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supermattyesterday at 9:03 PM4 repliesview on HN

How is this? https://claude.ai/share/99bfee0f-bab9-4593-aabb-377e71f1151d


Replies

miyojiyesterday at 9:13 PM

Yes, the original prompt is 10000% better than the AI output, because it shows me exactly how much the author (you?) cares about this topic and how much effort they're willing to put into communication, which is barely any at all.

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an0malousyesterday at 10:19 PM

I think you intentionally sandbagged your prompt by dragging on and being repetitive and it’s still a better read than the LLM output.

There’s also a difference between “please edit my writing” and “please generate a blog post from these bullet points.”

stordoffyesterday at 9:53 PM

FWIW, I tried to read the AI version first, and found myself bouncing back to the prompt multiple times. The AI version just reads as flat, impersonal, and as if it has had all the corners sanded off (both in style and content). The prompt conveys much more about what _you_ want to say, and is easier to read without zoning out and losing interest.

If you must use AI in this way, I'd tell it to take a _much_ lighter touch. It cleans things up without washing away the personality of your writing. ChatGPT example:

> adjust the following for spelling and grammar, making MINIMAL alterations to the original wording and content. do NOT rewrite, just clean up what is already there: [post]

https://chatgpt.com/share/6a8382b9-3620-83eb-b17e-4397aee5ad...

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swatcoderyesterday at 9:26 PM

Sure enough, the prompt is infinitely more expressive and interesting.

AI writing is like the voice anonymizer they'd use in TV interviews when they wanted to hide the identity of the person speaking. The output is more adherant to convention but likewise more impersonal and exhausting, and when it's used by too many people it's so indistint that it becomes noise.

It might look good to you in isolation, because you're excited to see that it says what you meant to say without the features you feel self-conscious about, but to others it just reads like yet another sample of the same old AI slop. The message gets entirely lost behind that.