Disclaimer
I'm going to be frank here. I'm using ChatGPT to proof read this post. I even used ChatGPT 4's DALL-E features to generate th...
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I would always propose to not use generative AI for skills you aim to master. This is, because mastery requires lots of repetition and failure and extensive dealing with the subject. The more we rely out skill in externals the less mastery we can achieve.
What's the conclusion of this hypothesis? Using AI as a supplement (as you described for review or generate images as your goal is to write articles and not design banners) is great.
Even greater is using AI as support towards your mastery. Prompt hot to give detailed feedback on your overall writing skills, instead of just reviewing the single stticle. Summarize them and feed it again to give you a summary of your skill development over time.
I totally agree. Even if you must use AI to generate an article, go the extra mile of reading it thoroughly, and making sure that everything it says checks out.
Also about properly guiding the AI to give you what you want.
Sometimes, you'd need to write on something but you don't know where to start or how to start. AI sort of gives you a landing pad and then, it is up to you to launch from there.
That concept of AI progressively hallucinating because of learning from previous hallucinations is great base for a Sci-Fi book / movie. We always assumed that AI will be superior, like SkyNet from "Terminator" or post evolutionary forms like in "Ideal Imperfection" by Jacek Dukaj.
But reality may be more like "Idiocracy" with AI :)
I agree, AI for the moment is correct for proof-reading.
If you really understand how the algorithm works behind chatGPT, it is obvious to conclude it is not good for creative contents.
I would just nuance the analysis of other dev.to articles, on the second example you took, you are not 100% sure the conclusion had been copy/pasted from an AI generated content (even if I agree TS is not directly responsible for the search engine ranking).
I skimmed things down with the TS article, I'm pretty sure a lot of that TS article that I was referencing used plenty of AI to fill in the blanks. And that's my problem with the use of AI. If the message is not fully your message, you shouldn't be using it to generate filler content.
You're right, it is a pity to see people searching for ranking spots rather than providing actual value. To be honest, I noticed the quality of dev.to content have lowered way before the rise of chatGPT, but since then it might have become worse unfortunately. Sad to see it!
I also was at the point where I used GPT to write my unit and e2e tests (React, Python FastAPI). The result was a good coverage and worked OK so far. That is, **until **I came to the point where I refactored a bit more than usual and had to admit that I knew practically nothing about the test-frameworks themselves.
That was a hard and humbling lesson (once again), that took me several weeks to intensely learn about Cypress, vitest etc. I would not recommend anyone using GPT for programming unless they have enough experience to gloss over the chore-details. Then it really becomes a booster that does not explode.
partially right is sometimes more dangerous than completely wrong......
💯💯💯
I agree wholeheartedly with the statement: ChatGPT Is A Tool, Not A Crutch.
Everytime I see another title that includes the world "unvieling" and the word "delve" somehwere in a post, it immediately discredits it for me, becasue those are some of the blatant telltale signs of uncurated AI usage.
Just like we moved from quills to pens to typewriters to wordprocessers, AI is another step on this path. Say what you will, it still has a ways to go before it can replace a writer that melds unique knowledge, opinions and aspirations.
The problem is "AI-assisted hyperdependence". As I delve into the concept of AI-assisted hyperdependence, I can't help but feel concerned about its long-term consequences. Relying heavily on artificial intelligence for a vast range of tasks, from simple daily decisions to complex analytical problems to even as simple as writing a blog or correcting grammar, I fear it might lead to a gradual erosion of my own skills and critical thinking abilities. It's very possible it can slowly be happening to a lot of people.
While this dependency streamlines my processes and enhances efficiency for others (like yourself when revising an article), it also makes me wonder if my judgment and creativity are becoming undervalued, and my ability to operate independently of AI is diminishing. Good points are made in this article. Copy and pasting straight out of ChatGPT for topical blog articles can only be recognized by someone who heavily uses it.
In my opinion, ChatGPT definitely helps you generate a component/function with some boiler-plate code (as you mentioned generation of e2e and unit tests). But when it comes to debugging complex bugs or generating new code to work with existing codebase, it can be misleading at times.
Haha well fair enough, that's true. But I'd rather be the whistle-blower warner than the person who encourages people to keep at it ;)
The content generated by AI will not be highly regarded
It will not indeed, and as a trusted member here I make an active member to flag posts, but I still see some posts get a lot of attention with people grateful for content that’ll lead them astray.
I have a strong admiration for individuals who scrutinize patterns in collective behaviors, Thank you .
Thanks man :)
Did AI generate that title for you?
Nope :)
I love the ratio in this reply 😅
"also outrank others in search engine results" could be a tongue in cheek sense of humor by the author as well. I laughed at least :-)
My two posts on dev.to is authored by chat gpt, and I clearly state so as per dev.to's guidelines. Also, I make sure that I stand by every statement given (and ask chat gpt to edit out the points I disagree with or is wrong/outdated).
As long as I carefully monitor the output, and use my experience to make sure the content is true, and relevant, to the best of my knowledge, I see chat gpt as a wonderful tool to communicate knowledge I wouldn't have else. But of course, to just spew out it's generated mumbling without editing or proofing is deteriorating. Hopefully such accounts will stay mostly unpopular and unread.
sounds about right...
I agree with you too! Posting an article generated with AI with bad writing and links just for a sake of posting, is something that I think will bite the person back in the foreseeable future.
My last four articles I have written all by myself, on my keyboard, with no input from ChatGPT. Observation: I got significant fewer readers compared to my ChatGPT engineered blog posts. Lessons learned: AI will become our new overlords?!?!
There's probably a good reason for this actually.
Assuming your first posts were written using ChatGPT, they probably got some initial readers. Then the mods probably came along and graylisted your account. So from now on all your posts will probably have significantly fewer readers regardless of whether or not you use ChatGPT moving forward.
That's also part of the reason I wrote this article, to try steer people away from using AI to write on their behalf.
Well, if this happened, the mods are not moderating according to the rules set by DEV. Not only that, but in that place they would have been discouraging people to follow their rules (i.e. clearly state that their post was written by Chat GPT), which seems rather contra-intuitive and unproductive.
I don't see a problem here, you see low quality content, you skip it. In the end it doesn't matter who/what generated it.
I agree, except it could be misleading for people who don't know it is low quality. In the example above with the article on npm packages, someone new to npm / JavaScript / development in general may not know it is bad to use out of date packages.
And if nothing else, it is time wasted reading an article before you realise just how low quality it is.
Well, bad is subjective.
Nonetheless, when you read articles written by strangers on the Internet, you should not be expecting scientific research, peer reviewed grade material in the first place :)
Do you think platforms like this would be better off if people who constantly regurgitating low quality posts aren't told to stop?
I do not know what better is from the platform perspective.
Essentially this is what fuels the platforms, free content generated by users, to keep their audience engaged in the comments section. From this perspective, the low quality content has lead to this article, which lead to more engagement from users.
Besides if we run out of here is how you create a div with react or do this and you will be a better developer every two weeks, the place might start to look abandoned :D
AI is generating low-quality content.
"The biggest problem here is that ChatGPT can "sound right", and that will mask misleading information"
This sums it up for me. I use AI a lot to come up with my articles but I have learnt not to use it to come up with issues I have no idea about.
Truth is, more people will keep writing with AI and there is nothing most content platforms can do about it.
They need the content but I feel, that if they can come up with a roadmap for using AI for content development, it would aid in navigating a pathway towards AI-written documented content.
I also believe dev. should allow moderators to tag AI-written content so others can be aware.
If more than 5 moderators tag a content AI written, it should be boldly labelled as AI-supported.
What do you think?
There are guidelines on dev.to that tell people to tag their posts as AI written. Based off most of the comments on my article here, people naturally ignore posts that they know are written by AI. I guess naturally mods are just going to mark AI generated posts as low quality. But my main purpose of this article is to point out that people can see through rubbish generated content, so don't bother posting it in the first place because over time your account will probably get gray-listed, which is the terrible for you in the long run.
It's now easy to identify the content that is generated using AI. I skip it after reading 1-2 sentences only.
That's fine for people like you and me, but it's a big problem for people just getting started in their programming journey.
i think the output can be improved with proper prompting, but i still get the random article that is filled with lorem ipsum lol
Don't get upset with ChatGPT when it doesn't do what you want :)
dev.to/michaelsynan/getting-big-ma...
It's amazing that I had to write a post with this title.
I don't understand how people can trust AI so much.