Everything here is mine. The ideas, the opinions, the arguments, the things I turn out to be wrong about. All of it started in my head and stayed there through however many drafts it took.
A language model is sometimes involved in what happens after that. Mostly a local one, running on my own machine rather than somebody else’s. Specifically, it may:
- Rephrase a sentence I couldn’t get right on my own
- Fix grammar, punctuation and the typos I stop being able to see after the third read
- Formalise something I wrote too casually, or loosen something I wrote too stiffly
- Talk me out of saying something that will get me in trouble, or cut a sentence that came out stronger than I actually meant it
- Handle the mechanical parts of publishing: files, formatting, the site itself
what it does not do is decide what I think or write a first draft becase I am too afraid to see a blank page. If the blog argues something, I am the one arguing it. If it is wrong, I am the one who is wrong. Nothing here is a model’s opinion wearing my name, and nothing here went up without me having read every word of it and agreed to it.
I don’t think using a language model this way requires an apology; but I do think it requires saying so.