The case against LLM prose
I like LLM-generated code more than most people do, but I'm pretty sure I dislike LLM-generated English more than most people do. There's plenty of anti-LLM sentiment out there, but surprisingly (to me) little theorizing about what is wrong with it, and why. So, here's my view:
A lot of what we get from writing, we get over time or from scrutiny. Both in fiction or nonfiction, we often underrate how much of its meaning and import only comes to us after investments of time and effort. LLM-generated English does not repay those investments the way human-generated English can. So, presenting LLM-generated English as human-generated English violates a trust. You are implicitly asking someone to consider something with care and to think beyond the surface of something, but the writing will not reward that care and time.1
Relatedly, LLM-generated writing is disproportionately manipulative. Precisely because it can't do much else, it trades in formulaic contrasts, cheap sensationalism, and flattery. Partly because it suggests a payoff that isn't there, it dulls the reader's receptivity to contrasts that are truly interesting, facts that are really sensational, and so on. More and more of the written environment feels like 20th-percentile vaudeville humor or partisan news: the recitation of cheap formulas aimed at emotional weak points, in the guise of something else.
I hope it's obvious that this doesn't apply to all AI prose. I like it when chatbots give me prose that's more digestible than bullet points, and I'm glad people can use AI for translation. Moreover, things like formal requests and lawsuits don't carry the same assumptions, and none of this applies to those.
My finger-to-the-wind sense is that people are mostly shrugging their shoulders about this, except when it comes to things like school essays and job interviews. The sentiment, if I had to guess at an articulation of it, is that in a world already stuffed with TikTok and video games and sound bites, rampant LLM-generated prose is just more of the same. If I'm right, though, LLM-generated prose is more corrosive than that.
Maybe future AI writing will reward such care. I doubt it, but I can't be sure. I'm talking about what is respectful now.↩