We need a word for words by humans made to other humans
Given how often people already pass on LLM-generated content (slop, enslopification) as their own writing, it follows that we need a word for human-produced texts made solely for the purpose of communicating with other humans.
Criteria for the word’s coverage
- It covers anything uttered by humans using any medium for the purpose of communicating with other people. Pen on paper, computer keyboard, phone keyboard (even with autosuggestions used) are all covered by it. If you use dictation software that doesn’t reformulate your statements and just transcribes what you said, that’s also covered. And yes, if you talk on the phone with a friend and neither of you is using LLMs for your lines, then it’s also covered.
- Because the purpose is primarily communicating with other humans, programming languages and LLM prompts are not covered. However, a comment in the code written by a human is covered.
- Similarly, the LLM output that has been human-edited is not covered. I know someone could argue that you could rewrite it so many times to get rid of all the smells that it no longer resembles the original text. However, in my view, if it still carries the same idea as was generated by an LLM, then it’s just doing the semantic equivalent of calligraphy practice.
From those criteria it follows that the word shouldn’t discriminate based on the perceived quality of what the person wrote (i.e. whether it’s a 1000-page novel or an angry Facebook comment) but rather focus on the human aspect of its origin. And while short and self-explanatory words are usually the best, I care more about the memorability aspect than the syllable count. (Enshittification, not the shortest word but very descriptive nonetheless, comes to mind.)
I have my own prefered term (brainism). Try figuring out yours. Just don’t ask an LLM for it and use your own nugget, please. :)