Researchers surprised to find less-educated areas adopting AI writing tools faster

People bad at math use calculators. People with bad handwriting prefer to type. Weak people use levers. Slow people rely more on wheels. Its like were a bunch of tool using primates or something.

In all of those examples, the user knows exactly what they want and the tool is a way to expedite or enable getting there. This isn't quite the same thing.

If we were talking a tool like augmented audio to text I'd agree. I'd probably even agree if it was an AI-proofreader style model where you feed it what you have to make sure it's generally comprehensible.

Writing as a skill is about solidifying and conveying thoughts so they can be understood. The fact that it turns into text is kind of irrelevant. Hand waving that process is just rubber stamping something you kinda-sorta started the process of maybe thinking about.
- I'm not really sure what you mean. They are not perfect, and in fact it will usually reduce the quality of output for a skilled writer, but half of the adults in the US cant read and write at a sixth grade level, and LLMs are greatly improving their ability to solidify and convey their thoughts in a more understandable way.
- Unfortunately not the case with calculators. Lots of triple font learn thr math they ask a machine to do for them
Bad at counting is not the same as bad at math. People bad at math I'd rather have use their hands to count.

People with bad handwriting are usually even more challenged to type with bullshit modern keyboards. I'm one such (I like my handwriting when I have time and mood, but that's not the usual situation).

OK, I get your point, just these analogies I gave are good for LLMs. I've yet to meet a person who'd really use them with good results. Except for me using porn chatbots.

'researchers surprised people that don't know how to do a thing cheat to use half baked tools to do the thing for them.'

This does not sound good for those people. Writing is a way of thinking. AI writing assistants are competitive cognitive artifacts. People who use AI to write most of their written communication will get worse at thinking through writing.

Most people don't need to think, they need to write. And AI helps them in that.
- Most people don't need to think
  
  No they just don't do it. The world would be in a much better position if people engaged their brains occasionally.
- If they can’t think or write on their own then what is their value? Why not just go straight to the LLM and cut out the middle man?
- Those people who don’t want to think need to be doing manual labor that doesn’t require thought.
Hey this that you're doing is called gate keeping.

We got multiple versions of these every time a new tech comes along.

People defending typewriters. Or learning Latin. Or something better than a quill and jar of ink. Or paper being affordable.

Just. Stop.
- You seriously need to look up gatekeeping because that's not what it means at all.
  
  Also you are making stuff up. No one has ever been against learning Latin, it is always being seen as something that a sophisticated gentleman knows, literally the opposite of whatever random nonsense you're claiming right now.
- There is published research that using AI makes people worse at critical thinking. It’s not gatekeeping, it’s a legitimate concern.
- Oh, nice username. Almost got me there

Even before the AI fad, services like Grammarly were surprising to me. So, you're marketing to non-readers, and people who want to sound better in written communication... without learning to write better... Huh. My current employment has very little formal writing as part of it, yet I still think learning how to effectively communicate is absolutely vital for any job, or at least for getting a better one...

I have also seen a video discussing that Grammarly often makes mistakes because it doesn't understand context and nuance as much as a human would.
- Grammar and now even spelling correction are increasingly unable to match my written style. Especially when I decide to play with my language.
Grammerly is a keylogger, I'd look into alternatives.
vital

Funny that you emphasized this word, which has become such a tell of ChatGPT (along with "delve" and "crucial").
- How are you such an expert on ChatGPT? Sus
- Are you... accusing me of being a bot?
- —Elevate—

Is that why all the executives and directors at my giant tech company are pushing AI? Fuckwits...

I'm surprised that researchers are surprised at all.

Surprised? Just yesterday got banned from one TG group.

I commented under a post, its author, ignoring the contents except for the first sentence, wrote that I seem snobbish and talking down so could I please change my writing style. I explained why I won't change my writing style, but made a big effort for it to be friendly and substantiated - that, first, they could specify what should be replaced with what, and second, not when that impedes meaning.

They answered with a ChatGPT response which was gibberish (with such emotion as if that were obvious authority), I answered with a cool article called "GPT in 500 lines" explaining basics of how that works, and also why that gibberish is wrong, in detail. They and a few others ignored everything I said and kept repeating their opinion. Then I wrote one comment with tone becoming a bit closer to theirs noting that they use long smart words incorrectly and don't seem to know how logic works (except for the word itself). Then I got banned.

The scariest thing is - this happened in a TG group for autistic people. Supposedly those least likely to behave in such way. I sometimes forget that autistic people can be dumb or trying to replace intellect with intrigue.

So I'm not surprised, uneducated people would find what to copy-paste before, - "look, that's my opinion written by someone in the Internet, this means I'm right, I won, hahaha", - and now they ask GPT bots for responses.

You mean people who haven't been taught to write quickly, easily, and with their own style tend to look to automate writing faster than those who write better than ai, can do so quickly, and have the proficiency to see it as a form of self expression?

Shocked I tell you. Also not surprised AI researchers are surprised

I always use AI to write texts.

I am to fucking lazy to write more than keywords 😆.

I let it format into a proper text and tell it what it should adjust. That is one task AI is very good in (way better than myself).

For me, it is the faster approach, but I always tend to write with enormous information density (which is disliked by many people somehow) anyway.

I personally prefer the shortest wording with most information to read, so I sometimes let AI summarise.

I'm not an AI fan, but thank you for using it remove words, rather than turn 20 words into 200.
- Reading such articles made me vomit even prior AI 🤣 newspaper writers just love expanding 3 sentences to, like, 5 paragraphs.
  
  Edit: Paragraphs, not Absätze, lol
AI doesn't really "summarize" though, it just chooses random topics to filter out.
i'm honestly curious about your writing style. maybe you could develop it or refine it! but yeah i don't judge you for using ai
- Of course I could, but I don’t want to 😆🤪

Professional writing was always fake. And this just proves it more.

I hate how increasingly we will be forced to take patronizing AI slop at face value.

How are journalists, novelists, researchers, etc fake?
- Sorry, I was focused in on professional communication. All those emails sent by bosses that feign interest or care. All necessary niceties that can grate on someone once they know many are just masks.
  
  I wasn’t being precise, and I assumed others wouldn’t think about it in such broad terms. I agree that my statement would be silly if it applied to all writing that people get paid for.
Professional writing was always fake.

I don't even know what that means. You mean that professional authors use spell-checkers or something?
- I said more in another comment, but I mean stuff like email. The thing companies like Apple are showing ads on TV for.
Are you talking about corporate jargon? Intentionally vague and used by people to try to sound smart. I always ask what someone means when they use it because they could have just used clear and normal language.
- I appreciate that someone could tell I didn’t mean to be super broad.
  
  Jargon definitely falls under the umbrella I was pointing at. Communication among co-workers. Managers. Etc.
  
  The whole style feels cold to me. And impersonal. And I hate it. Jargon can definitely play a role. But I’m also ok with certain types that actually do make communication flow smoother. But yeah, the vapid jargon that masks a lack of understanding, curiosity or humility is a bummer.