LLM AIs as Editors

Why you didn't find any typos in yesterday's mini-essay

I tried something new for yesterday’s mini-essay.

In the past I have gone one of two ways with editors:

1. No editor: The result is lots of spelling and grammar mistakes. I never have the motivation to catch them in my own work. Not an ideal experience for the reader.

2. High touch editor: For my essays I use an old friend who is an excellent editor. He does a complete pass on the (long) essays, often changing the structure of the essay in the process. I need to give him at least a day or two notice, and he says he spends at least four hour or more on each essay (and charges me appropriately)

Generally I use LLM AIs to help in the early stages of a process. They are great at generating ideas and creating content that I can later edit into something I am proud of. AS my friend said, LLMs can generate the first draft that is 80% right. That is a lot of efficiency!

But LLMs are not limited to writing first drafts. They are not limited to “asking questions”. I am now using GPT-4 to edit all of my essays.

My first prompt attempted worked pretty well:

Edit the following essay to fix any spelling and grammar mistakes and make it more readable: [cut and paste full essay]

GPT-4 in ChatGPT is not fast, but it spit out a new essay in a few minutes. It looked fine. But my inability to see details meant that I wasn’t sure it was any better than the original. So I asked ChatGPT to list all the changes, “What changes did you make to the essay?”. The answer was not what I was looking for:

I made several changes to the essay to improve its grammar, spelling, readability, and overall flow. Here is a summary of the changes:

1. Corrected spelling and grammar mistakes throughout the essay.

2. Improved sentence structure and phrasing for better readability.

3. Added punctuation and proper capitalization where necessary.

4. Removed unnecessary words and rephrased some sentences to enhance clarity and conciseness.

5. Broke up longer paragraphs into shorter ones for better organization and readability.

These changes were made to create a more polished and reader-friendly essay, while maintaining the original content and message.

Since ChatGPT can hold the memory of previous conversations I just asked it, “Please be specific and list show the original sentences and the changed sentences”. I got what I was looking for:

Certainly! Here is a list of specific changes I made, with the original sentences and the revised sentences:

1. Original: When Google first launched it’s search results were orders of magnitude better than contemporary alternatives like Yahoo and Alta Vista that used directories and weighted results based on the number of time the words you searched for appeared on any given web page. Revised: When Google first launched, its search results were orders of magnitude better than contemporary alternatives like Yahoo and AltaVista, which used directories and weighted results based on the number of times the searched words appeared on any given web page.

2. Original: Google’s search function was so different that strategy did not work. Revised: Google's search function was so different that this strategy didn't work.

3. Original: That original page ranking system was Brin and Page’s Stanford PhD thesis, and is still available online for free. Revised: Brin and Page's original page ranking system, their Stanford PhD thesis, is still available online for free.

4. Original: To goose results more they created pyramids of fake websites. Revised: To boost results further, they created pyramids of fake websites.

5. Original: They used new techniques (not published on Stanford’s website) to identify what began to be called “Black Hat SEO” and downgrade their rankings. Revised: They used new techniques (not published on Stanford's website) to identify what began to be called "Black Hat SEO" and downgrade their rankings.

6. Original: But each time Google searched for a “true signal of quality”, Black Hat SEO’s tried to reverse engineer the signals and duplicate the signal (sometimes without the corresponding consumer benefit), and Google had to adjust their algorithm again. Revised: But each time Google sought a "true signal of quality," Black Hat SEOs attempted to reverse engineer the signals and duplicate them (sometimes without the corresponding consumer benefit), forcing Google to adjust their algorithm again.

7. Original: The last twenty years has been an arms race between Google and Black Hat SEO. Revised: The last twenty years have been an arms race between Google and Black Hat SEO.

These are just a few examples of the specific changes I made to improve the essay's grammar, readability, and overall flow.

The cost for me to hire a proofreading editor would not be high, but the time and effort to find someone I liked, and the delay and coordination needed to ensure each mini-essay was edited would be high.

I am particularly bad at missing typos, but it feels like anyone writing for public consumption should be doing this now. A typo is no longer just a typo, it is a signal the writer is not using AI.

Keep it simple,

Edward