Just Do The Work

At a gathering last year, I met the slightly uncommon "IT professional living in a small town in the Midwest". Given that X is overworked, let's call him Mr. K. The conversation eventually became religious in nature, as it tends to when among a group of people who assume that they are all of the same religious persuasion, and Mr. K was one of the folks taking the lead.

It transpired that Mr. K had used LLMs to generate a series of first-person fictional writings from the perspective of a historical religious figure and posted them as content on one of the social media channels he ran. He emphasized the little time it had taken him, the perceived high quality of the content, and mostly the little time it had taken him. His confidence in not only admitting to this, but actually having done it, was rather breathtaking to me at the time.

Think for a moment. What spiritual, intellectual, emotional, and other personal benefit did Mr. K gain from instructing a machine to generate this for him?

None.

What spiritual, intellectual, emotional, and other personal benefit would he have gained from meditating upon that religious figure and writing those stories himself?

Every benefit.

If you wish to gain any personal benefit...

...just do the work.