My only caution is that good writers and LLMs look very similar, because LLMs were trained on a corpus of good writers. Good writers use semicolons and em-dashes. Sometimes we used bulleted lists or Oxford commas.
So we should make sure to follow that other HN rule, and assume the person on the other end is a good faith actor, and be cautious about accusing someone of using AI.
(I've been accused multiple times of being an AI after writing long well written comments 100% by hand)
Like, sure, LLM writing is almost always grammatically correct, spelled correctly, formatted correctly, etc., which tends to be true of good writing. But there's a certain style that it just can't get away from. It's not just the em-dashes, the semi-colons, or the bulleted lists. It's the short, punchy sentences, with few-to-no asides or digressions. Often using idiom, but only in a stale, trite, and homogenized manner. Real humans, are each different -- which lends a certain unpredictability to our writing, even if trying to write to a semi-formal standard, the way "good" writers often do -- but LLMs are all so painfully the same, and the output shows it.
Sometimes speedbumps that deter the lowest effort infractions are sufficient but I don't think this is that time.
On a per-prompt basis, or via a persistent system prompt or SKILL, or - god help us - via community-specific fine tuning, LLMs can convincingly affect insane variations in prose styling.
Think how easy it was to tell the differences a year or two ago. By 2030 there will be no way to ever tell.
The same is true of all video, and all generated content. The death of the Internet comes not from spam, or Facebook nonsense, but instead from the fact that soon?
You'll never know of you're interacting with a human or not.
Why like a post? Reply to it? Interact online? Why read a "news" story?
If I was X or Meta or Reddit, I would be looking at the end.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/1pyjkuf/i_...
Granted, it was in a thread about AI and maybe people were on edge, but I was still accused, which to be honest hurt a bit after the effort I put into writing it.
I've been talking to Opus a lot lately though, and this could almost be something it wrote; it also has the tendency to write AI-ish looking blurbs that are missing the information-free pitter-patter that bloats older and lesser LLMs. People are going to hate me for saying it but sometimes it words things in a way that are actually a joy to read, which is not an experience I've had with other models. Which is to say, maybe what we hate about AI has less to do with the visual patterns and more to do with what we expect them to mean about the content.
But I think there will always be that feeling of: a human being took the effort to write this. No matter how informative or well written an AI article or comment is, it isn't something we instinctively want to respond to, the way we do when we know there is a person behind the words.
This is very much a general "English reading skills" kind of test. A lot of people don't speak English as a first language, in which case I think it's entirely forgiveable. It's hard being attuned to things like writing style in a foreign language (I know from experience!). It's a pretty high level language skill, all things considered. And even among those who do speak English as a first language, there are many in this industry who don't have strong reading skills.
I do believe that personally my hit rate for calling out AI content is likely very high. Like many of us I've had the misfortune of reading more LLM output than is probably healthy for my brain.
One quick point:
>Those sentence constructions that are "tells" were also learned from good writers though.
I don't agree at all, I think the LLM style of writing is cribbed from like, LinkedIn and marketing slop. It's definitely not good writing.
It is amusing to witness this happening to others when it's someone like you who is a semi-public figure who should probably be well known on Reddit of all places.
Parent's last paragraph was definitely an ironic portray of LLM writing! Notice the double-dash emdash.
Personally, when I see the number of accusations thrown around, I very much suspect that the false positive rate is pretty high.
How do you know?
Uhh, isn't that how senior management in larger corporations communicates ...
(This isn’t necessarily true for first world countries, which is why I describe it for the non-U.S. folks in particular.)
Arguably it cannot avoid all the possible harm. For example, someone might generate a comment that makes false statements but cannot reasonably be detected as LLM-generated except perhaps by people who know (or determine) that the statements are false. But from a policy perspective, this is again not really different from if someone just decided to lie.
I use semicolons a lot. If this is the nouveau tell du jour for LLMs then I'm in trouble.
* A comment should be judged on its merits mostly, and if a comment seems to be substantive, interesting, or ask a thoughtful question, it should be acceptable. I think some LLM comments look superficially relevant, but a moment's thought can make me wonder if a comment actually added anything to the discussion, or did it sound like a rephrasing or generalization of a topic?
* Unfortunately for decent new users, account age is one metric on which to judge here.
* People who post here, should want to engage on a subject when they can, and disengage and be quiet when they can't. There is nothing wrong if you're not an expert on something, and it is not desired by the people here to have you alt-tab to an LLM to plug in extra perspective. We can all do that on our own.
People moving to careless writing for authenticity while good writing will be considered AI? funny. We want authentic human thought but can only detect human style.
This reddit thread that came out today is the perfect inversion of the discussion here: https://old.reddit.com/r/ChatGPTPromptGenius/comments/1rr19k...
No, only if you oversimplify "good writing" to a set of linguistic tics. LLM writing isn't good, it just overuses certain features without much judgement or context awareness. Some of those are writerly.
I don’t think there’s a lot to AI generated stuff on here that really bothered me to the point I wanted to call someone out.
Good writing is not created by Oxford commas or em-dashes. It comes from taste.
I disagree; good writing communicates an idea effectively. Using em dashes and semicolons — even though they have some meaning — confuses the reader because they add unnecessary noise. Surely you wouldn't say that adding such unnecessary punctuation as an interrobang is a sign of a good writer‽
Good writers ALWAYS use the Oxford comma.
While that might be ideal, is that really the case with most LLM training data? Does the curation process weed out all the slop from bad writers?
- You seem to have a rather high opinion of your own writing :-)
- Why the mix of tense (use/used)?
- Oxford commas are a monstrosity
Please don’t present your personal aesthetic beliefs as if those who disagree are morally wrong ‘bad people’. This ‘monstrosity’ comment in this context is derogatory-by-proxy of everyone (including the person you’re criticizing) who uses them, whether they know anything at all about your arguments that they should not, and that’s not really a good tone for us users here to be taking with each other.
Being anti-Oxford comma is baffling. It's almost zero extra effort and reduces confusion.
This is objectively wrong.
Perhaps always be sure to say something especially timely, original or insightful that an LLM can't have come up with.
