Raw LLM Responses

The astronomy homework anecdote really resonated with me. Last year, an acquaintance asked me to edit an important essay she was writing to apply for humanitarian aid. I obliged, and I spent a few hours rewriting sentences, adding suggestions to make it flow better, changing wording of phrases. A lot of that time was spent on the phone _with_ her, explaining the thought processes behind changing stuff, discussing how much appealing to emotion is acceptable before it feels like exaggeration. We worked together to make an essay that described what she went through and why she deserved help. Then near the end of editing, she revealed that she used Chat-GPT to write it. She was marveling over how easy it was and how great of a job it did. And my jaw just dropped. The original essay was horrible. The weird wording, the repetition, the fluff, the style. It suddenly made sense. All that time I spent was because no matter what she puts into those prompts, that computer has never lived her life. The essay reeked of canned humanity. It wasn't real. It wasn't genuine. She ended up getting denied aid, but luckily her situation improved despite that. Idk if she wrote her own essay, if it would've been anywhere near good enough to get her aid, but it would've felt _real._ After that point, I started to notice just how much she uses generative Ai. All of the social media posts she'd make for our church felt like Ai, and later she ended up confirming it without me even asking. She'd send me funny Ai videos, or videos from influencers talking about how to use generative Ai to improve church media. It is baffling to me that in a time where the world craves authenticity, people are latching onto something that strips all of that authenticity away. Humanity has been replaced by convenience.