I recently went to an interest group meeting. It begins with a presentation, which is generally confirmed in advance by the meeting organizer based on a text abstract of the planned presentation submitted by a future presenter. This time, the presentation turned out to be staggeringly bad, mostly consisting of filler words and interjections, and presenter was struggling to express even the basic idea. I could not fathom how that would happen, considering the idea was presumably expressed in the abstract.

At some point, the organizer (to help situation) quoted from the abstract that was submitted, and it was indeed apparently decently written. After that, I could not help thinking that the likelihood the abstract was written by an LLM is very high. In that case, the presenter certainly reviewed it, but crucially did not write it—the thought process that makes the idea part of your active vocabulary, and you capable of expressing it would not have taken place.

In fact, even if no LLM was involved in this particular case (perhaps it was just a particularly violent case of stage fright, despite the event being very small and the environment very casual), it would be beyond silly to assume that this would not be happening going forward.

I used to think that it is beneficial if an LLM can help in handling certain boring signaling communication for people who are very bad at it, acting as a sort of an equalizer. A model writes stuff, you approve it, and you gain access somewhere without having, say, the written language flair of someone who went to a prestigious school, or having to spend time on something that seems unnecessary.

I am changing my mind now. Sure, the case I have described is one of the more extreme ones, but it made me think how signals are actually signals for a reason, and when these signals go away the communication field does not become equalized—instead, other signals and barriers are used: money, IRL meetings, invitation, some sort of privacy-violating invasive check of humanity, etc., or the communication that relied on some signals before would simply not happen now. I personally do not see that as a positive thing.

Only if you also tell me you did. Then I know I'm not worth your time.