5 ms·

Why are these articles always AI written? What's the point of having AI generate a bunch of filler text?

alluro2 8mo ago
1) the person is either too lazy to write themselves anymore, when AI can do it in 15 sec after being provided 1 sentence of input, or they adopted a mindset of "bro, if I spent 2 hours writing it, my competitors already generated 50 articles in that time" (or the other variant - "bro, while those fools spend 2 hours to write an article, I'll be churning 50 using AI") 2) They are still, in whatever way, beholden to legacy metrics such as number of words, avg reading time, length of content to allow multiple ad insertion "slots" etc... Just the other day, my boss was bragging about how he sent a huge email to the client, with ALL the details, written with AI in 3 min, just before a call with them, only for the client on the other side to respond with "oh yeah, I've used AI to summarise it and went through it just now". (Boss considered it rude, of course)
- Shank 8mo ago
  Jason Meller was the former CEO of Kolide, which 1Password bought. I doubt he's beholden to anything like word count requirements. There is human written text in here, but it's not all human written -- and odds are since this is basically an ad for 1Password's enterprise security offerings that this is mostly intended as marketing, not as a substantive article.
  - terracatta 8mo ago
    Author here, I did use AI to write this which is unusual for me. The reason was I organically discovered the malware myself while doing other research on OpenClaw. I used AI for primarily speed, I wanted to get the word out on this problem. The other challenge was I had a lot of specific information that was unsafe to share generally (links to the malware, URLs, how the payload worked) and I needed help generalizing it so it could be both safe and easily understood by others. I very much enjoy writing, but this was a case where I felt that if my writing came off overly-AI it was worth it for the reasons I mentioned above. I'll continue to explore how to integrate AI into my writing which is usually pretty substantive. All the info was primarily sourced from my investigation.
    - Shank 8mo ago
      As a longtime customer (I have my challenge coin right here), and fan of your writing, I do implore you to consider that your writing has value without AI. I would rather read an article with 1/5 the words that expresses your thoughts than something fluffed out.
      - terracatta 8mo ago
        Thanks Shank, feedback received, and appreciate that you have enjoyed my other writing in the past. Thanks for being a customer.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 8mo ago
      > The other challenge was I had a lot of specific information that was unsafe to share generally (links to the malware, URLs, how the payload worked) and I needed help generalizing it so it could be both safe and easily understood by others. What risk would there be to sharing it? Like, sure, s/http/hXXp/g like you did in your comment upthread to prevent people accidentally loading/clicking anything, but I'm not immediately seeing the risk after that
      - terracatta 8mo ago
        Already received a private DM from someone who was accidentally infected from my comment upthread above and was angry at me. That's why.
        yjftsjthsd-h 8mo ago
        Okay, but how? Is someone reading commands in a "how the exploit works" write-up and... running them?
        moi2388 8mo ago
        Never underestimate human stupidity, especially when it comes to IT.
sd9 8mo ago
It’s on the front page of HN, generating clicks and attention. Most people don’t care in the ways that matter, unfortunately.
StilesCrisis 8mo ago
Yes!! I'm interested in the topic but the AI patterns are so grating once you learn to spot them.
- fiprisoner 8mo ago
  I was in prison as AI became a thing, didn't spend all that much time on the internet. Regardless, the LLM-writing stood out immediately. I didn't know what it was, but it didn't take any learning to realize that this is not how any normal human writes.
samlinnfer 8mo ago
Blog posts like this are for SEO. If the text isn't long enough, Google disregards it. Google has shown a strong preference for long articles. That's why the search results for "how to X" all starts with "what is X", "why do X", "why is doing X important" for 5 paragraphs before getting to the topic of "how to X".
nomagicbullet 8mo ago
This is a tough one in my opinion because the content of the article is valuable. Yes while reading it i noticed several AI tells. Almost like hearing a record scratch every other paragraph. But I was interested in the content so I kept reading mostly trying to ignore the "noise". The problem I fear is that with enough AI generated content around, I will become desensitized to that record scratching. Eventually between over-exposure, those who can't recognize the tells, people copying the writing they see..., we might have to accept what might become a prevalent new style of writing.

1) the person is either too lazy to write themselves anymore, when AI can do it in 15 sec after being provided 1 sentence of input, or they adopted a mindset of "bro, if I spent 2 hours writing it, my competitors already generated 50 articles in that time" (or the other variant - "bro, while those fools spend 2 hours to write an article, I'll be churning 50 using AI") 2) They are still, in whatever way, beholden to legacy metrics such as number of words, avg reading time, length of content to allow multiple ad insertion "slots" etc... Just the other day, my boss was bragging about how he sent a huge email to the client, with ALL the details, written with AI in 3 min, just before a call with them, only for the client on the other side to respond with "oh yeah, I've used AI to summarise it and went through it just now". (Boss considered it rude, of course)

Shank 8mo ago
Jason Meller was the former CEO of Kolide, which 1Password bought. I doubt he's beholden to anything like word count requirements. There is human written text in here, but it's not all human written -- and odds are since this is basically an ad for 1Password's enterprise security offerings that this is mostly intended as marketing, not as a substantive article.
- terracatta 8mo ago
  Author here, I did use AI to write this which is unusual for me. The reason was I organically discovered the malware myself while doing other research on OpenClaw. I used AI for primarily speed, I wanted to get the word out on this problem. The other challenge was I had a lot of specific information that was unsafe to share generally (links to the malware, URLs, how the payload worked) and I needed help generalizing it so it could be both safe and easily understood by others. I very much enjoy writing, but this was a case where I felt that if my writing came off overly-AI it was worth it for the reasons I mentioned above. I'll continue to explore how to integrate AI into my writing which is usually pretty substantive. All the info was primarily sourced from my investigation.
  - Shank 8mo ago
    As a longtime customer (I have my challenge coin right here), and fan of your writing, I do implore you to consider that your writing has value without AI. I would rather read an article with 1/5 the words that expresses your thoughts than something fluffed out.
    - terracatta 8mo ago
      Thanks Shank, feedback received, and appreciate that you have enjoyed my other writing in the past. Thanks for being a customer.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 8mo ago
    > The other challenge was I had a lot of specific information that was unsafe to share generally (links to the malware, URLs, how the payload worked) and I needed help generalizing it so it could be both safe and easily understood by others. What risk would there be to sharing it? Like, sure, s/http/hXXp/g like you did in your comment upthread to prevent people accidentally loading/clicking anything, but I'm not immediately seeing the risk after that
    - terracatta 8mo ago
      Already received a private DM from someone who was accidentally infected from my comment upthread above and was angry at me. That's why.
      - yjftsjthsd-h 8mo ago
        Okay, but how? Is someone reading commands in a "how the exploit works" write-up and... running them?
        moi2388 8mo ago
        Never underestimate human stupidity, especially when it comes to IT.

sd9 8mo ago

It’s on the front page of HN, generating clicks and attention. Most people don’t care in the ways that matter, unfortunately.

StilesCrisis 8mo ago

Yes!! I'm interested in the topic but the AI patterns are so grating once you learn to spot them.

fiprisoner 8mo ago
I was in prison as AI became a thing, didn't spend all that much time on the internet. Regardless, the LLM-writing stood out immediately. I didn't know what it was, but it didn't take any learning to realize that this is not how any normal human writes.

samlinnfer 8mo ago

Blog posts like this are for SEO. If the text isn't long enough, Google disregards it. Google has shown a strong preference for long articles. That's why the search results for "how to X" all starts with "what is X", "why do X", "why is doing X important" for 5 paragraphs before getting to the topic of "how to X".

nomagicbullet 8mo ago

This is a tough one in my opinion because the content of the article is valuable. Yes while reading it i noticed several AI tells. Almost like hearing a record scratch every other paragraph. But I was interested in the content so I kept reading mostly trying to ignore the "noise". The problem I fear is that with enough AI generated content around, I will become desensitized to that record scratching. Eventually between over-exposure, those who can't recognize the tells, people copying the writing they see..., we might have to accept what might become a prevalent new style of writing.