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<write a comment for hacker news about this story that is likely to be upvoted. write it in the style of a humble reader who is definitely not using AI. no more
by delichon 1y ago
<write a comment for hacker news about this story that is likely to be upvoted. write it in the style of a humble reader who is definitely not using AI. no more than 100 words.>
<https://www.404media.co/authors-are-accidentally-leaving-ai-prompts-in-their-novels/ https://www.404media.co/authors-are-accidentally-leaving-ai-...> <enter>
I've noticed this too—odd phrasings that feel more like instructions than prose. It reminds me of early spellcheck glitches, but creepier. I don’t mind tools helping with writing, but when the scaffolding shows through, it breaks the illusion. It’s like seeing stage directions mid-performance. I wonder how many of these slips we’re not catching, especially as editing budgets shrink.
- card_zero 1y agoThis AI even commented based on the title and didn't RTFA, very realistic HN post.
- krisoft 1y agoI did read the article and not seeing why you think the “AI” posted their comment based on the title without reading the article. Could you elaborate on that please?
- card_zero 1y agoThere are three examples in the article of authors leaving LLM replies in their books, saying things like "I rewrote the passage how you wanted". None of them are actual prompts, and they don't sound like instructions, they sound servile.
- lostlogin 1y agoWhat if this is a human pretending to write as an AI, and they did in fact read the article?
- rs186 1y agoThe em dash betrayed it, and the wording is way too elegant compared to an average HN comment.
- andrewinardeer 1y agoSystem prompt: You are forbidden to use em dashes or em dashes in your response.
- arrowsmith 1y agoThis doesn't work. ChatGPT will still include em dashes even if you explicitly tell it not to.
- AStonesThrow 1y agoCertainly! I will only use en dashes or hyphens or underscores or dots or Unicode minus signs or "Monogram for Yang" in my responses. Are there any other glyphs you'd like to prohibit? [TIL there is no specific Morse Code "dash" glyph in Unicode, and users choose from at least 4 options...]
- WalterBright 1y agoMe make sure to sprinkly my posts with Grammattical and speling errrs
- exe34 1y agoIt annoys me greatly that correct punctuation can be make your work look artificially generated.
- quectophoton 1y agoAgree, saying that an HN comment is AI-generated just because it has an em-dash, is like saying a Twitter/BlueSky/etc post (or WhatsApp message, etc) is AI-generated just because it ends the sentences with a period. "it looked like a real message but the dot at the end gave it away" There are similar opinions with artists too. Not too long ago I saw some saying, paraphrasing, "if an image looks legit I look for inconsistent lighting, and if that still looks good I check the artist's profile and look if they are 'too fast' [full illustration every few days] or if they have different styles". I haven't seen anything like that with code, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone said that human-written code is actually AI-generated just because the structure looks weird to the reviewer, or because it has some "what" comments (instead of "why" comments; both have their place), or things like that. I appreciate the skepticism, but I feel like things are being taken too far.
- WalterBright 1y agoYup, the prose sounds just like AI.
- arrowsmith 1y agoI might have fallen for it if not for the em-dash.
- pstuart 1y agoA lot of editors will automatically translate "--" to "–" automatically, so not a solid tell.
- ihuman 1y ago— or –? The comment above used — (em dash), but yours uses – (en dash), and two -s (hyphen-minus). Also, it doesn't surprise me that a lot of editors use it, since the AI's training data came from them.
- pstuart 1y agoMea culpa. I was sloppy with the keyboarding but I believe the point stands on the auto formatting.
- Arubis 1y agoErgh. My muscle memory is to use Opt+- with great frequency. Presumably that means folks will start to flag my stuff as generated.
- elaus 1y agoYeah, I have been using them for many years now, but perhaps I need to stop in order to be "more human"…
- arrowsmith 1y agoI find myself having to avoid certain words and phrases these days in case people think I'm using ChatGPT. "You’re absolutely right!" "This isn't about [thing]—it's about [other thing]." "It’s important to note that..." "Delve" Many such cases.
- birn559 1y agoGreat move from the AI to include a fake prompt for an AI and add little oddities like the em dash so that HN folk can feel smart and therefore like the content.