This reminds me of a conversation I had a while back with another writer. He was telling me that he used Microsoft's Copilot (the same base tech as ChatGPT) to 'generate ideas' and find facts as starting points. When I told him that LLMs were really unreliable at finding facts, he AGREED. 1/ - ThreadSky

oisinmcgann.bsky.social • 39 days ago

This reminds me of a conversation I had a while back with another writer. He was telling me that he used Microsoft's Copilot (the same base tech as ChatGPT) to 'generate ideas' and find facts as starting points. When I told him that LLMs were really unreliable at finding facts, he AGREED. 1/

Reposted from Chuck Wendig

Yup. I continue to say that AI is for those who fetishize THE IDEA and dismiss THE WORK. It's for those people who come up to writers and say, "I got a great idea for a book, I'll give it to you, you write it, and we'll split the profits 50/50," as if the idea is the hardest and most important part.

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oisinmcgann.bsky.social•39 days ago

He'd asked for a list of things not long before. 6 out of the 8 things on the list were wrong, but it made him think in different ways. The inaccuracy didn't seem to bother him, so I asked if he didn't have an issue with the fact that web search was being polluted with this flood of bad info ... 2/

oisinmcgann.bsky.social•39 days ago

And that he was being used by a company to field-test technology that clearly wasn't ready to be used by the public. He didn't see a problem with that; 'I'm not paying for it'. I pointed out that if it was on Windows, then he WAS paying for it, but he figured he had Windows anyway. 3/

oisinmcgann.bsky.social•39 days ago

I said that people were making very serious legal and medical decisions based on flawed data. I asked him if he'd be willing to get on a airplane with the same failure rate as an LLM, he said 'Well, *I* wouldn't, but . . .' We went back and forth on this for a bit, neither convincing the other. 4/

oisinmcgann.bsky.social•39 days ago

It became clear to me that he didn't see the damage this was doing to the fundamental value of truth, that this was a technology that undermined everything writing is supposed to be about, and he was using it because it would save him from having to think more. And the weirdest thing about this? 5/

oisinmcgann.bsky.social•39 days ago

We were at a meeting of writers who had gathered to protest about Meta's mass breach of copyright to train its AI. He didn't want his writing being used to train the LLMs he was using to avoid thinking more about his writing. 6/6

emmanewman.bsky.social•39 days ago

It's like there is a fundamental, and probably wilful inability to connect really important dots. Like the erosion of synaptic connections is happening in real time.

editsinthemargins.com•39 days ago

Absolutely wild.

chuckwendig.bsky.social•39 days ago

O_o

smeg.bsky.social•39 days ago

Really starting to feel like genAI is just the sunglasses from They Live

velvetsparrow.bsky.social•39 days ago

aarrgghhh... 😒

aveteresa.bsky.social•39 days ago

This is an interesting article, I think: https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2025/05/20/guest-post-beyond-efficiency-reclaiming-creativity-and-wellbeing-in-the-age-of-ai-and-scholarly-publishing/?informz=1&nbd=&nbd_source=informz

donclyde63.bsky.social•39 days ago

I feel the biggest misconception of AI is that it is doing anything more than sorting data that it gets access to.
Also just as elon showed us the results can be skewed to whatever programmers desire.
How many company secrets will be divulged by AI accidentally because of employees that are unaware

oisinmcgann.bsky.social•39 days ago

I imagine that’s already happening.

paigeleitman.bsky.social•39 days ago

Why do those people exist? I don’t write books, I write RPGs and adventures. I’ve run into lots of people with good ideas for adventures. The REAL thing that makes an author is putting in the work to WRITE it. No AI can do that part well.

oisinmcgann.bsky.social•39 days ago

There's no telling some people.

paigeleitman.bsky.social•38 days ago

So sad but so true.

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