People would start writing more and getting better at it with the help of LLM. This would create a positive feedback loop that would encourage them to write more and better. LLM should be used a tool improve productivity and quality of output. Like we use a computer interface to write faster, move and edit text, instead of using a pencil and an eraser, today you can use a LLM to improve your writing. This will help people to get better at organizing their thoughts and think more clearly instead of replacing the thinking.
The "people are mostly fine" is true. People were mostly fine at the time when only the elites could write, but the society will not be the same. We are moving towards those old times.
Maybe you deal with intellectual elite from the best schools and haven't noticed[1], but adult literacy even among college educated has been on a downward trend for some time and we can see some results. Normal interactions in the corporate world are more difficult. People in middle-level management can't explain and articulate things as well as they used to. There is more communication, but it's not as efficient. One well-written report in every two weeks used to be enough. You need to be on a Zoom call 2-3 hours weekly for the same thing.
Mediocre or low quality writing is mentally taxing to read. If what you read is grammatically correct AI-slob it really kills all interest in reading and communicating in writing.
[1] Only about 10% of adults have PIAAC adult literacy level 4 or 5.
With language however we are attempting to refer to some kind of underlying meaning or reality, and an LLM will not give you the understanding of the things being referred to - only the outward representations themselves. If you are indeed interested in meaningless exchange of symbols a la Searle's Chinese Room then perhaps there is some utility in this; otherwise it's the act of digesting and comprehending meaning, and the internal cognitive processes that go into the production of the written artifact that matter, not just the written artifact itself.
I wonder if some people would argue that it _was_ disastrous though?
We seem to struggle with things like putting people on the moon and not making airplanes fail compared to 50 years ago.
Maybe there was some critical mass of mental maths skills that engineers had in the 60s that we've lost now? Are we still inventing things at the same rate as before?
Not that, say, doing long division in your head isn't a valuable skill, mind.
Writing is different. It is more akin to the left leg, when the right leg is your thinking. I am a weird combination of an author and a mathematician-turned-programmer, and both these skills are very useful in either activity; I wouldn't be able to program half as well if I didn't dump my messy ideas to a doc first, especially when the model is far from straightforward.
Writing things down is a huge feedback loop for thinking. Plenty of edge cases stick their head out of the doc once you write everything down.
If I were teaching at a university, I think I could not assign essay grades until i sat down with every student for a quick Q&A on the subject of their paper. That would reveal the plagiarists and charlatans and lame non-thinkers.
As opposed to the writing at one end, these thoughts are rooted in an experience, an emotion, and this association never dissapears. Add the above act on them, it is like writing.
Maybe the author is referring strictly to communication or to the art of writing.
If on the other hand, you need to generate a bunch of content for a school paper, blog or etc then its immensely helpful.
If AI trains on generated text it is equivalent of an incestuous relationship and I don't have elaborate on analogy further.