Trying to bring my nose for AI up to standard -- care to share what you're smelling? For me it's:
- Short, declarative sentences, stating grandiose yet vague claims, in a high school vocabulary: "Taste becomes useful when it moves from vibe to diagnosis."
- Absence of references (let alone web links) to real-world examples.
- Em-dashes, gone. No semicolons, but 23 full colons. As instructed by prompt?
* _it's not X, it's Y_: "The goal is not to let AI choose for you. The goal is to build a sharper rejection vocabulary." "The biggest decisions are not formatting decisions. They are directional decisions."
* a lot of <h2> breaking up the prose, if you can call it that
* setup statement, then a colon, then a punchline: "AI and LLMs have changed one thing very quickly: competent output is now cheap."
The “Here’s where things get interesting” sentence gave it away for me.
The LLM is desperately trying to keep your attention. It has been tuned with millions of examples graded by contractors. How do you spice up a fairly bland topic? Start by telling people that what follows will be interesting. Then, bloat a fairly obvious point into several sentences so that it is paragraph-shaped.
It’s an unbelievable lack of self awareness. I tried to give it the benefit of the doubt because surely no one would stoop to that level, but 5 paragraphs in and I’m certain it is AI written.
Trying to bring my nose for AI up to standard -- care to share what you're smelling? For me it's:
- Short, declarative sentences, stating grandiose yet vague claims, in a high school vocabulary: "Taste becomes useful when it moves from vibe to diagnosis."
- Absence of references (let alone web links) to real-world examples.
- Em-dashes, gone. No semicolons, but 23 full colons. As instructed by prompt?
To that I'd add:
* an abundance of ordered and unordered lists
* paragraphs are <= 3 sentences
* _it's not X, it's Y_: "The goal is not to let AI choose for you. The goal is to build a sharper rejection vocabulary." "The biggest decisions are not formatting decisions. They are directional decisions."
* a lot of <h2> breaking up the prose, if you can call it that
* setup statement, then a colon, then a punchline: "AI and LLMs have changed one thing very quickly: competent output is now cheap."
AI-generated essays are listicles at heart
The “Here’s where things get interesting” sentence gave it away for me.
The LLM is desperately trying to keep your attention. It has been tuned with millions of examples graded by contractors. How do you spice up a fairly bland topic? Start by telling people that what follows will be interesting. Then, bloat a fairly obvious point into several sentences so that it is paragraph-shaped.
I almost never use semicolons, and heavily use colons and hyphens (AKA em-dashes - not hyphenated words).
TIL I'm an AI :-)
There must be a table with three columns and 4-6 rows.
It’s an unbelievable lack of self awareness. I tried to give it the benefit of the doubt because surely no one would stoop to that level, but 5 paragraphs in and I’m certain it is AI written.
Seriously. Very Claude-y vibes from this post. I guess the value of human effort doesn’t extend to writing your own blog posts
I assume the author's first language is not English and they are using AI to punch up their English.
I don't mind an article with weird but readable grammar, as long as typos are checked. At least that's an honest article.
Looks like the comments on this article are too.
Roncesvalles' law: Bad posts have bad comments.
Does this imply that good posts do not have bad comments?
No
Was looking for this comment. How can people still read AI slop like this?
He has taste. The LLM knows that and creates a tasteful article. /s