Quit using AI to fill out your blog posts

content/posts/quit-using-ai-to-fill-out-your-blog-posts.md

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+---
+title: Quit using AI to fill out your blog posts
+author: Kayla Washburn
+date: 2023.8.26
+summary: Seriously, knock it off.
+tags: ai, writing
+accent_color: "#aaa"
+cover:
+  avif: https://cdn.mckayla.cloud/-/h087vb7915ache/bleep.avif
+  default: https://cdn.mckayla.cloud/-/h087vb7915ache/bleep.webp
+---
+
+<!--
+
+## Prelude
+
+I'm quite a fan of [Lobste.rs]. I like the content that gets shared there, and the comments section tends to be a lot nicer than certain similar sites which sport orange color schemes. I think the invite-only, reputation-tree model of user interaction has actually done a pretty good job of keeping conversation productive and on-topic with minimal moderation, allowing people to still speak quite freely in all the ways that are appropriate.
+
+---
+
+-->
+
+Recently, I had an [interaction] that finally got me to put something into words which I've been _trying_ to say for months. I didn't say everything I have to say on the subject (not even close, honestly), but I said enough of it that I felt like it was worth a blog post. It started with this comment, that I left on [Lobste.rs].
+
+![A screenshot of a comment that I posted on lobste.rs in which I say "Really enjoyed this, other than that half of it was a chatgippity explanation of branch prediction. I truly loathe that this is becoming normal"](https://cdn.mckayla.cloud/-/exi9y0904vh99i/lobsters.webp)
+
+After leaving this comment, I got a reply.
+
+> Can I ask why? I’m genuinely curious. [...] I have to say, I am surprised by the increasing anti-AI sentiment in tech communities.
+
+I said this in a reply to them, but I want to say it again here:
+
+ChatGPT is always going to generate descriptions that are at least slightly incorrect when they’re that long, and either the author doesn’t know better, or is willfully jettisoning misinformation out into the world. If I, as the reader, don’t know what branch prediction is and I care enough to learn about it, I’m just going to open a new tab and go learn about it for a minute.
+
+Instead of spending the time going to ChatGPT and generating some unverifiable stream-of-un-consciousness, they could have just found an actual knowledgable description written by a human, and they could’ve linked to it, or quoted some small descriptive section of it with a citation.
+
+These AI insertions are not neutral or harmless. They deprive us of actual research.
+
+[lobste.rs]: https://lobste.rs
+[interaction]: https://lobste.rs/s/kaxcd8/print_lol_doubled_speed_my_go_function#c_xzpa2o