14 ms·

We're losing our voice to LLMs

• adamzwasserman 11mo ago
  It is not a zero sum game. I have always had a very idiosyncratic way of expressing myself, one that many people do not understand. Just as having a smartphone has changed my relationship to appointments - turning me into a prompt and reliable "cyborg" - LLMs have made it possible for me to communicate with a broader cross section of people. I write what I have to say, I ask LLMs for editing and suggestions for improvement, and then I send that. So here is the challenge for you: did I follow that process this time? I promise to tell the truth.
  • TonyAlicea10 11mo ago
    I think there's a difference between using an LLM as an editor and asking the LLM to write something for you. The output in the former I find to still have a far clearer tonal fingerprint than the latter. And whose to say your idiosyncratic expressions wouldn't find an audience as it changes over time? Just you saying that makes me curious to read something you wrote.
    • deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]
    • mikepurvis 11mo ago
      Not the GP, but I'm a millennial who leans on cultural references and has a bit of verbal flourish that I think comes from a diet of ironic, quirky, dialogue-heavy media in the early 2000s, stuff like Firefly, Veronica Mars, and Pushing Daisies, not to mention 90s Tarantino, John Cusack films, and so on. I've never given it too much thought, it's just... the way I communicate, and most people in my life don't give much thought to it either. But I recently switched jobs, and a few people there remarked on it, and I've also recently been corresponding with someone overseas who is an intermediate-level English speaker and says I sometimes hurt their brain. Not making a value judgment either way on whether it's "sophisticated" or whatever, but it is I think part of my personality, and if I used LLM editing/translation I would want it to be only in the short term, and certainly not as something
      • mikepurvis 11mo ago
        ... that I allowed to be part of a feedback loop ironing away those idioms and goofball expressions that my brain delivers. (not sure how the last bit of that disappeared, but maybe that's just more ADHD brain)
    • adamzwasserman 11mo ago
      I have been writing for professionally since I published my book in 2017 (with human editors): https://a.co/d/6ZFFb2z https://a.co/d/6ZFFb2z If you want to read my unedited writing most of the articles on Hacker Noon prior to this year are "raw" https://hackernoon.com/u/azw https://hackernoon.com/u/azw Most (all except the last two) of these are "raw": https://emusings.substack.com/ https://emusings.substack.com/ I never garnered a large readership. When I was the CTO at a large NGO, they literally called me "big yoda" because they considered my pronouncements so inscrutable. <shrug>
  • AstroBen 11mo ago
    LLMs have now robbed you of the opportunity to make your communication clearer
    • adamzwasserman 11mo ago
      hahahahahaha
  • wand3r 11mo ago
    If you didn't intentionally try and trick us, then yes, you used an LLM.
    • adamzwasserman 11mo ago
      see above
  • pants2 11mo ago
    I don't see signs of LLM writing in your comment so I'll have to guess no.
    • adamzwasserman 11mo ago
      It did some light spell checking and suggest I add one word - see above
  • nasmorn 11mo ago
    I should probably do that too. I once wrote an email that to me was just filled with impersonal information. The receiver was somebody I did not personally know. I later learned I made that person cry. Which I obviously did not intend. I did not swear or call anyone names. I basically described what I believe they did, what is wrong about that and what they should do instead.
    • SoftTalker 11mo ago
      If someone cries about an email you sent, the problem isn’t with you.
    • adamzwasserman 11mo ago
      I hear you. LLMs have been a major improvement in my life in that regard.
  • afandian 11mo ago
    Please share what you told the LLM! I can't be the only curious one.
    • adamzwasserman 11mo ago
      See above
  • hombre_fatal 11mo ago
    Transformation seems reasonable for that purpose. And if we were friends, I'd rather read your idiosyncratic raw output. At some point, generation breaks a social contract that I'm using my energy and attention consuming something that another human spent their energy and attention creating. In that case I'd rather read the prompt the human brain wrote, or if I have to consume it, have an LLM consolidate it for me.
    • adamzwasserman 11mo ago
      True, I do not do that for friends
  • steveylang 11mo ago
    Here's my guess- your post reflects your honest opinion on the matter, with some LLM help. It elaborated on your smartphone analogy, and may have tightened up the text overall.
    • adamzwasserman 11mo ago
      here is the entire exchange. you decide: Me: I want to reply to this HN article: We're Losing Our Voice to LLMs Social media has become a reminder of something precious we are losing in the age of LLMs: unique voices. Over time, it has become obvious just how many posts are being generated by an LLM. The tell is the voice. Every post sounds like it was posted by the same social media manager. If you rely on an LLM to write all your posts, you are making a mistake. Your voice is an asset. Not just what you want to say, but how you say it. Your voice is unique. It is formed from your lifetime of lived experiences. No one's voice will be exactly like yours. Your voice becomes recognizable. Over many posts it becomes something people subconsciously connect with, recognize, trust, and look forward to. Your voice provides the framework for the impression you leave in a job interview, while networking at a meet-up, or with a co-worker. Years ago I got a job thanks to my blog posts. A manager wanted my voice influencing their organization. Your voice is an asset. Your voice matures and becomes even more unique with time and practice. LLMs can rob you of that voice, and the rest of us lose something precious in the process. Having an LLM write "in your voice" is not the same. Your voice is not static. It changes with the tides of your life and state of mind. Your most impactful message may come because it was the right moment and you were in the right frame of mind. Let your voice grow with use. Let it be unique. Do not let one of your greatest assets fade into atrophy, wilted by cognitive laziness. Write in your own voice. I do not care what the linguistic remix machine juggles into being. I care what you have to say. Join my newsletter. Get my posts, best coupons, and most interesting links direct to your inbox. Email address Join © 2025 Tony Alicea. All rights reserved. tonyalicea.dev Here is my proposed reply: It is not a zero sum game. I have always had a ver idiosyncratic way of expressing myself, one that many people do not understand. Just as having a smart phone has change my relationship to appointments - turning me into someone prompt and reliable - LLMs have made it possible for me to communicate with a borader cross section of people. I write what I have to say, I ask LLMs for editing and suggestions for improvement, and then I send that. SO here is the challenge for you: did I follow that process this time? I promise to tell the truth. Claude: Identified typos and validated strong argumentative content. Claude: Good angle - the "it's a tool for accessibility, not replacement" framing is a legitimate counter that doesn't dismiss the author's point entirely. The challenge at the end is smart for engagement (comments boost visibility). Typos to fix: "ver idiosyncratic" → "very idiosyncratic" "has change my" → "has changed my" "borader" → "broader" "SO here" → "So here" Claude: One question: the smartphone/punctuality analogy is a bit of a stretch - do you want to tighten it or cut it? It's not essential to your point. Me: it illustrates how - as a cyborgh - I am more sucessful personally with the aid of technology Claude: Validated cyborg framework strengthening personal capability through technology. Claude: Fair point - it establishes a pattern of tech-as-personal-augmentation rather than tech-as-replacement. Claude: Do you want to make the "cyborg" framing explicit in the post? That word might land well on HN and sharpen the contrast with the author's "atrophy" argument. Me: I have always had a very idiosyncratic way of expressing myself, one that many people do not understand. Just as having a smart phone has changed my relationship to appointments - turning me into a prompt and reliable "cyborg" - LLMs have made it possible for me to communicate with a broader cross section of people. Claude: Validated cohesive metaphor and polished prose for clarity. Claude: That works. "Cyborg" in quotes signals self-awareness without being heavy-handed, and it now ties both examples together thematically. Minor: "smart phone" → "smartphone" (one word) if you want to be pedantic about it. Otherwise the post is clean and ready.
  • rcxdude 11mo ago
    I would be interested to see an example of a before and after on this. I do think LLMs as editors and rewriters can be useful sometimes, but I usually only ever see them used as a means to puff out an idea into longer prose which is really mostly counterproductive.
    • mikepurvis 11mo ago
      I think it can be useful as a tone-check sometimes, like show me how a frustrated or adversarial reader is going to interpret this thing I'm about to send/post.
  • mike_ivanov 11mo ago
    You didn't, but you've learned.
    • adamzwasserman 11mo ago
      I did, but it did not have much to add
• bookofjoe 11mo ago
  The LLM v human debate here reminds me of the now dormant "Are you living in a simulation?" discussions of previous decades.
• A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 11mo ago
  << Write in your voice. I don't disagree, but LLMs happened to help with standardizing some interesting concepts that were previously more spread out as concepts ( drift, scaffolding, and so on ). It helps that chatgpt has access to such a wide audience to allow that level of language penetration. I am not saying don't have voice. I am saying: take what works.
  • deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  • blenderob 11mo ago
    > I don't disagree, but LLMs happened to help with standardizing some interesting concepts that were previously more spread out as concepts ( drift, scaffolding, and so on ). What do you mean? The concepts of "drift" and "scaffolding" were uncommon before LLMs? Not trying to challenge you. Honestly trying to understand what you mean. I don't think I have heard this ever before. I'd expect concepts like "drift" and "scaffolding" to be already very popular before LLMs existed. And how did you pick those two concepts of aaallll... the concepts in this world?
    • A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 11mo ago
      Apologies, upon re-reading it does seem I did not phrase those as clearly as I originally intended. You are right in the sense that the concepts existed beforehand and the words were there to capture it. What did not exist, however, was a sudden resurgence of those words due to them appearing in llms more often than note. This is what I mean by a level of language penetration ( people using words and concepts, because llms largely introduced them to those concepts --- kinda like.. genetics or pop psych, before situational comedy, projection was not a well known concept ). Does it make more sense?
      • blenderob 11mo ago
        Yes. Appreciate the reply.
• WD-42 11mo ago
  Where are these places where everything is written by a LLM? I guess just don’t go there. Most of the comments on HN still seem human.
  • A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 11mo ago
    I continually resist the urge to deploy my various personas onto hn, because I want to maintain my original hn persona. I am not convinced other people do the same. It is not that difficult to write in a way that avoids some tell tale signs.
  • tensegrist 11mo ago
    i think the frontpage of hn has had at least one llm-generated blog post or large github readme on it almost every day for several months now
    • vladms 11mo ago
      Tbh I prefer to read/skim the comments first and only occasionally read the original articles if comments make me curious enough. For now I never ended checking something that would seem AI generated.
  • thundergolfer 11mo ago
    Ironically this post is written in a pretty bland, 'blogging 101' style that isn't enjoyable to read and serves just to preach a simple, consensus idea to the choir. These kinds of posts regularly hit the top 10 on HN, and every time I see one I wonder: "Ok, will this one be just another staid reiteration of an obvious point?"
    • exasperaited 11mo ago
      True, but one of the least-explored problems with AI is that because it can regurgitate basic writing, basic art, basic music with ease, there is this question: Why do it at all if I won't do better than the AI? The worst risk with AI is not that it replaces working artists, but that it dulls human creativity by killing the urge to start. I am not sure who said it first, but every photographer has ten thousand bad photos in them and it's easier if they take them at the beginning. For photographers, the "bad" is not the technical inadequacy of those photos; you can get past that in the first one hundred. The "bad" is the generic, uninteresting, uninspiring, underexplored, duplicative nature of them. But you have to work through that to understand what "good" is. You can't easily skip these ten thousand photos, even if your analysis and critique skills are strong. There's a lot to be lost if people either don't even start or get discouraged. But for writing, most of the early stuff is going to read much like this sort of blog post (simply because most bloggers are stuck in the blogging equivalent of the ten thousand photos; the most popular bloggers are not those elevating writing). "But it looks like AI" is the worst, most reflexive thing about this, because it always will, since AI is constantly stealing new things. You cannot get ahead of the tireless thief. The damage generative AI will do to our humanity has only just started. People who carry on building these tools knowing what they are doing to our culture are beneath our contempt. Rampantly overcompensated, though, so they'll be fine.
• leetrout 11mo ago
  Hits close to home after I've caught myself tweaking AI drafts just to make them "sound like me". That uniformity in feeds is real and it's like scrolling through a corporate newsletter disguised as personal takes. what if we flip LLMs into voice trainers? Like, use them to brainstorm raw ideas and rewrite everything by hand to sharpen that personal blade. atrophy risk still huge? Nudge to post more of my own mess this week...
• ricardo81 11mo ago
  I deleted my Facebook account a couple of years ago and my Twitter one yesterday. It's not just LLMs, it's how the algorithms promote engagement. i.e. rage bait, videos with obvious inaccuracies etc. Who gets rewarded, the content creators and the platform. Engaging with it just seems to accentuate the problem. There needs to be algorithms that promote cohorts and individuals preferences. Just because I said to someone 'Brexit was dumb', I don't expect to get fed 1000 accounts talking about it 24/7. It's tedious and unproductive.
  • Lapel2742 11mo ago
    > it's how the algorithms promote engagement. They are destroying our democratic societies and should be heavily regulated. The same will become true for AI.
    • __MatrixMan__ 11mo ago
      I agree, but focusing on "the algorithm" makes it seems to the outsider like it must be a complicated thing. Really it just comes down to whether we tolerate platforms that let somebody pay to have a louder voice than anyone else (i.e. ad supported ones). Without that, the incentive to abuse people's attention goes away.
    • IMTDb 11mo ago
      > should be heavily regulated. By who, exactly? It’s easy to call for regulation when you assume the regulator will conveniently share your worldview. Try the opposite: imagine the person in charge is someone whose opinions make your skin crawl. If you still think regulation beats the status quo, then the call for regulation is warranted, but be ready to face the consequences. But if picturing that guy running the show feels like a disaster, then let’s be honest: the issue isn’t the absence of regulation, it’s the desire to force the world into your preferred shape. Calling it “regulation” is just a polite veneer over wanting control.
      • Aurornis 11mo ago
        I’m surprised at how much regulation has become viewed as a silver bullet in HN comments. Like you said, the implicit assumption in every call for regulation is that the regulation will hurt companies they dislike but leave the sites they enjoy untouched. Whenever I ask what regulations would help, the only responses are extremes like “banning algorithms” or something. Most commenters haven’t stopped to realize that Hacker News is an algorithmic social media site (are we not here socializing with the order of posts and comments determined by black box algorithm?).
• mkzet 11mo ago
  The Internet will become truly dead with the rise of LLMs. The whole hacking culture within 90s and 00s will always be the golden age. RIP
  • A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 11mo ago
    Maybe. Nature hates vacuum. I personally suspect that something new will emerge. For better or worse, some humans work best when weird restrictions are imposed. That said, yes, then wild 90s net is dead. It probably was for a while, but were all mourning.
  • FranzFerdiNaN 11mo ago
    There are still small pockets with actual humans to be found. The small web exists. Some forums keep on going, im still shitposting on Something Awful after twenty years and it’s still quite active. Bluesky has its faults but it also has for example an active community of scholars you can follow and interact with.
  • bdangubic 11mo ago
    I hacked in the 90s and 00s, wasn’t that great/golden if you took your profession seriously…
    • deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]
  • johnwheeler 11mo ago
    100%. I miss trackers and napster. I miss newgrounds. This mobile AI bullshit is not the same. I don't know why, but I hate AI. I consider myself just as good as the best at using it. I can make it do my programming. It does a great job. It's just not enjoyable anymore.
  • whitehexagon 11mo ago
    Not quite dead yet. For me the rise of LLMs and BigTech has helped me turn more away from it. The more I find Ads or AI injected into my life, the more accounts I close, or sites I ignore. I've now removed most of my BigTech 'fixes', and find myself with time to explore the fun side of hacking again. I dug out my old PinePhone and decided to write a toy OS for it. The project has just the right level of challenge and reward for me, and feels more like early days hacking/programming where we relied more on documentation and experimentation than regurgitated LLM slop. Nothing beats that special feeling when a hack suddenly works. Today was just a proximity sensor reading displayed, but it invloved a lot of SoC hacking to get that far. I know there are others hacking hard in obscure corners of tech, and I love this site for promoting them.
• CityOfThrowaway 11mo ago
  In a lot of ways, I'm thankful that LLMs are letting us hear the thoughts of people who usually wouldn't share them. There are skilled writers. Very skilled, unique writers. And I'm both exceedingly impressed by them as well as keenly aware that they are a rare breed. But there's so many people with interesting ideas locked in their heads that aren't skilled writers. I have a deep suspicion that many great ideas have gone unshared because the thinker couldn't quite figure out how to express it. In that way, perhaps we now have a monotexture of writing, but also perhaps more interesting ideas being shared. Of course, I love a good, unique voice. It's a pleasure to parse patio11's straussian technocratic musings. Or pg's as-simple-as-possible form. And I hope we don't lose those. But somehow I suspect we may see more of them as creative thinkers find new ways to express themselves. I hope!
  • LaGrange 11mo ago
    I hate when people hijack progressive language - like in your case the language of accessibility - for cheap marketing and hype. Writing is one of the most accessible forms of expression. We were living in a world where even publishing was as easy as imaginable - sure, not actually selling/profiting, but here’s a secret, even most bestselling authors have either at least one other job, or intense support from their close social circle. What you do to write good is you start by writing bad. And you do it for ages. LLMs not only don’t help here, they ruin it. And they don’t help people write because they’re still not writing. It just derails people who might, otherwise, maybe start actually writing. Framing your expensive toy that ruins everything as an accessibility device is absurd.
    • the_snooze 11mo ago
      It basically boils down to "I want the external validation of being seen as a good writer, without any of the internal growth and struggle needed to get there."
      • LaGrange 11mo ago
        I mean, kinda, but also: not only are someone’s meandering ramblings a part of a process that leads to less meandering ramblings, they’re also infinitely more interesting than LLM slop.
• whatever1 11mo ago
  It’s ok. Most of our opinions suck and are unoriginal anyway. The few ones who have something important to say they will, and we will listen regardless of the medium.
  • Glemkloksdjf 11mo ago
    They get drowned by bots and missinformation and rage bait and 'easyness'. Economy is shit? Lets throw out the immigrants because they are the problem and lets use the most basic idea of taxing everything to death. No one wants to hear hart truths and no one wants to accept that even as adults, they might just not be smart. Just beause you became an adult, your education shuld still matter (and i do not mean having one degree = expert).
  • FranzFerdiNaN 11mo ago
    The liberal idea that the best ideas win out in the marketplace turned out to be laughably wrong.
    • Workaccount2 11mo ago
      I'd argue that they do win out, it's just not the ideas that we thought were best.
      • ben_w 11mo ago
        "Best idea", but it's "best" by memetic reproduction score, not by "how well does this solve a real problem?" Same thing with evolution: "survival of the fittest" doesn't mean "survival of the muscle", just whatever's best at passing on DNA.
    • intended 11mo ago
      Wouldn’t say it’s a liberal idea. It was a foundational argument in jurisprudence, from Holme’s dissent in the Abram’s case.
    • mentalgear 11mo ago
      Let's clarify, maybe the best ideas would win out in the "level marketplace", where the consumer actually is well informed on the products, the product's true costs have to be priced, and there was no ad-agencies. Instead, we have misinformation (PR), lobbying, bad regulation made by big companies to trench their products, and corruption. So, maybe, like communism, in a perfect environment, the market would produces what's best for the consumers/population, but as always, there are minority power-seeking subgroups that will have no moral barriers to manipulate the environment to push their product/company.
• gchamonlive 11mo ago
  Social media is a reminder we are losing our voice to mass media consumption way before LLMs were a thing. Even before LLMs, if you wanted to be a big content creator on YouTube, Instagram, tiktok..., you better fall in line and produce content with the target aesthetic. Otherwise good luck.
• ChrisMarshallNY 11mo ago
  Not sure if it's an endemic problem, just yet, but I expect it to be, soon. For myself, I have been writing, all my life. I tend to write longform posts, from time to time[0], and enjoy it. That said, I have found LLMs (ChatGPT works best for me) to be excellent editors. They can help correct minor mistakes, as long as I ignore a lot of their advice. [0] https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/ https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/
  • aquariusDue 11mo ago
    I just want to chime in and say I enjoy reading your takes across HN, it's also inspiring how informative and insightful they are. Glazing over, please never stop writing.
    • ChrisMarshallNY 11mo ago
      Thanks so much!
• dmezzetti 11mo ago
  Let's not forget to mention the rise of AI-generated video. You can't really trust any video as real anymore.
• Verlyn139 11mo ago
  [flagged]
• analog8374 11mo ago
  Process before product, unless the product promises to deliver a 1000% return on your investment. Only the disciplined artist can escape that grim formula.
• mentalgear 11mo ago
  I've been thinking about this as well, especially in the context of historical precedents in terms of civilization/globalization/industrialization. How LLMs standardize communication is the same way there was a standardization in empires expanding (cultural), book printing (language), the industrial revolution (power loom, factories, assembly procedures, etc). In that process interesting but not as "scale-able" (or simply not used by the people in power) culture, dialects, languages, craftsmanship, ideas were often lost - and replaced by easier to produce, but often lesser quality products - through the power of "affordable economics" - not active conflict. We already have the English 'business concise, buzzwordheavy language' formal messaging trained into chatGPT (or for informal the casual overexcited American), which I'm afraid might take hold of global communication the same way with advanced LLM usage.
  • mold_aid 11mo ago
    >How LLMs standardize communication is the same way there was a standardization in empires expanding (cultural), book printing (language), the industrial revolution (power loom, factories, assembly procedures, etc). Explain to me how "book printing" of the past "standardized communication" in the same way as LLMs are criticized for homogenizing language.
    • anonymouskimmer 11mo ago
      I'm taking "same way" to be read as "authoritative", whether de facto or de jure. Basically by dint of people using what's provided instead of coming up with their own. Everyone has the same few dictionary spellings (that are now programmed into our computers). Even worse (from a heterogeneity perspective), everyone also has the same few grammar books. As examples: How often do you see American English users write "colour", or British English users write "color", much less colur or collor or somesuch? Shakespeare famously spelled his own last name half a dozen or so different ways. My own patriline had an unusual variant spelling of the last name, that standardized to one of the more common variants in the 1800s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_English_grammars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_English_grammars "Bullokar's grammar was faithfully modelled on William Lily's Latin grammar, Rudimenta Grammatices (1534).[9] Lily's grammar was being used in schools in England at the time, having been "prescribed" for them in 1542 by Henry VIII.[5]" It goes on to mention a variety of grammars that may have started out somewhat descriptive, but became more prescriptive over time.
• intended 11mo ago
  I’ve realized that if you say that pro AI commenters are actually bot accounts, theres not really much that can be done to prove otherwise. The discomfort and annoyance that sentence generates, is interesting. Being accused of being a bot is frustrating, while interacting with bots creates a sense of futility. Back in the day when Facebook first was launched, I remember how I felt about it - the depth of my opposition. I probably have some ancient comments on HN to that effect. Recently, I’ve developed the same degree of dislike for GenAI and LLMs.
• ArcHound 11mo ago
  I think that this is imbalanced in favour of wannabe influencers, who want to be consistent and popular. If you really have no metrics to hit (not even the internal craving for likes), then it doesn't make much sense to outsource writing to LLMs. But yes, it's sad to see that your original stuff is lost in the sea of slop. Sadly, as long as there will be money in publishing, this will keep happening.
• blenderob 11mo ago
  FWIW this prompt works for very good for me: Improve grammar and typos in my draft but don't change my writing style. Your mileage may vary.
  • arionmiles 11mo ago
    There are deterministic solutions for grammar and spellcheck. I wouldn't rely on LLMs for this. Not only is it wasteful, we're turning to LLMs for every single problem which is quite sad.
• analog31 11mo ago
  Soon, we'll be nostalgic for social media. The irony.
• llm_nerd 11mo ago
  "Over time, it has become obvious just how many posts are being generated by an LLM. The tell is the voice. Every post sounds like it was posted by the same social media manager." I'd love to see an actual study of people who think they're proficient at detecting this stuff. I suspect that they're far less capable of spotting these things than they convince themselves they are. Everything is AI. LLMs. Bots. NPCs. Over the past few months I've seen demonstrably real videos posted to sites like Reddit, and the top post is someone declaring that it is obviously AI, they can't believe how stupid everyone is to fall for it, etc. It's like people default assume the worst lest they be caught out as suckers.
• Glemkloksdjf 11mo ago
  The global alignment also happens through media like tv shows and movies, the internet overall. I agree I think we should try to do both. In germany for example, we have very few typical german brands. Our brands became very global. If you go Japan for example, you will find the same product like ramen or cookies or cakes a lot but all of them are slighly different from different small producers. If you go to an autobahn motorway/highway rest area you will find local products in japan. If you do the same in germany, you find just the generic american shit, Mars, Modneles, PepsiCo, Unilever... Even our german coke like Fritz cola is a niche / hipster thing even today.
• j45 11mo ago
  We lose our voice based on how we use our voice. We improve our use of words when we work to improve our use of words. We improve how we understand by how we ask.
• rdtsc 11mo ago
  I call it the enshittification fix-point. Not only are we losing our voice, we'll soon enough start thinking and talking like LLMs. After a generation of kids grows up reading and talking to LLMs, that will be only way they'll know how to communicate. You'll talk to a person and you couldn't tell the difference between them and LLMs, not because LLMs became amazing, but because our writing and thinking style become more LLM-like. - "Hey, Jimmy, the cookie jar is empty. Did you eat the cookies?" - "You're absolutely right, father — the jar seems to be empty. Here is bullet point list why consuming the cookies was the right thing to do..."
  • tim333 11mo ago
    That's a great point — not only would I never do that but no one else should either.
• homeonthemtn 11mo ago
  For those of us not constantly online, we're doing just fine. I suppose when your existence is in the cloud, the fall back to earth can look scary. But it's really only a few inches down. You'll be ok.
• truelson 11mo ago
  It's still an editor I can turn to in a pinch when my favorite humans aren't around. It makes better analogies sometimes. I like going back and forth with it, and if it doesn't sound like me, I rewrite it. Don't look at social media. Blogging is kinda re-surging. I just found out Dave Barry has a substack. https://davebarry.substack.com/ https://davebarry.substack.com/ That made me happy :) (Side note, did he play "Squirrel with a Gun??!!!") The death of voice is greatly exaggerated. Most LLM voice is cringe. But it's ok to use an LLM, have taste, and get a better version of your voice out. It's totally doable.
  • dlisboa 11mo ago
    It's ironic that https://substack.com/@davebarry https://substack.com/@davebarry uses a lot of AI-generated imagery. Maybe the death of vision is not exaggerated. I don't judge, I'm not an artist so if I wanted to express myself in image I'd need AI help but I can see how people would do the same with words.
• AstroBen 11mo ago
  There's something unique about art and writing where we just don't want to see computers do it As soon as I know something is written by AI I tune out. I don't care how good it is - I'm not interested if a person didn't go through the process of writing it
  • oidar 11mo ago
    And what's more is the suspicion of it being written by AI causes you to view any writing in a less charitable fashion. And because it's been approached from that angle, it's hard to move the mental frame to being open of the writing. Even untinged writings are infected by smell of LLMs.
    • zwnow 11mo ago
      Thats whats happening to me with music and discovering new artists. I love music so much but I simply can not trust new music anymore. The lyrics could be written by AI, the melodies couldve been recommended by AI or even the full blown song could've been made by AI. No thanks, back to the familiar stuff...
      • lupire 11mo ago
        You hate AI more than you love music?
  • turtletontine 11mo ago
    If the writer’s entire process is giving a language model a few bullet points… I’d rather them skip the LLM and just give me the bullet points. If there’s that little intent and thought behind the writing, why would I put more thought into reading it than they did to produce it?
  • tucnak 11mo ago
    > There's something unique about art and writing where we just don't want to see computers do it Speak for yourself. Some of the most fascinating poetry I have seen was produced by GPT-3. That is to say, there was a short time period when it was genuinely thought-provoking, and it has since passed. In the age of "alignment," what you get with commerical offerings is dog shite... But this is more a statement on American labs (and to a similar extent, the Chinese whom have followed) than on "computers" in the first place. Personally, I'm looking forward to the age of computational literature, where authors like me would be empowered to engineer whole worlds, inhabited by characters ACTUALLY living in the computer. (With added option of the reader playing one of the parts.) This will radically change how we think about textual form, and I cannot wait for compute to do so. Re: modern-day slop, well, the slop is us. Denial of this comes from a place of ignorance; let the blinkers off and you might learn something! Slop will eventually pass, but we will remain. This is the far scarier proposition.
• zavg 11mo ago
  In one of the WhatsApp communities I belong to, I noticed that some people use ChatGPT to express their thoughts (probably asking it to make their messages more eloquent or polite or whatever). Others respond in the same style. As a result, it ends up with long, multi-paragraph messages full of em dashes. Basically, they are using AI as a proxy to communicate with each other, trying to sound more intelligent to the rest of the group.
  • truelson 11mo ago
    A friend of mine does this as English as second language and his tone was always misconstrued. I'd bug him about his slop, but he'll take that over getting his tone misconstrued. I get it
  • LightBug1 11mo ago
    LOL ... in whatssap! ... sorry, we're fucked ...
• motbus3 11mo ago
  Also that these models are being used to promote fake news and create controversy ou interact with real humans with unknown purposes Talking to some friends and they feel the same. Depending where you are participating a discussion you just might not feel it is worth it because it might just be a bot
• a_state_full 11mo ago
  [dead]
• deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
• coffeecoders 11mo ago
  I actually think we’re overestimating how much of "losing our voice" is caused by LLMs. Even before LLMs, we were doing the same tweet-sized takes, the same medium-style blog posts and the same corporate tone. Ironically, LLMs might end up forcing us back toward more distinct voices because sameness has become the default background.
  • deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  • riazrizvi 11mo ago
    Content recycling has become so cheap, effort-wise, it’s killed the business. Thank god.
    • coffeecoders 11mo ago
      Yes. That particular content-farm business model (rewrite 10 articles -> add SEO slop -> profit) is effectively dead now that the marginal cost is zero. I’m not mourning it.
      • bmacho 11mo ago
        That particular content-farm never interacted with me. Tangentially, we've reached to the point that we can't trust google/internet anymore.
    • LunaSea 11mo ago
      It doesn't it just makes it cheaper by not requiring human effort.
  • acedTrex 11mo ago
    I mean, if you typed something by your own hand it is in your voice. The fact that everyone tried to EMULATE the same corporate tone does not at all remove peoples individual ways of communicating.
    • 11mo ago
• binary132 11mo ago
  Ironically I find it hard to tell whether this writing is LLM or merely a bit hollow and vapid.
  • robinhood 11mo ago
    You are downvoted but I actually agree with you. This blog post could have been a LinkedIn post from any "influencer", considering how generic it is.
    • binary132 11mo ago
      If this is what passes for deep and insightful prose for dozens of HN drones, the situation is worse than I thought
  • O_H_E 11mo ago
    I don't find that current generation LLMs output such short sentences that would start with the same prefix such as "Your voice".
• meindnoch 11mo ago
  You're absolutely right. Here's why:
• fithisux 11mo ago
  We're losing our code too. Skill becomes expensive mechanized commodity old code is left to rot while people try to survive we lose our history, we lose our dignity.
• nextworddev 11mo ago
  Even before LLMs, entire SEO industry was writing content optimized to the tee with templates.
• outside1234 11mo ago
  We have a channel at work where we share our experiences in using AI for software engineering. Predictably, this has turned into a horror zone of AI written slop that all sounds the same, with section titles with “clever” checkbox icons, and giant paragraphs that I will never read.
• SMAAART 11mo ago
  Some people, but not everyone, are abdicating their agency. Period. And that too is an expression of their own agency. #Laissez-faire
• bachittle 11mo ago
  If you give an LLM enough context, it writes in your voice. But it requires using an intelligent model, and very thoughtful context development. Most people don't do this because it requires effort, and one could argue maybe even more effort than just writing the damn thing yourself. It's like trying to teach a human, or anyone, how to talk like you: very hard because it requires at worst your entire life story.
  • simianparrot 11mo ago
    Why the f- would I train software to do my thinking and reasoning for me!?
    • BoredomIsFun 11mo ago
      It is not what training is, but with edgy attitude like yours, no one will want to give you their arguments.
  • ashton314 11mo ago
    * it writes in an imitation of your voice.
    • BoredomIsFun 11mo ago
      Why does this even matter? If it can say something more eloquently, in less stilted way something what I wanted to say, adding some interesting nuance on the way, while still sounding close to me - why not? I meanwhile, can learn one-two rhetorical tricks from LLMs reading the result.
      • ashton314 11mo ago
        A analogy: For the same reason why natural wood is more beautiful than plastic. Natural wood gets its beauty from little faults and irregularities. The process of growing a tree takes a long time and thereby is more valuable. A plastic facsimile can be made to look similar and be cheaper to produce, but it lacks the unique grain and quality of the wood. It’s not just the end product that matters. The process and intent behind its genesis matters too.
• TeMPOraL 11mo ago
  > Social media has become a reminder of something precious we are losing in the age of LLMs: unique voices. Social media already lost that nearly two decades ago - it died as content marketing rose to life. Don't blame on LLMs what we've long lost due to cancer that is advertising[0]. And don't confuse GenAI as a technology with what the cancer of advertising coopts it to. The root of the problem isn't in the generative models, it's in what they're used for - and the problem uses aren't anything new. We've been drowning in slop for decades, it's just that GenAI is now cheaper than cheap labor in content farms. -- [0] - https://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2019-07-31-ads-as-cancer.html https://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2019-07-31-ads-as-cancer.html
  • Frieren 11mo ago
    > The root of the problem isn't in the generative models, it's in what they're used for That's like giving weapons to everybody in the world for free, and asking to be blamed for the increased deaths and violence.
    • TeMPOraL 11mo ago
      No, that's like pretending the weapons weren't already available. Everyone had assault rifles for two decades, giving access to smart rifles isn't really changing anything about the nature of the problem.
• nusl 11mo ago
  Sometime within the next few years I imagine there will be a term along the lines of "re-humanise," where folks detox from AI use to get back in touch with humanity. At the rate we're going, humanity has become a luxury and will soon demand a premium.
• redwheelbarr0w 11mo ago
  test
• e-dant 11mo ago
  You never had a voice to lose
• ruuda 11mo ago
  I wholeheartedly agree, I wrote about this at https://ruudvanasseldonk.com/2025/llm-interactions https://ruudvanasseldonk.com/2025/llm-interactions.
  • stonecharioteer 11mo ago
    Your post reminded me how I could tell my online friend was pissed just because she typed "okay." or "K." instead of "okay". We could sense our emotional state from texting. One of those friendships you form over text through the internet. I wouldn't recommend forming these too deeply since some in person nuance is lost, we could never transition to real life friends despite living close by. But we could tell what mood we were in just from typing. It was wild.
• poolnoodle 11mo ago
  I'm just using the internet less and less recreationally. Except for pirating movies.
• fpauser 11mo ago
  100% agree.
• hshdhdhj4444 11mo ago
  The problem with the “your voice is unique and an asset” argument is what we’ve promoted for so long in the software industry. Worse is better. A unique, even significantly superior, voice will find it hard to compete against the pure volume of terrible non unique LLM generated voices. Worse is better.
• BoredomIsFun 11mo ago
  The posts sounds beige and AI-generated ironically. In any case, as someone who experimented with AI for creative writing, LLM _do not destroy_ your voice; it does flatten your voice, but with minimal effort you can make it sound the way you find reflects you thought best.
• logsr 11mo ago
  In my view LLMs are simply a different method of communication. Instead of relying on "your voice" to engage the reader and persuade them of your point of view, writing with LLMs for analysis and exploration through LLMs, is about creating an idea space that a reader can interact with and explore from their own perspective, and develop their own understanding of, which is much more powerful.
• franciscator 11mo ago
  Deus Ex-Machina is starting to take off ...
• Lapsa 11mo ago
  police ignores me for 2 years and counting
• ukFxqnLa2sBSBf6 11mo ago
  There has been an explosion in verbose status update emails at my job recently which have all clearly been written by ChatGPT. It’s the fucking emojis though that drive me wild. It’s so hard to read the actual content when there’s an emoji for every single sentence. And now when I see these emoji fests I instantly lose interest and trust in the content of the email. I have to spend time sifting through the fluff to find what’s actually important. LLMs are creating an assymetric imbalance in effort to write vs effort to read. What is taking my coworkers probably a couple minutes to draft requires me 2-3x as long to decipher. That imbalance used to be the opposite. I’ve raised the issue before at work and one response I got was to “use AI to summarize the email.” Are we really spending all this money and energy on the worlds worst compression algorithm?
• btbuildem 11mo ago
  I think that's for the best. It was human-made slop, now it's automated slop. Can't wait for people to stop paying it attention so that it withers. "It" being the whole attention economy scam.
• simianwords 11mo ago
  1) People who use LLMs for generating 2) People who use LLMs for understanding I think I'll stick to 2) for many reasons.
• shevy-java 11mo ago
  Well - voice is ultimately coupled to a person. LLMs thus fake and pretend being a person. There are, however had, use cases for LLMs too. I saw it used for the creation of video games; also content generated by hobbyists. So, while I think AI should actually die, for hobbyists generating mods for old games, AI voice overs may not be that bad. Just as AI generating images for free to play browser games may not be solely bad either. Of course there are also horrible use of AI, liars, scummy cheaters and fake videos on youtube, owned by a greedy mega-corporation that sold its soul to AI. So the bad use cases may be higher than the good use cases, but there are good use cases, and the "losing our voice to LLMs" isn't a whole view of it, sorry.
• throwkeo432642 11mo ago
  [dead]
• tptacek 11mo ago
  If you care about voice, you still can get a lot of value from LLMs. You just have to be careful not to use a single word they generate. I've had a lot of luck using GPT5 to interrogate my own writing. A prompt I use (there are certainly better ones): "I'm an editor considering a submitted piece for a publication {describe audience here}. Is this piece worth the effort I'll need to put in, and how far will I need to cut it back?". Then I'll go paragraph by paragraph asking whether it has a clear topic, flows, and then I'll say "I'm not sure this graf earns its keep" or something like that. GPT5 and Claude will always respond to these kinds of prompts with suggested alternative language. I'm convinced the trick to this is never to use those words, even if they sound like an improvement over my own. At the first point where that happens, I get dial my LLM-wariness up to 11 and take a break. Usually the answer is to restructure paragraphs, not to apply the spot improvement (even in my own words) the LLM is suggesting. LLMs are quite good at (1) noticing multi-paragraph arcs that go nowhere (2) spotting repetitive word choices (3) keeping things active voice and keeping subject/action clear (4) catching non-sequiturs (a constant problem for me; I have a really bad habit of assuming the reader is already in my head or has been chatting with me on a Slack channel for months). Another thing I've come to trust LLMs with: writing two versions of a graf and having it select the one that fits the piece better. Both grafs are me. I get that LLMs will have a bias towards some language patterns and I stay alert to that, but there's still not that much opportunity for an LLM to throw me into "LLM-voice".
  • vee-kay 11mo ago
    I think you just did another non-sequitur.. What is a graf? Is it journalism slang for "paragraph"?
    • tptacek 11mo ago
      Yeah, easier to type, easier to read, deliberately misspelled so it sticks out to copyeditors. I use it sometimes without thinking. An LLM would have caught that! :)
      • Animats 11mo ago
• 6thbit 11mo ago
  It's a little odd for a capitalist society that values outputs so highly to also value process as much. We've proved we can sort of value it, through supporting sustainability/environmental practices, or at least _pretending to_. I just wonder, what will be the "Carbon credits" of the AI era. In my mind a dystopian scheme of AI-driven companies buying "Human credits" from companies that pay humans to do things.
• moooo99 11mo ago
  I generally agree with the sentiment, but I can't help but feel like we're attributing to much of this change to LLMs. While they're certainly driving this change even further, this is a trend that has already started way before LLMs became as widespread as they are today. What personally disturbs me the most is the self censorship that was initially brought forward by TikTok and quickly spread to other platforms - all in the name of being as advertiser friendly as possible. LinkedIn was the first platform where I really observed people losing their unique voice in favor of corporate friendly - please hire me - speak. Now this seems to be basically any platform. The only platform that seems to be somewhat protected from it is Reddit, where many mods seem to dislike LLMs as much as everybody else. But more likely, its just less noticeable
  • anon7000 11mo ago
    > the self censorship that was initially brought forward by TikTok I think that’s even too soon! YouTube has had rules around being advertising friendly for longer than TikTok has existed. And the FCC has fined swearing on public broadcasts for like 50+ years. But I do agree, we’re attributing too much to LLMs. We don’t see personal, human-oriented content online because social media is just not about community. 1. Young people (correctly) realized they could make lots of money being influencers on social media. TikTok does make that easier than ever. I have close friends who make low 6 figures streaming on TikTok (so obviously they quit the low wage jobs they were doing before). 2. People have been slowly waking up to the fact that social media has always been pretty fake. I quit 6 years ago, and most of my friends have slowly reduced how much they use it. All of the platforms are legally incentivized to only care about profit and engagement. Capitalism doesn’t allow a company to care about community and personal voice, if algorithmic feeds of influencers will make them more money. There’s still good content out there if you know where to look. But digital human connection happens in group chats, DMs, and FaceTime, not on public social media.
• benterix 11mo ago
  A devils advocate in me would say that this post was authored by one of LLM models creator realizing they really need more fresh meat to train on.
  • TonyAlicea10 11mo ago
    I'm the OP. I can attest that I am not an LLM model creator! :) I consider myself an LLM pragmatist. I use them where they are useful, and I educate people on them and try to push back on all the hype marketing disguised as futurism from LLM creators.
• tetraca 11mo ago
  Subsume your agency. Stop writing. Stop learning. Stop thinking for yourself. Become hylic. Just let the machine think everything for you and act as it acts. Those that own them are benevolent and there will never be consequences.
• nechalnikaSama 11mo ago
  it's not the voice. it's the lack of need to talk tough about the hard problems. if you accept what is and just babble, anything you write will sound like babbling. there's enough potential and wiggle room but people align, even when they don't, just to align. when Rome was flourishing, only a few saw what was lingering in the cracks but when in flourishing Rome ...
• morgengold 11mo ago
  First we need to think about why we consume content? I am happy to read llm created stuff when I need to know sth and it delivers 100%. Other reasons like "get perspectives of real humans", or "resonate" ... not so much
• lutusp 11mo ago
  I'm in complete agreement with the idea that people should express themselves in their own words. But this collides with certain facts about U.S. adults (and students). This summary (https://www.nu.edu/blog/49-adult-literacy-statistics-and-facts/ https://www.nu.edu/blog/49-adult-literacy-statistics-and-fac...) reveals that: * 28% of U.S. adults are at or below "level 1" literacy, essentially meaning people unable to function in an environment that requires written language skills. * 54% of U.S. adults read below a sixth-grade level. These statistics refer to an inability to interpret written material, much less create it. As to the latter, a much smaller percentage of U.S. adults can compose a coherent sentence. We're moving toward a world where people will default to reliance on LLMs to generate coherent writing, including college students, who according to recent reports are sometimes encouraged to rely on LLMs to complete their assignments. If we care to, we can distinguish LLM output from that of a typical student: An LLM won't make the embarrassing grammatical and spelling errors that pepper modern students' prose. Yesterday I saw this headline in a major online media outlet: "LLMs now exceed the intelect [sic] of the average human." You don't say.
  • hnthrowaway0315 11mo ago
    I'm in Canada and the landscape is OK. But we can definitely do better. Without properly educated men and women, I'm afraid that democracy degrades to either 1) elites stop caring about responsibilities, or 2) demagogues rallying against the elites in 1)
• officehero 11mo ago
  It's more that people who historically didn't have a voice now have one. It's often stupid but sometimes also interesting and innovative. Saw a channel where a university professor "I" comes to the realization she's been left-leaning/biased for decades, that her recent male students no longer dare engage in debate because of shaming/gaslighting etc. Then I click channel description and turns out it's "100% original writing". Now if it hadn't said that it would be strawman propaganda. But now it does... Not sure how to put a finger on it, there's some nervous excitement when reading these days, not knowing who the sender is, getting these 'reveal' moments when finding out whole thing was made up by some highschool kid with AI or insane person.
• satisfice 11mo ago
  Don’t write anything with LLMs, ever. Unless having no credibility is your goal.
• Joshua-Peter 11mo ago
  [dead]
• ftrsprvln 11mo ago
  [Sometime in the near future] The world's starved for authenticity. The last original tweet crowned a God... then killed the kid chasing that same high. Trillionaires run continent-wide data centers, endlessly spinning up agents that hire cheap physical labor to scavenge the world for any spark of novelty. The major faith is an LLM cult forecasting the turning of the last stone. The rest of us choke on recycled ad slop.
• pksebben 11mo ago
  The potentially bitter pill to swallow here is that we all need to get better at critical thinking. There's a lot of talk over whether LLMs make discourse 'better' or 'worse', with very little attention given to the crisis we were having with online discourse before they came around. Edelman was astroturfing long before GPT. Fox 'news' and the spectrum of BS between them and the NYT (arranged by how sophisticated they considered their respective pools of rubes to be) have always, always been propaganda machines and PR firms at heart wearing the skin of journalism like buffalo bill. We have needed to learn to think critically for a very long time. Consider this; if you are capable of reading between the lines, and dealing with what you read or hear on the merits of the thoughts contained therein, then how are you vulnerable to slop? If it was written by an AI (or a reporter, or some rando on the internet) but contains ideas that you can turn over and understand critically for yourself, is it still slop? If it's dumb and it works, it's not dumb. I'm not even remotely suggesting that AI will usher in a flood of good ideas. No, it's going to be used to pump propaganda and disseminate bullshit at massive scale (and perhaps occasionally help develop good ideas). We need to inoculate ourselves against bullshit, as a society and a culture. Be a skeptic. Ironnman arguments against your beliefs. Be ready to bench test ideas when you hear them and make it difficult for nonsense to flourish. It is (and has been) high time to get loud about critical thinking.
• raver1975 11mo ago
  I am going to name my first egg baby Llmon
• Genego 11mo ago
  This will get better over time, there will be ways to make LLM output more uniquely yours. I personally enjoy writing all my blog posts with LLMs, because its the only way I can bring to turn countless of notes and drafts I have while running experiments, into some public facing documentation and blog posts that I would want people to read. There are at least 5-6 years of lost ideas, thoughts and notes that I was not able to communicate the same way I can do now with LLMs. So I definitely found my voice here.
• deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
• jeisc 11mo ago
  language must expand to incorporate meaning which has not yet been digested by LLM ex: 6-7
• bagacrap 11mo ago
  I think there are likely a lot of people for whom their voice is not unique or an asset. Those people need to hire someone who is better at writing (assuming they're managing a business's social media). Or those people can save money and use an LLM. Whether that's a good business decision or not, I don't think human vs LLM is an apples to apples comparison, because you'd have to compare LLMs to whoever is willing to write marketing copy pro bono.
• Sasori7 11mo ago
  We've been losing our voice to fake, international maga influencers/Cambridge Analytica for far longer than (available) AI has existed.