One of the critiques I hear from others about AI is lack of credit for work. I have a different motivation for a lot of my work which is maximum impact and scale, such that for a lot of things it’s less important to designate “credit” as it is for the work to scale and reach as many people as possible. Thus, it’s a benefit for my work (whether it’s my book – which is open source, or OpenAPS or any other projects) to be training material for LLMs. And it’s a benefit for it to be accessible and referenced and used, because it will reach more people. 

I was thinking the other day about some of the smaller scale projects that are most meaningful to me. Particularly, things like writing the post after I broke my ankle in 2019, which for years picked up steam and reached other people (via search) who also couldn’t find other resources about returning to weight-bearing after an ankle fracture. I’ve written a variety of other posts knowing they would not be high-volume traffic and would instead sit ‘on page 17 of Google’, or the like. Interestingly, with AI, I think some of that content has the ability to be surfaced up more easily into AI – which is awesome! Usually it links to posts so theoretically someone could click the link and read it in its full form, rather than the paraphrase or summarized content in the AI they are using.

I don’t mind the summary or paraphrasing in their AI, actually. Again, my goal is to get information to people who need it – so this AI use case does serve my goal.

However, one thing I realized the other day is that this breaks a feedback loop. I maybe get 1 comment on a piece of content (e.g. a blog post) for every ~500 reads of it (order of magnitude estimate). That feedback via the comment is a huge signal and part of my process, because it indicates there is value in continuing to write and provide this niche content (whether it’s about broken ankles or book recommendations or anything else). But, that ratio is changing – meaning I get fewer comments over time – as people ingest the content elsewhere, not realizing that there is a place to give feedback or acknowledge that it was useful. That then influences me, because it makes me question in some cases whether there is still value in creating (writing, etc) things. 

I’m not sure what to do about it. However, it has given me a renewed motivation to start to give other people feedback and acknowledgement when I see something of theirs that is useful. I’m trying to build this muscle and habit to go look for a way to give someone feedback. (PS – if you now or in the future read any of my posts and find it useful – I would benefit from you leaving a comment or shooting me a private note or emailing me to let me know!)