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I think this is the cleanest formulation of why it's wrong that I've heard. It's simply plagiarism and misrepresentation.

by mpyne16 hours ago|

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And it doesn't foreclose the possibility of LLM achieving human-like writing ability. If I stole the writing of a human author much better than me it would still be plagiarism.

Of course, with real books we do have the problem of ghostwriting, where an author willingly writes for a book that will be published under someone else's authorship. That may be where things end up here, with requirements to acknowledge sources, whether ghostwritten for you or written by others.

by riskable19 hours ago|

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It's because they view the LLM's output as "their thoughts." They told the LLM (via the prompt) what to do—often with loads of run-on sentences and long trains-of-thought. From their perspective, the LLM is just acting as a translation tool, saving them the trouble of having to think (about grammar, ideal wording, or even the order in which their thoughts should be presented).

They treat it as "just another tool" to improve efficiency. Like using a drill instead of a screwdriver.

Then there's people who are so lazy they give LLMs instructions like, "write a LinkedIn post about how AI is changing the future of work for thumbnail consultants." That's when it moves from "translating your thoughts" to "writing for you."

I think the issue is that it can be hard to tell the difference. We need better terms for these things so we can differentiate use cases.

by Sharlin19 hours ago|

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Yes. If someone tells an author to write a novel based on a vague stream-of-consciousness premise or rough plot idea, that doesn’t make them even a co-author.

by asdff11 hours ago|

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It is really no different than you telling your ghost writer what you want the book to be generally about.