3 pointsby sankalpnarula8 hours ago5 comments
  • qup4 hours ago
    I've never had an AI write for me. I don't really understand why people would do that unless English was a foreign language, perhaps--even then, it should be translating, not writing.

    It's not that hard to learn your own language. You presumably are using it constantly, every day. It should be a high priority to know how to spell the words you're using, IMO.

    I do make occasional mistakes, but mostly from using the "swipe" keyboard on my phone, and failing to catch the mistake.

    I don't proofread things like text messages or forum posts--only important emails, or documents that will be posted publicly at my business, and therefore reflect on me.

    If I'm not sure about a word I'm using, I either look it up, or rephrase to use words I'm more familiar with.

  • Croak7 hours ago
    I write most of my stuff in vim so use a neither a spellchecker or grammar-checker. I have found that since I started doing that my spelling has greatly improved. My grammar can be janky sometimes, but I have doubt programs will help with that. If I want to be sure of my spelling I might find some textbox on some website and paste the text there.
  • PaulHoule8 hours ago
    (1) conventional spell checkers still exist

    (2) it's ok to ask "is this grammatical?"

    (3) I will bounce ideas off chatbots but I think I've used just once AI generated sentence in the last two years. On one hand it is not my voice and it also sticks out like a sore thumb. I mean, if I hear "you're not a fur, you're a therian" another time I'm going to howl at the moon or something.

    • sankalpnarula7 hours ago
      TBH, that is not the behaviour, I have observed around me.

      Most of my friends, have started using AI to do job applications, where you have to answer 3 questions. 1-2 para each. Even though the probability of you actually getting an interview is less that 0.01%. So is it reasonable to spend 25 minutes per job application. And when all the application answers look the same, wouldn't having an unpolished version stand out?

      • PaulHoule7 hours ago
        I dunno. I'm glad I'm not looking for a job right now.

        I think marketing of any kind, including job seeking, is a lot more than most people expect, like 25x more work most of the time. In any normal workplace people hate looking at resumes and interviewing and really feel desperate for it to stop so, if you can stand out, people do respond.

        I don't think my experience is transferable, but to me a good job search looks like this:

        I spent about 2 years trying to sell people on a vision I had that could have changed enterprise software. And it didn't work out. My wife was angry at me, and then on Jan 1 I rolled my car which left me unhurt but carless.

        My wife was really skeptical but my plan was to use my product ideas and the demo parts I had laying around to build an AI that would help me with my job applications. This was when if you told people you were working on AI they thought you were a crackpot or a throwback to the 1970s. My first application was to an AI startup and talked about the AI I made to process job applications and... I got the job.

        To be fair I've had other job searches that have gone on for about a year and required a lot of the plain ordinary job-application grind or intensive political work behind the scenes to get the right subunits of a large institution to find the funding to hire me.

        I am seeing a real intensification of "FOMO-ism" lately around AI, like a lot of people seem to think that if they don't get ChatGPT to write a seemingly insightful blog post AI in the next 30 seconds they can enjoy being poor for the rest of their lives.

        I can't tell you how to be unique, but I can tell you that when so many people are barking up the same tree the rewards of doing anything else are greater than ever.

      • verdverm5 hours ago
        It will stand out in ways that probably get it auto rejected by the ATS
  • jayturley7 hours ago
    It's not the lack of spelling and grammar.

    It's the "reduction to the mean" that turns everything into bland corporate-friendly prose like the bulk of the corpus that AI models ingest.

  • verdverm8 hours ago
    Spelling and grammar errors will hurt you in the job application process. Effective communication is one of the non-technical aspects you are being evaluated on. These mistakes are seen in the broader context of attention to detail and professionalism. You look sloppy, no Ai required.
    • sankalpnarula7 hours ago
      But the level of polish which AI generates nowadays, is almost unparalleled. My bigger concern here is what happens to people whose job was to write polished posts.

      What this have led to is, even if some blog, article is written by human, if it uses even slightly fancy words, I have a tendency to assume it's human. Are other's experiencing the same?

      • verdverm5 hours ago
        One of the new tasks for interviewers is determining who's using Ai to mass apply, fake their skills, and cheat during testing. Not doing this will make you stand out, but you still have to bring the required skills. Spend more time upskilling than mass applying. A 0.01% apply to interview rate is a sign you are not doing the right things. I've personally never applied to more than 2-3 jobs at a time.