Hacker News Reader

As a native English speaker, I'd be quite wary of doing that -- I thought your original message was perfectly clear (a few errors like "It's has been", but nothing that impeded my ability to understand -- in fact, I had to closely re-read your 1st message to see the difference, because my brain skipped over things like "it's has been").

The "ChatGPT improved" result is certainly a little more polished, but given ChatGPT's ability to confidently misinterpret / hallucinate, I would be worried that it could subtley change meanings, especially for more technical content.

Of course this problem isn't just limited to AIs, I've known (native speaker) Project Managers and client liaisons who have tweaked text I have written to ask technical questions and in doing, totally changed the meaning (and then done the same in the opposite direction, so the response was especially bewildering!)

I can understand that it's improving your confidence (and by the look of your 1st paragraph your English is good enough that you could easily identify if it changed the meaning in your message -- and that combined with a confidence boost is maybe worth the extra proof-reading you need to do) but that wariness of risk is just my $0.02.

I helped a guy who wasn't good at english send emails in a previous job. It was conflicting, because with automation we're removing trials from our lives that convey how much mastery we have in given areas.

One of the heaviest consequences of AI proliferation is that the value of understanding will continue to plummet, while the value of asking for help and delegating will rise.

This is all fine as long as there are plenty of willing subordinates, man or machine, to do the dirty work of actually knowing things for you, but what happens when they wise up to the fact that they're getting the short end of the stick?

I understand that you would prefer to sound like a native speaker. This is a perspective I've heard from others over the last few weeks too, so I've been considering it. Your writing is fine; the original version is perfectly understandable on its own.

The thing is... the only time that grammatical mistakes actually matter is when they make meaning ambiguous. And since ChatGPT doesn't know what you meant, I would be more worried that it would further distort any mistakes in that area.

I personally like your original paragraph because it may not be perfect it has flavor. If everyone started using AI to fix their paragraph then text will become boring because it would all be of similar style. It would be like reading one long continuous book written by the same author.

Imagine if restaurants all started using AI to cook their food. It would destroy the taste of food because no matter where you go the food will always taste the same. The great thing about restaurants is you could go to two different pizza places on the same street and order the same type of pizza and they would both taste different. Now imagine if AI got a hold of the recipe and made the pizza at both places. They would turn out same and taste the same.

How is that better?

AI has lots of flaws, but that's not inherently one of them, and in the context of ChatGPT it explicitly is not one of them. It samples from a probability distribution, and with appropriate prompts it's actually fantastic at giving you a new recipe every night, or a dozen variations on a recipe theme, and you can tailor it to exactly the level of novelty you're expecting. Randomness by itself is not the human characteristic that the current batch of AI is lacking.

It fixed some things (“ChatGPT have”, “It’s has”) but changed the meaning of the first sentence and introduced a misplaced modifier (“As a non-native English speaker, ChatGPT…”).

Can you please explain how that is considered a misplaced modifier?

The modified version is saying that ChatGPT is the non-native speaker, not the original poster. It is a different meaning.

It is probably wrong too. ChatGPT is a native English speaker as far as I can tell.

Sure. To be more precise, it's a "dangling modifier" [1]. The modifying clause "As a non-native English speaker" intends to refer to the narrator, who is using ChatGPT to improve their text. But the sentence as constructed, where this clause is followed by the subject "ChatGPT", might be read as implying that ChatGPT is a non-native English speaker. The original beginning "I am not a native English speaker..." was clearer.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangling_modifier

I'm not that impressed with the ChatGPT output. I see one or two one routine grammar errors ChatGPT fixed for you, but overall its version reads worse than your original. (A regular grammar checker could catch these mistakes just as well.)

For example, it took your perfectly good:

>I am not a native English speaker (as many of you already noticed due to my grammar mistakes), ...

And replaced it with

> As a non-native English speaker (as many of you have likely noticed due to my grammar mistakes), ...

While a lot of native speakers would write something like this, it's awkward and incorrect. You didn't mean to say "As you may have noticed, as a non native speaker, blah blah", you meant to say "As you may have noticed, I am not a native speaker."

Apropos automated approval of "tone". The company I work for now has a policy that documents must not use any "potentially biased" terms (e.g. "whitelist" or "master"). We now have automated agents that do simple search-and-replace (e.g. s/whitelist/allowlist/) over our internal Wiki pages. With no intention of debating the value or politics of such a policy, I wonder whether anyone is contemplating employing ChatGPT for more pervasive automated tone-control.

I also wonder how long until this is mandatory in pretty much every organization, at least in the US.

Sounds like something "the Party" would want to have in 1984 to further cement the use of "newspeak".

Notably, ChatGPT changed the meaning of what you said.

“Maybe you are trying to do the wrong thing with ChatGPT” vs “Perhaps you are using ChatGPT in the wrong way” are subtly but substantially different statements.

One implies the incorrect usage of the software, the other implies the software being used for the incorrect things.

I actually prefer the original paragraph. It reads like you wrote it, you being you the person. The second feels entirely sterile and generic.

I am not worried about whether chatgpt would hallucinate as I’m sure you read the responses and I know it’s easier for me to read and listen in a foreign language than compose.

By the way, I think you’re doing an amazing thing here taking the technology and making a profoundly useful tool out of it. By reading its revision you can get corrections and pointers. I use chatgpt similarly but in other domains. It’s not always “right,” but it’s close enough to point me in directions I wasn’t aware of before.

You writing skills will stop improving the more you depend on this. It's similar to people losing the ability to mentally map where they are or learn their own city by relying on map and routing apps. While map apps have made navigation so much easier and getting lost much less frequent, it does come at some cost, perhaps acceptable. Is it acceptable to you that your English growth stalls, or if you internalize the ChatGPT changes, that you start to talk like a generic bot, albeit seemingly intelligent bot?

How long until all conversations will start looking like they're authored by the same person?

It’s already getting that way with things like grammarly. It makes me sad. I know my colleagues who speak English as an additional language use it and find it helpful, but I much prefer whatever English they speak with be the same when they write. It makes engagement more interesting

Grammarly is very limited in what it allows you stylistically. I tried it for a few months but it didn't let me express all of my thoughts. However muddled and confused, those are my muddled thoughts, damnit.

I never cared for Grammerly and the like. I felt like they wanted to homogenize your voice and often dumb down your language. Google Docs' blue underlines, on the other hand, usually do point to an actual error of some sort.

Curious question. This makes me think ChatGPT is to English what gofmt/Prettier is to Go/JavaScript.

Sounds like a good anonymity tool.

Wow, that is a significant improvement. I’m a native English speaker and I may start using ChatGPT for this purpose too.

Most of it is an improvement, but the change in the first sentence could really change the meaning in a way that may or may not be appropriate. That change is ambiguous but could be important.

Proofreading shouldn't change the meaning or intention of a passage.

Maybe that was the intent (of the AI) :-)

I feel like some of the nuance got lost in at least two places:

"trying to do the wrong thing with ChatGPT" vs "using ChatGPT in the wrong way" "have been "approved" by this AI" vs "have been reviewed and approved by this AI."

I prefer the original phrasing.

I seem to remember a book where people starting using AI's like this to automatically improve their email/texts, eventually allowing it to do more (basic responses/appointment scheduling/etc), making communication a lot easier and more efficient.

At some point, the boundary between simply "polishing things up" and actively guiding the interactions became blurry, and the AI eventually becomes the go between between everyone and starts taking over.

We know this response has not been "enhanced" by the AI if my second and third sentences have not been filtered out.

"Significant" improvement? Really? They're almost the same but ChatGPT version removed some of the nuance such as `"approved"` vs `reviewed and approved`. I prefer the human-written version even with the grammar errors.

Okay, I guess I'm in the other camp. I really did not like the ChatGPT version, and had no problem with the original.

The original was perfectly clear, and had your own unique "voice" to it. The ChatGPT version sounded like every other piece of ChatGPT, and honestly, I've become somewhat allergic to them now.

The second version is only marginally better and ignores your own style. How's that invaluable?

I prefer your original text, and I'd caution you against using AI this way. Embrace your writing style, make an effort to improve it but accept that it is a part of you.

Few things to consider here:

- By outsourcing your thinking to ChatGPT, you are not investing into improving your own skills.

- ChatGPT helps paint a picture of you that is not true to who you are

- This may lead to situatons that may make you very uncomfortable, for example speaking in person with people who built a ChatGPT-based image of you

It is probably a good idea to not rely on ChatGPT for your text any more than you are relying on Photoshop for your pictures.

As a native (American) English speaker, the original paragraph looks fine to me except for “IA”.

The chatgpt tone is weird, be careful. AI mistakes are different than non native mistakes, and we are all going to be getting a lot more sensitive to being able to detect robots talking to us.

As a non native english speaker, I'm perfectly fine with my maybe-filled-with-some-errors-but-understandable-and-personal-english

In particular, the AI removed the scare quotes around approved. Assuming you intended them, that was a significant loss in nuance.

I think the answers being about ChatGPT subtly changing the meaning, changing the tone are missing the point and ignoring the agency the author has. We usually are better at curating than writing, so I feel pretty confident the author went over the ChatGPT version and (as is their prerogative, and their's only) decided that the ChatGPT version actually reflected their intent and their style better.

I've been using ChatGPT (as a non-native speaker) as well and found it tremendously useful—not only to catch grammar mistakes or provide some better vocabulary, but to understand what might have been off and provide more alternatives. I often ask it to rephrase my sentences in different styles and then pick and choose what I like the best ("in the style of the new yorker", "in the style of ayn rand", "in the style of ezra klein", "in the style of CNN").

Anybody that cares enough to have ChatGPT edit their sentences and cares about what they are intent to express, will I think benefit tremendously from such a tool.

In fact, it is what ChatGPT is really good at: a search engine for vibes, tailored to what you feed it. It is I think a much richer, much more enticing tool that following some rules out of Strunk & White or some other bland business writing handbook.

My thoughts on both paragraphs:

Oh look another apologetic non native English speaker using perfect English

Wouldn’t something like Grammarly be a better fit for that usecase?