Charlie Stross – On the non-use of AI in my writing process | Hacker News

A Hacker News discussion of Charlie Stross’s refusal to use AI for writing turned into a debate over the accuracy of claims about LLMs.

Commenters argued about the basics of GANs, transformers, and RLHF, with some correcting misunderstandings about how these models actually work.

The thread also split over whether AI can handle long-range narrative structure, or whether the real objection is cultural and spiritual rather than technical.

Overall, the debate highlights tensions around generative AI in fiction: technical limits, artistic values, and the meaning of human authorship.