• KevonLooney@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    I’m sure someone out there is using them in a way that helps, but I haven’t seen it yet in the wild.

    That’s because those responses are indistinguishable from individually written ones. I know people who use chatGPT or other LLMs to help them write things, but it takes the same amount of time. You just have more time to improve it, so it’s better quality than you would write alone.

    The key is that you have to use your brain more to pick and choose what to say. It’s just like predictive text, but for whole paragraphs. Would you write a text message just by clicking on the center word on your predictive text keyboard? It would end up nonsensical.

    • ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com
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      8 months ago

      I believe that in theory. But I’ve tried Mixtral and Copilot (I believe based on ChatGPT) on some test items (e.g., “respond to this…” and “write an email listing this…” type queries) and maybe it’s unique to my job, but what it spits out would take more work to revise than it would take to write from scratch to get to the same quality level.

      It’s better than the bottom 20% of communicators, but most professionals are above that threshold, so the drop in quality is very apparent. Maybe we’re talking about different sample sets.

        • ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com
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          8 months ago

          Of course, yeah. That’s definitely possible. But I’d be more likely to believe that if I’ve seen even one example of it actually being more effective than just writing the email, and not just churning out grammatically correct filler. Can you give me an example of someone actually getting equivalent quality in a real world corporate setting? YouTube video? Lemmy sub? I’m trying to be informed.

          • keegomatic@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            I have used it several times for long-form writing as a critic, rather than as a “co-writer.” I write something myself, tell it to pretend to be the person who would be reading this thing (“Act as the beepbooper reviewing this beepboop…”), and ask for critical feedback. It usually has some actually great advice, and then I incorporate that advice into my thing. It ends up taking just as long as writing the thing normally, but materially far better than what I would have written without it.

            I’ve also used it to generate an outline to use as a skeleton while writing. Its own writing is often really flat and written in a super passive voice, so it kinda sucks at doing the writing for you if you want it to be good. But it works in these ways as a useful collaborator and I think a lot of people miss that side of it.

              • keegomatic@lemmy.world
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                8 months ago

                I considered writing at least a post somewhere after reading your comment/adding my reply, but to be honest I don’t even know where it would be best received