alt Hacker NewsI don't really think that good writing and LLM writing looks all that similar. It's not always easy to spot (and maybe HN users aren't always doing a great job at it), but even the best LLM output tends to have an "LLM smell" to it that's hard to avoid.
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.
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Seems like the ability to distinguish LLM versus 'good human' writing depends on the size of the writing sample you have to look at (assuming you think it can be done). And that HN-scale posts are unlikely to be a long enough for useful discernment.
AI driven web design has the same smell, it’s quite fascinating to see the different tells in different media. Then it’s also quite fascinating to see those same tells change and evolve over time.
It's not whether it "really" looks similar. It's what people think, most of the people, and most of the people are neither known for practising good writing nor consuming good writing.
LLMs have good writing in the same way that technical manuals can have good writing. It might all be correct, but it's usually not a good read.
Those sentence constructions that are "tells" were also learned from good writers though. But here, I'll let you be the judge. This was a comment I wrote 100% myself on reddit, which was both downvoted and I got multiple DMs referencing it and telling me to "stop posting this AI slop":
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.
LLM writing is like AI-generated photos in that you don't notice the good instances of LLM writing, i.e. you don't know your false negative rate.
> It's the short, punchy sentences, with few-to-no asides or digressions.
Uhh, isn't that how senior management in larger corporations communicates ...
I can’t help thinking how ironic it would be if your comment is from an llm
> I don't really think that good writing and LLM writing looks all that similar.
How do you know?
I know the thing you are describing, but the real bitch is that you're actually just describing the lowest effort default outputs. The help-desk assistant persona.
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.