Why this blog isn't written using an LLM

At the start of the year I happened to be mucking about trying to write blog posts using an LLM. I had gotten it in my head that I wanted to write more, and I was trying — and failing — to keep a writing schedule. I think I was using some version of Claude through Kagi Assistant. I fed it a couple bits of writing as a style guide, I fed it a WhatsApp transcript I had with my partner, and let it rip.

The result felt pretty incredible. In retrospect, it wasn’t a piece of grand literature. It made very liberal use of the “it’s not A — it’s B” structure that everyone recognizes nowadays. But it managed to turn a mediocre idea I had into a mediocre blog post in 2 minutes flat.

Way better than the 2 hours I usually would do.

If I wanted to, I could start churning out a blog post every day. Trivially, I would start dwarfing my previous output. No more fretting to myself about what to write, no more irregular post schedules. No more drafts stuck in editing hell. With a little bit of copy-editing and clever prompting, I could probably beat the allegations and avoid all the LLM-isms that would give it away.

My partner didn’t like it. Not because the writing was bad1, but because of what it did to the act of writing itself, and what it did to me. Great, I now have more lottery tickets to throw on HackerNews, more opportunities to “be read”. But then what? I keep chasing that dragon of more content and more clout?

I’m not exactly sure what I’m trying to achieve here, writing this. Mostly I just know it’s good for me, somehow. A way to be a little less crazy in this information-addled world. A way for me to share my thoughts with my friends and colleagues. A mental touching-of-grass.

Though I’d like to be, I’m not gwern. I’m not Tim Urban. I’m not a writer2. I don’t have the mental strength to throw post after post into the void of the internet, in the vague hopes of being read and remembered by a bunch of people3. I’m just an engineer who happens to like words. And I’d like to keep writing for the right reasons.

So yeah. That’s why this blog isn’t written with an LLM. Because I don’t need any more ways for me to intensify and productivize my own hobbies.

Footnotes

  1. Though it definitely was ↩

  2. Nor do I think it’s a good idea, in our socio-economic climate ↩

  3. I’m just not that kind of crazy ↩