a particular problem. Even when a blog post is purely technical with no personal narrative, it usually provides a snapshot of some aspect of some other human’s life, and the way they structure the words they wrote is a reflection of how their brain works.<p>I also enjoy seeing the progression of thought over time from authors. They’ll write about something and later realize some nuance was wrong, and they’ll write about their updated understanding.<p>I worry that the more disconnected authors become from their writing, the less aware they’ll be of the potential impact of their words, and those “aha! that thing I wrote 6 months ago was crap for xyz reason” moments are less likely to happen.<p>To me, AI-assisted blogging just fundamentally devalues the content. As a reader, I can’t know if what I’m reading is real to the author, or a flourish/detail fed to them by an LLM that they liked. Lately I’ve encountered an increasing number of posts that have those telltale (or obvious) signs, and I immediately stop reading. I’m no longer interested.<p>If I wanted LLM output about a given subject, I’d go to ChatGPT myself.<p>I think there’s a place for LLMs and some real value to be gained. But when it comes to blogging (and many types of writing), I think it’s a net negative to society.<p>I’d like to see a standard emerge where blogs can label themselves “No AI”.
This indicates to me that you treat blogging as an obligation rather than a way to share your ideas. I guess if you read enough AI blog spam, blogging itself just feels like a status game of what you've written about, divorced from quality of content? If you're padding out your own ideas with AI filler, why not just make your style more shortform and save your reader's time?
I just use Obsidian's copilot sidebar plugin with a prompt that is essentially:<p>"Review {activeNote} and point out misspellings or structural errors.
Please ensure to highlight any grammatical issues and carefully examine the text for clarity and coherence.
Additionally, check for punctuation errors, repeated use of words and ensure proper sentence structure.
Do not mention double dashes (--) since they are post-processed into em dashes.
Check any inline HTML for accessibility attributes."<p>Zero generation, zero automated edit, pure review and manual tweaking. If you want to keep your own voice, that's the only thing you need.
I was expecting the blog post to be different based on the headline. It's really about an AI-powered tool that finds the links to things you want to refer to for you so you don't have to waste time looking up all your own references. It's not actually about <i>writing</i> the post.<p>I don't see how this tool takes the human out of the writing. It just saves some time looking up links. I think people are judging the post by the headline, but might actually find use for the tool itself.
I find it ironic that the author says<p>> [AI] tends to write in a generic style erases my personal tone of voice. I don't want to create "AI slop"<p>And yet the article has telltale signs of AI content. Dead giveaway? The “conclusion” section - no human writes like that unless they’re doing a high school essay, and most AI slop out there has that predictable structure with an often unnecessary conclusions section. AI just can’t tell the difference or whether it’s actually needed.<p>I even went through some other articles in this same blog to see if it was just this article or the author consistently adds conclusions to her other articles. Others don’t have a conclusion, this AI-assisted one is the first one with that structure.
I found that when I tried to use Cursor for blogging I was totally infuriated by it. As happy as I am to have Cursor auto-complete my code all day long, the sensation of having Cursor try to put words into my mouth (or, worse, <i>put thoughts into my head</i>) was very unpleasant.<p>So I stopped trying to use Cursor for writing and went back to vim.<p>But I found the unpleasantness of the sensation very surprising! I love using Cursor for writing code, but for some reason, even though I am primarily a programmer, it's much more important to me that my <i>words</i> are a "true expression of my spirit" than that my code is. I couldn't quite figure out why.
I read the complete article. It does feel like written by human but only if you don't read it all. So overall, I would have saved time if it was written by AI completely (by choosing to not read after a glance)
I love the approach: keep the creative, human part intact - and in fact free up time for it, by letting AI take care of the menial tasks. And to all naysayers, yes, research is a menial task... if you think a True Writer[1] would always do it themselves on Google, keep in mind that just a few years ago a "true writer" would have to go scavenge in some abandoned archives to find reference material, so it's just a matter of perspective.<p>We built UnitText[2] with the same idea in mind, although we started from the "proofreading/copy-editing" part. Arguably, that's something most don't do at all... but asking someone to read your content, give you feedback, and iterate on it is an extremely valuable part of the process. Having AI do it means you can do it almost for free, and often. Again, freeing up more time for the actual writing.<p>Doesn't mean a human copy-editor shouldn't review your content before you hit publish, or a writer shouldn't read their references, but AI can help a lot with all those steps.<p>[1]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://unittext.com" rel="nofollow">https://unittext.com</a>
Looks interesting! I'm curious what kind of editor you used.<p>I've been thinking of creating a text editor with AI support and have been thinking of implementing something like CRDT for the backend? So that user edits are not overwritten by AI<p>Are there any chances of open sourcing your project? Thanks!
I see the points others are making, but I would find this a useful tool, I think. IMHO the missing factor gets bypassed on many posts like this (not just on this platform) -- the proof is in the product.<p>Like any AI tool, the created results can be positive or negative. The churn of poorly written articles and reduplicated imagery has most of us on edge, but that should not negate the purpose and quality of other output.
Some commenters appear to see this tool as just another means to rapidly generate slop content, but I don't see why it should have to be, nor do I think that was the intent of the author / creator.<p>If what guides the use of the tool is the desire to create a certain piece of content, to express something, and the tool aids in <i>telling the human story</i>, then it's a winning answer, I think.