My article "How to Write an Effective Software Design Document" is on the front page of Hacker News today. I tried submitting this myself 4x a couple months ago, and it flopped every time, so I'm excited to see this hit #1.
Michael Lynch
@mtlynch.io
875 followers 184 following 283 posts
Bootstrapped founder. Lover of unit tests. One successful exit. ex-@google, ex-@microsoft.
![AI can help you become a good writer, not a great writer
AI can be improve your writing, but it's important to recognize its limitations.
AI can't accurately predict the responses of real readers. AI has seen many examples of good writing, and it does an impressive job at pattern matching your writing to other examples, but you know your readers better than AI does.
As an experiment, I asked an AI agent to offer feedback on a recent essay written by Paul Graham, a popular and influential software writer. Here was the AI assistant's first note:
> “An essay has to tell people something they don't already know” may feel too rigid. [...]
>
> A softer version might be:
>
> - “A good essay usually tells readers something they didn't already fully know.”
> - “An essay has to add something to the reader's understanding.”
The AI's feedback is basically, “You have a strong point of view. Why don't you water it down?”
The feedback for Graham's essay is typical of AI. An AI assistant does not want to adopt bold stances or take risks. AI wants to sound like everyone else.
If Paul Graham let an AI assistant revise all of his writing, he would not be popular or interesting because AI would filter the exact qualities that make Graham stand out.
AI can help you reach the 60th or 70th percentile of writing ability, but not beyond. An AI assistant will never say, “Gosh, that's better than I can write, so I'll leave it alone.” If you show it 90th percentile writing, AI will drag it to the 70th percentile with needless edits.
To grow beyond AI's limitations, you need to follow your intuition. If AI tells you to change something, think carefully about whether the AI assistant “gets” what you're trying to do and whether you agree with its feedback.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:5rmuptxnl562svleoywqf7fe/bafkreifhpr5qrx7t6gx6uf573f77nydmwbcrszzh672ef6r6sp3anszocm)
