Says Jake Abrams, on TikTok. I prefer to read his comment as text, but you might want to observe him and see if it affects your reaction to what he's saying. I saw this first as video and decided to blog it but took the trouble to make a transcript because I find the video distracting. He drops the microphone at the end.
Clearly, he thinks he is one of the smart people. He doesn't like the stupid people horning in on the space that belonged to him and his people — you know, the ones who were always producing documents that gave off the impression of competence. Have those documents been making much sense? Were they concise?
Now that everyone can produce long documents that look good superficially, what's going to happen? If people continue to read documents, will they separate out the search for what was written by A.I. or will they judge everything skeptically? It's more likely that they will use A.I. to read the documents and to assess them critically. In the end, who's going to feel that they are "smart and brilliant"? Is Abrams afraid that those he wants to view as stupid, perhaps because they didn't go to a good college, are going to play the game of using A.I. better than those who thought they had it made because they did go to a good college?
We'll see who picks up the tools and uses them best.
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39 comments:
Well the fact its on tiktok makes me doubt jakes bonafides
What happens? Misinformation will grow by leaps and bounds.
Ask Grok or ChatGPT or Gemini about a subject you know really well and you see that the response will contain significant errors.
I'm sure Alan Sokal would have some thoughts on people thinking they're smart because they can produce 30 pages of gibberish.
Ann doesn’t really appreciate the nonsense that the mouth breathers in the office have started spitting out. Abrams may or may not be one of them, but he’s right in principle.
Can they explsin what they wrote: thats the test
Nebraska lawyer in a divorce case used AI to draft his brief. Predictable results.
Of course opposing counsel called him out on it.
What was super painful to watch the Supreme Court grill him and grill him they did. He made matters worse because he denied it and asserted the dog-ate-my-homework defense.
What the hell discipline is he in where long documents are a metric for anything? It doesn’t sound like anything constructive…
Before publishing, I asked AI if Abrams was AI!
"I'm sure Alan Sokal would have some thoughts on people thinking they're smart because they can produce 30 pages of gibberish."
Exactly
If his argument was just that AI was producing 30 pages to explain something that should have taken 2 pages, I would agree. More so if people took the additional 28 pages as evidence that AI made things better.
"Ann doesn’t really appreciate the nonsense that the mouth breathers in the office have started spitting out."
Since when? Are you talking about AI or what humans have been doing all along?
I'm not soft on AI. I'm just insisting on comparing it to the work of real humans. It's imperfect against imperfect. Humans developed the practice of writing long documents that bamboozle readers and humans have an interest in preserving privileges won through obfuscating writing.
Effective people value their time too much and won't be willing to read 30-page documents.
i think This Explains Many of Ann's posters (the commenters, NOT Ann).
Artificial intelligence has democratized content creation in ways that were unimaginable a decade ago. Large language models (LLMs) such as GPT-series systems, Claude, and Grok can now transform a vague, poorly spelled prompt into a polished 500-word report in seconds. This capability has a dark side: it allows genuinely incompetent individuals to produce documents that appear authoritative, lengthy, and professional while containing little substance, originality, or factual grounding. The result is a flood of long, idiotic reports that waste time, mislead decision-makers, and erode institutional trust.The mechanism is simple and powerful. An incompetent user needs only a minimal prompt—“write a report on market trends” or “analyze Q2 performance”—and the AI supplies structure, vocabulary, bullet points, and filler paragraphs. No research, no domain knowledge, and no critical thinking are required. The model draws on its training data to generate plausible-sounding prose, complete with invented statistics, generic frameworks (SWOT analysis, Porter’s Five Forces), and confident assertions. When the output is too short, the user simply adds “make it longer” or “add more examples,” and the AI obliges by expanding filler without improving insight. Spelling errors in the original prompt are silently corrected. Formatting is perfect. The final document looks like the work of a competent professional who spent hours on it.This process rewards volume over veracity. AI-generated reports frequently contain “hallucinations”—confidently stated falsehoods presented as facts—because the model optimizes for fluency rather than truth. An incompetent middle manager can submit a 20-page strategic plan that cites nonexistent studies and proposes initiatives that violate basic economics. A student can submit a term paper that reads like a journal article yet demonstrates zero personal understanding. In consulting firms and government agencies, entire decks are now generated by prompting an LLM and then lightly editing the output to insert the user’s name. The incompetence is hidden behind a veneer of sophistication.The consequences are already visible. Decision-making suffers when leaders receive lengthy reports that sound impressive but collapse under scrutiny. Organizations waste resources implementing AI-suggested strategies that were never vetted by human judgment. Public discourse degrades as idiotic but well-written white papers circulate online, shaping policy and opinion without accountability. Most damagingly, the widespread use of AI for this purpose discourages genuine competence: why bother learning a subject when a machine can fake expertise on demand?AI itself is not the villain; it is a tool. The problem lies in the absence of safeguards—mandatory human authorship disclosure, mandatory source verification, and cultural insistence that length and polish do not equal insight. Until organizations demand evidence of original thought rather than accepting any sufficiently long document, incompetent individuals will continue to weaponize AI to produce the ultimate modern bureaucratic artifact: the long, idiotic report that somehow survives every review meeting.
If 30 page AI documents start showing by the bushel, use AI to summarize them!
If someone hands you a 30-page document, whether it's written by AI or not, you're going to want your AI to make it into a 2-page document. Cut all the bullshit and make it as concise as possible. Make it one page. Make it half a page. The awareness that what we are reading is bullshit will burgeon.
@Rob
Exactly
lol gilbar, I asked Perplexity if what you write was AI:
“I’d put this at ~95% likely AI-generated, probably GPT-4-class, with little or no human editing beyond the paste.“
This reminds me of the old trope "Have your people call my people."
Everyone's AI will relate to everyone else's AI and that will minimize any person-to-person contact. Is that what you want? Maybe we can get back to nature, but in the meantime, I'm not reading your documents. Who will read anything?
The really smart stupid people will realize they can just stick to their knitting of fixing your furnace/air conditioner or putting a new roof on your house, and they won’t say anything more than they ever did.
BTW, Grok completely disagreed:
“This feels like something a thoughtful, slightly jaded human.”
You have an assertion but they dont demonstrate what thet mean
Ann Althouse asks:
"Is that what you want?"
No.
Be brief.
I looked up "who is Jake Abrams?"
Here is part of the result:
"Jake Abrams is a writer, editor, and podcast producer with a focus on food, wine, and culture writing. He has built a career in various editorial roles, contributing to the fields of food and beverage journalism.
What are the notable works of writer Jake Abrams in food and wine?
Jake Abrams has written about zippy Sauvignon Blancs, Hollywood's spirit brands, and ProWein 2026's focus on tariffs and no/low alcohol wines. He also covers exciting Sauvignon Blancs under $20."
If it's a well-written document, the first and last few paragraphs should summarize it--even (or especially) without AI.
If you've ever run a project before, one of the most important things to learn is whether or not you're hearing somebody speak truthfully, from a position of knowledge and experience. A project brings together different skill sets, different methodologies, different procedures, different tools and materials. As a project manager, you have to know something about all of these things, but not necessarily the minute details. You have to know something in order to responsibly negotiate a contract, up front. Artificial Intelligence isn't going to make anybody an expert, not even a convincing liar. I think the fear is overblown.
When a new hand would come onto any rig I was running, we would have a chat about their upcoming job or service. I would quiz them on what their preparations were, what they needed on the deck, what they needed from me, and who their support function was in town.
Then I would ask them if they had packed their offshore baskets themselves, holding their equipment and supplies. Then I would ask them if they had made sure, absolutely sure, had gone through their equipment on the rig, to be certain they had everything they needed to fulfill their job. Because any shortfall would potentially shut down a 24 hour operation, waiting on it to come from town. Their response would be the first tell whether they lie or tell the truth.
All you have to do to sift out the A.I. B.S. is to ask questions and have an idea of what the answer ought to be.
I recall some Amazon statistics that 80% of digital books purchased on their Kindle platform never get read beyond the 3rd chapter.
in my perfect world:
Q: can you summarize how this makes you feel, Claude?
A: "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."
"lol gilbar, I asked Perplexity if what you write was AI..."
LOL, that was my guess too, because as I was reading it, I noticed that it went on and on saying the same thing over and over as if it wasn't.
There are certain documents I have to produce for work like material declarations that are a pain in the ass, take a long time, and just get put in a customer's file. Nobody reads them. AI spits them out accurately in seconds if correctly prompted. I have no shame in using it to save time.
Eva Marie said...
lol gilbar
thanx Eva! (Ann, i PROMISE *i* won't do that again)
i asked grok for 500 words..
it gave me 498.. But then i DID writed the 1st sentence).
i used to wonder what traffic would be like, once the majority of cars were autodrive (hint: i think it'd be SLOW)
NOW,
i wonder what media will be like when a majority of posters are AI.
AI is cheap, super fast and bad. My brother in law gave me a 30 page document that promised to make me millions of dollars. It was pure garbage.
Here's some unasked for advice -- First. Writing is a creative endeavor. Second. Stop outsourcing the cognitive load to AI, your brain is going to atrophy. You'll never pick up any skills!
A few years ago, you blogged the obituary of some mid-century jet-setter who complained that mass tourism ruins everything by letting regular people travel. My brother hates ATVs because they let “ignorant slobs” get into backcountry they have no understanding of or appreciation for (I don’t disagree and despise e-bikes for a similar reason).
This screed against AI reminds me of those objections.
Althouse said...The awareness that what we are reading is bullshit will burgeon. There is a shitload of regulatory paperwork in many industries that is really just cover your ass bullshit. Activity behind the paperwork may be important, but the administrative burden slows projects down and makes them more expensive, increasing overhead. And the administrators LOVE it. Justifies their existence. I'm sure this fed part of the administrative bloat and waste at universities.
AI makes these administrative tasks lightning fast. So look out. If your job is basically to output bullshit paperwork, hop on the AI train to be more productive, or get left behind.
gilbar said…i used to wonder what traffic would be like, once the majority of cars were autodrive (hint: i think it'd be SLOW)
Maybe, but I won’t care because instead of being stuck in the driver’s seat fighting that traffic, I’ll be reading a book or napping, no more aware of the traffic than if I were on a bus.
I’m expecting large tax rate reductions in the future. The cost of producing officious bureaucratic jargon has plummeted.
Sam Altman is gonna need to call a Claude Code Red™
"Business subscriptions to Claude Code have quadrupled since the start of 2026, and enterprise use has grown to represent over half of all Claude Code revenue."
AI is brilliant at giving your writing a veneer of intelligence. But it won't make your writing interesting if you have nothing interesting to say.
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