>“Don’t Be Evil” wasn’t just a slogan (...) —it was a north star for teams making hard calls
I've developed an involuntary, muscle-level reflex that forces me to close the tab immediately when I read these "not just X -- it was Y" LLMisms.
I realize the author might be human and am sorry if that's the case, but I can't help it.
The author might be human, but used an LLM to help them draft the letter. Something I do sometimes is brain dump into an LLM and have it help me organize it, and then I iteratively refine what I want to say.
20 some odd years ago I read zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance, and it made the point that writing is hard when trying to decide what to say and how to say it at the same time. Just stuck with me. Brain dumping into an LLM is one way to get some momentum.
That said, the negation parallel pattern LLMs overuse drives me nuts and I'm always having to manually edit those out. I can't help but wonder if there is an advantage to thinking like that that helps with coding. E.g. defensive negation in coding probably improves code quality, but it dilutes good writing when over used.
That example flowed well and didn't stand out to me.
But what happens when you no longer feel that you have a decent chance of being able to determine that something might have been created with LLM assistance? Do you not mind because you can't tell anyway, or do you refuse to read anything at all for fear of potentially consuming some LLM assisted work?
I'm fine with it as long as it's not full of the usual signals, because that's just bad writing that I don't enjoy.
Also comparing something to northstar is also the tell tell sign
Google removed "Don't be evil" from its Code of Conduct in May 2018. Shocking that it took 8 years for the author to make their ethical stand -- during which time Google stock went up 600%...
Same for me. It is the spectral signal of LLM writing. I'm a writer and last week I re-read one of my own books, that was written a few years before LLMs appeared. And I saw I used the "It's not X; it's Y" construction and I cringed, and now I have a moral dilemma: it feels so painful LLM robot speak that I want to rewrite that sentence for the next edition. But on the other hand, I want to keep it in because it is what I wrote and it was me talking not an LLM. Oh the moral dilemmas one must face!!!