Another annoying thing about getting emails people have used AIs to write for them is that they're usually longer than they'd have written by themselv...
Paul Graham complains that emails written with AI assistance tend to be overly long, filled with paragraphs of plausible-sounding but unnecessary text, unlike the more concise versions people would naturally write themselves.
Background
- Paul Graham is a well-known programmer, venture capitalist, and co-founder of Y Combinator (the influential Silicon Valley startup accelerator). He regularly writes essays on technology and startup culture, and his tweets often get wide attention in tech circles.
- This tweet reflects a growing frustration in professional settings as large language models (like ChatGPT) become common tools for drafting emails. Critics argue that AI-generated writing tends to produce longer, more verbose text that sounds plausible but lacks conciseness and personal voice.
- The complaint echoes broader debates about AI writing: it often fills space with generic filler, obscures intent, and forces recipients to wade through more text to extract the same information. Graham's point is that AI assistance, in this case, worsens communication rather than improving it.