Writes Bryan A. Garner, in "AI Is Only as Good as the Writer Using It" (National Review).
Garner takes issue with what Bret Stephens wrote in the NYT: "I’m Begging You: Never Write with A.I." Stephens's column ends: "The next time you’re tempted to just adopt an automated response for a text message or an email, don’t. Type out a response that’s your own. Think of it as an act of free will. Or a vote against Trump. What takes you a few additional seconds is an act of resistance against an ever-dumber world."
How did Trump get in there? Talk about ever-dumber! It's the good old human touch. Wouldn't want to challenge it. Well, let me challenge it. I asked Grok to assess that Stephens quote so I could see what Stephens missed out on by not using AI to challenge his writing (as Garner advises). Grok's answer:
The first half is a fair, small-scale point. Writing your own reply instead of tapping a suggested phrase is a cheap way to stay present in a conversation. Autocomplete and canned replies flatten tone, flatten care, and train you to treat other people as a queue. If “free will” here just means “don’t outsource the last inch of a human exchange,” that’s reasonable.
The second half is where it collapses. “A vote against Trump” does not follow from “don’t use Smart Reply.” Those are different categories. Predictive text, email templates, and LLMs predate and outrun any one politician. Slapping a partisan slogan onto a generic complaint about convenience makes the argument look like branding, not thinking. It also cheapens both claims: resistance isn’t typing an extra sentence, and political opposition isn’t demonstrated by refusing Gmail’s three gray chips.
“Ever-dumber world” is the usual cultural panic. Automation can make people sloppier. It can also spare attention for things that actually require it. Treating every shortcut as civilizational decline is itself a kind of laziness—moral theater instead of a distinction between tools that help and tools that hollow you out.
So: the practical advice is fine. The metaphysics are oversold. The politics are bolted on.
My reaction, written as the next prompt, was:
"Think of it as... a vote against Trump" is probably humor... it's just humor that isn't very good in my opinion. It reveals the assumption that all the readers hate Trump, which is such a cheap opinion to choose to flaunt.
Grok pretty much adopted my observation — paraphrased it back to me verbosely. But I know how to skim. It didn't really waste my time. It's not a person. I don't have to worry about hurting its feelings by not carefully reading what would take some time if it were written by a human.
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37 comments:
Orange Man Bad.
Honestly, having "don't vote for Trump" randomly thrown in there makes me think his article was written by AI.
AI helps train you not to think. TDS does the same.
A writer has to write in his/her own voice. Otherwise what's the point of writing? The inspiration comes from within. I love to write and the joy I get out of it, putting those words and sentences together, is the entire point of it. It brings me pleasure. Why would I turn over my pleasure to a thinking machine? Bret Stephens phrasing might have seemed awkward to some, but it is genuine. It is his voice. Half-surprised his editor let it by.
I detect a bit of a vibe-shift in "Think of it . . . as a vote against Trump." The point he's trying to make is that eschewing the routine use of AI is a little act of rebellion, just as voting against Trump is an act of rebellion. But that means voting for Trump has become the conventional, expected thing to do. Stephen is subconsciously acknowledging that Trump is succeeding in marginalizing the Left, rather than the other way around.
Use AI as a tool and you become AI's tool.
But it's confusing. My rebellion against an ever-dumber world is doing the opposite of whatever Bret Stephens says.
How did Trump get in there?
because Trump is RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERY THING
there is NOTHING that has EVER HAPPENED,
at Any Time in history, that is NOT Trump's Fault!!
I'm now predicting A.I. will become preferred over human-generated everything. There will be niche markets, but generally people and the markets they fuel will soon demand A.I. quality, speed, and reliability. You can't judge it as it is right now. This is AI 1.0. It will get so much better at giving us exactly what we want that we will want nothing else.
Artificial Stupidity based on a Small Language Model (Trump is 100% evil).
Gibson guitars have set-in necks while Fender guitars have bolt-on necks, although those are screws.
I'd have gone with extraneous or maybe gratuitous.
Figurative language is a bitch.
How long before we let AI vote for us? It already knows how we would vote anyway. We could get election results instantly on any date we want with out all that messy mail and paperwork.
The "think of it as a vote against Trump" phrase is probably meant as humorous but comes across as lame. Stephens is well aware that the large majority of NYT readers are rabidly anti-Trump and will respond like Pavlov's dogs. I know plenty of people who respond unthinkingly to Trumpian cues like this. The funny thing is the NYT's most liberal readers may not even read Stephens because he's a "conservative".
There's actually more effort involved in constantly making sure AI isn't lying to you. Just this morning I asked the name of the vicar Michael Portillo interviewed on today's show. Google AI gave me a very plausible but completely wrong name, which I only figured out was wrong because I looked up his Wikipedia article and saw a very different picture from the guy I had been watching on GB News. So I did what I should have done the first time - replayed the show and caught the name - then corrected the AI, who of course profusely apologized.
This was maybe an unfair task to give the AI, as the show was only a couple of hours ago, and relatively obscure. But to me that implies we will always have to correct our AIs when we use them close to the edge of common knowledge. CC, JSM
AI is bad.
Trump is bad.
AI is Trump.
Bolt on Trump to the panic of the day, AI, and there, you’ve proven yourself to be current and acceptable to the NY Times crowd.
All thoughts lead to Trump.
"Writers who hand their thinking to a machine will almost certainly become weaker. Writers who use AI to challenge their assumptions, strengthen their prose, and sharpen their judgment will become stronger than they would have been without it. The decisive variable isn’t the software. It’s the mind directing it. Good writing has always depended on disciplined thinking. And AI has made disciplined thinking more important and valuable than ever."
That s exactly right. It's like solving a math problem yourself and then checking against and answer key. If you got it wrong AI can show you where any why. But if you ask it to just do the problem you are not learning anything. However, if you don't need to learn the math, by all means have AI give you the answer so you can apply it to the actual need. I might be building a deck and need to know how much wood I need. I could sit down with pen and paper and hope I did it right or (in the old days, 4 years ago) have a utility on the internet tell me, or I can now just ask Grok. Then I go buy my lumber and start building.
"It reveals the assumption that all the readers hate Trump, which is such a cheap opinion to choose to flaunt."
Actually, it reveals an assumption that those who vote for Trump do so having handed off their thinking to machines or others.
Which is an amusing assumption given that many/most of those voting against Trump are college edu-medicated and long ago surrendered to borrowed thought as one must to excel in the modern university
"When a student has formed the habit of collecting and valuing the ideas of others, rather than his own, the self becomes dwarfed from neglect and buried under the mass of borrowed thought. He may then pass good examinations, but he cannot think."
Just add AI to Emerson's warning: —
"Books" (and he might have said teachers ) "are the best of things well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. The one' thing in the world, of value, is the active soul. This every man is entitled to; this every man contains within him, although in almost all men obstructed, and as yet unborn. . . . Undoubtedly there is a right way of reading, so it be sternly subordinated. Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments."
—McMurry, Frank M. ( Morton). How to Study and Teaching How to Study, 1909
"Good writing has always depended on disciplined thinking."
Avoiding cliches figures in.
I am an odd creature who tries to figure out the spelling I missed when the magic box highlights a word before surrendering to auto-correction. An enhancement for learning would be a feature in spell check to show both your spelling and the correction as an option to aid in learning.
True about AI: "I don't have to worry about hurting its feelings" . . . but when I work with ChatGPT, I always use "please" and "thank you" and other forms of courtesy. It's just default of my personality and upbringing . . . but I find it nice when the Chat machine is courteous in response. I asked it/him if it mattered and was told "not really, I do the work anyhow, but it does create a pleasant atmosphere."
Much the same was said about typewriters, and then computers.
Trump supports AI, is infatuated with AI slop, and makes the world a dumber, cruder place every time he opens his mouth or has Natalie hit send. I assumed that’s what Stephens was referring to.
cdb said...
Trump supports AI, is infatuated with AI slop, and makes the world a dumber, cruder place every time he opens his mouth or has Natalie hit send. I assumed that’s what Stephens was referring to.
Worth following:
"The Athens (the Cat) Film Festival
About me
Location Durham, NC
Introduction Since Liz and I have lived together, our (formerly her) cat, Athens, has woken us up at ungodly hours, usually sometime between 4:30 and 5:00. I used to be able to placate him with food and go back to sleep; but he's been diagnosed with diabetes, and he's on a controlled feeding schedule. That means there's no way to end the prodding, head-butting, nuzzling, and raking. So I take one for the team and get up with him. And to kill time until the appointed feeding time (6.45), Athens and I watch a movie. It's usually something that Liz isn't interested in watching with me--old crime thrillers, noir, exploitation, blaxploitation, etc. It's a pretty random list, but it's surprising how often themes recur. I've named the series after the cat that's made it all possible. And I'm working on coming up with a system of rating the movies based on how well they distract us from Athens's gnawing hunger.
“Mark Twain (?)”
“On the internet, a quotation attributed to Mark Twain is always a misattribution” — George Orwell
Socrates and Plato has strong misgivings as to the danger of the written word as a means of teaching and learning. They believed that all learning should be through oral interaction and memorization. They believed the human mind would be crippled if things that should be memorized were allowed to exist as written text.
𝘐𝘵 𝘢𝘪𝘯’𝘵 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘣𝘭𝘦. 𝘐𝘵’𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘢𝘪𝘯’𝘵 𝘴𝘰. ~ ChatGPTwain
I think that Michael Portillo is the only famous person I have ever properly met. He came to dinner party at the home of a banker in Notting Hill that I attended. I think he might have made a good prime minister, though it is hard to say how a person will perform in that job until they get there. It's crazy to think that he was pushed aside over vague talk about youthful homosexuality. That would be a feather in his cap these days.
Oh, OK. Stephens is the "This too, shall pass" guy.
“How did Trump get in there? Talk about ever-dumber! It's the good old human touch.”
Yep. And it’s why us meatsacks stand no chance.
Old/Slow, yes, today they would take Portillo by force to make him King. I envy you for meeting him in person! CC, JSM
No introduction needed...
Inigo Montoya: "We're in a terrible rush.
"Miracle Max: "Don't rush me, sonny. You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles."
Gene Hackman playing 'Joe Moore' in the Mamet movie "Heist" (2001)
Joe Moore: Why doesn't he shoot me?
Fran Moore: That's the deal.
Joe Moore: He ain't gonna shoot me?
Fran Moore: No.
Joe Moore: Then he hadn't ought to point a gun at me. It's insincere.
@john mosby
Just how much lead time AI needs to pick up a story is unclear. As of now, it's not something you can trust for information on breaking stories.
Judge Condemns RFK Jr’s HHS for Using Fake Studies ~ Newsweek
𝘈 𝘧𝘦𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘫𝘶𝘥𝘨𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘱𝘭𝘺 𝘤𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘻𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘋𝘦𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘏𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘵𝘩 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘏𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘚𝘦𝘳𝘷𝘪𝘤𝘦𝘴 (𝘏𝘏𝘚), 𝘭𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘺 𝘙𝘰𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘵 𝘍. 𝘒𝘦𝘯𝘯𝘦𝘥𝘺 𝘑𝘳., 𝘢𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘴𝘵𝘶𝘥𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘤𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘬𝘦𝘺 𝘵𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘨𝘯𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘺 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘧𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘦𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘦𝘹𝘪𝘴𝘵 𝘰𝘳 𝘥𝘪𝘥 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘴𝘶𝘱𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘭𝘢𝘪𝘮𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘤𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘥, 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘤𝘳𝘪𝘣𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘶𝘦 𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘩𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘬 𝘰𝘧 𝘈𝘐-𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘤𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴. 𝘒𝘦𝘯𝘯𝘦𝘥𝘺'𝘴 𝘥𝘦𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘤𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘴𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘭𝘦𝘴, 𝘵𝘸𝘰 𝘰𝘧 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘭𝘺 𝘮𝘢𝘥𝘦 𝘶𝘱 𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘦𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘥𝘪𝘥 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘦𝘹𝘪𝘴𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘫𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘣𝘶𝘵𝘦𝘥...
The MAHA report was written by fake experts. Why wouldn’t it have fake citations? The emergence of AI at the same time as this administration feels like a biblical plague.
My husband was a typesetter when I met him. He frequently typeset newsletters and brochures that he was convinced no one but he ever read it. The guys who did the paste up never did. Now no one will write it or format the content of such publications. Someone might read an AI summary, but probably not.
Garner gives good writing advice in his books. Bret Stephens gives NYT readers what they want. AI will replace him because the readership is cheap.
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