alt Hacker NewsI wanted you to be wrong, and to be able to make this an example of us over-reacting to certain trigger words created by AI, but unfortunately I just scanned the first couple paragraphs with pangram and it reported 100% AI, so you're probably correct.
I get a funny feeling in my stomach over the idea that common and effective means of communication (i.e. it's not X it's Y) have become faux pas to use because of AI. I think it's something about these phrases being taken away from us more-so than the AI inventing them.
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Em-dashes would be a loss, they can be a better flowing version of a parenthetical. “It’s not X it’s Y” is not a loss. This phrase is a symptom of a situation where the author wants to subvert expectations but doesn’t have the space, ability, or faith in their audience to organically set up X as the thing to be contrasted against.
I suspect it became an LLM tell because it is over-represented in text that’s easily available to the models but that most people don’t actually want to consume: marketing text, LinkedIn posts, that sort of thing.
All these "is this AI" checkers should be banned, as they never can reach 100% accuracy.
Have you also scanned earlier work of the author with pangram to establish a baseline? Pangram is not without problems.
That’s not common and effective, it’s buzz feed style articles.
Why trust pangram? What are their accuracy scores in the wild? Ai detection is notoriously difficult.
Fwiw, I only did the first 300 words (signed into pangram) and it seemingly correctly noted that there were 2 (mostly) human-authored sentences in there
What's wild to me is that:
1. People are responding to this article like it's hitting a nerve
2. In most Ubers you already don't talk to the driver (yellow cabs are higher variance in NYC). Doesn't seem like anything's being lost in that case.
3. There are enormous safety benefits to waymo, mobility benefits for youth (and elderly) that are afforded by this technology. It's not clear why people argue "Uber" is better than waymo. A few years ago there were arguments against Uber! (A technology which, again, provides a huge benefit, especially if you live in an area where people were previously expected to go out for drinks and then drive home)
I think it's fair to point out real issues at these companies. But we should be clear-eyed about which technologies we want to accelerate vs slow down
Pangram should be paying HNers for how often we pitch needing to use their product by name to believe things as obvious as "a long form news article cramming every AI trope it can fit from start to finish" being AI written.
At this point I'm surprised when a news article isn't largely AI written, let alone one using the default tone! I don't even mind it as much as others seem to, it's just turning into more and more of a rarity for a news article to not be these last few years and so is now what sticks out.