6 ms·

Nonsense. I’ve written bland prose for a story and AI made it much better by revising it with a prompt such as this: “Make the vocabulary and grammar more sophi

by lurquer 8mo ago

Nonsense. I’ve written bland prose for a story and AI made it much better by revising it with a prompt such as this: “Make the vocabulary and grammar more sophisticated and add in interesting metaphors. Rewrite it in the style of a successful literary author.” Etc.

co_king_5 8mo ago
[dead]
- adambb 8mo ago
  The great promise and the great disaster of LLMs is that for any topic on which we are "below average", the bland, average output seems to be a great improvement.
  - dsf2d 8mo ago
    Counter intuitively... this is a disaster. We dont need more average stuff - below average output serves as a proxy for one to direct their resources towards producing output of higher-value.
- Selkirk 8mo ago
  I have a colleague that recently self-published a book. I can easily tell which parts were LLM driven and which parts represent his own voice. Just like you can tell who's in the next stall in the bathroom at work after hearing just a grunt and a fart. And THAT is a sentence an LLM would not write.
  - lurquer 8mo ago
    > And THAT is a sentence an LLM would not write. Really? Here's some alternatives. Some are clunky. But, some aren't. …just like you can tell whose pubes those are on the shared bar of soap without launching a formal investigation. …just like you can tell who just wanked in the shared bathroom by the specific guilt radiating off them when they finally emerge. …just like you can tell which of your mates just shitted at the pub by who's suddenly walking like they're auditioning for a period drama. …just like you can tell which coworker just had a wank on their lunch break by the post-nut serenity that no amount of hand-washing can disguise. …just like you can tell whose sneeze left that slug trail on the conference room table by the specific way they're not making eye contact with it. …just like you can identify which flatmate's cum sock you've accidentally stepped on by the vintage of the crunch. …just like you can tell who just crop-dusted the elevator by the studied intensity with which one person is suddenly reading the inspection certificate.
    - tartoran 8mo ago
      It's still on you to pick what the LLMs regurgitate. If you don't have a style or taste you will simply make choices that would give you away. And if you already have your own taste and style LLMs don't have much to offer in this regard.
      - lurquer 8mo ago
        Indeed. Wholeheartedly agree. Just as it’s on you to pick the word you want when using Roger’s Thesaurus. My workflow, when using it for writing, is different than when coding. When coding, I want an answer that works and is robust. When writing, I want options. You pick and choose, run it through again, perhaps use different models, have one agent critique the output of another agent, etc. This iterative process is much different than asking an LLM to ‘write an article about [insert topic)’ and hope for the best. In any case, I’ve found the LLMs when properly used greatly benefit prose and knee-jerk comments about how all LLM prose sound the same are a bit outdated… (understandable as few authors are out there admitting they are using AI… there’s a stigma about it. But, trust me, there are some beautiful soulful pieces of prose out there that came out of a properly used LLM… it’s just that the authors aren’t about to admit it.)
    - co_king_5 8mo ago
      [dead]
      - lurquer 8mo ago
        One shouldn’t expect the ‘joke’ to have identical tone. (As if that’s even measurable.) The point was simply that these examples are not trending towards the average or ‘ablating’ things as the article puts it. They seem fairly creative, some are funny, all are gross… and they are the result of very brief prompt… you can ‘sculpt’ the output in ways that go way beyond the boring crap you typically find in AI-generated slop.
- lurquer 8mo ago
  My point is simply that the tell-tale marks of LLM prose can be remediated through prompts. I have a very large ‘default prompt’ that explicitly deals with the more obnoxious grammatical structures emblematic of LLMs. I would wager I deal with more amateurishly created AI slop on a doily basis than you do. (Legal field, where everyone is churning out LLM-written briefs.) Most of it is instantly recognizable. And, all of it can be fixed with more careful prompt-engineering. If you think you can spot well-crafted LLM prose generated by someone proficient at the craft of prompt-engineering by, to use an analogy to the early days of image creation, counting how many fingers the hand has, you’re way behind.
- FooBarWidget 8mo ago
  So what even if that is true? You confirmed that it improved upon what he could manually produce, which is still a win. It doesn't always make sense to pay $20000 to a professional author to turn it into a masterpiece.
  - co_king_5 8mo ago
    [dead]
matternous 8mo ago
Why don't you post it so we can see how much better the AI made it?
- lurquer 8mo ago
  Because HN isn't a literary forum. Maybe it sucks. Maybe it doesn't. But, I notice a curious pretentiousness when it comes to some people's assumptions about their ability to identify LLM prose. Obviously, the generic first-pass 'chat' crap is recognizable; the kind of garbage that is filling up blog-posts on the internet. But, one shouldn't underestimate the power of this technology when it comes to language. Hell, the 'coding' skills were just a pleasant side-effect of the language training, if you recall. These things have been trained on millions of works of prose of all styles: its their heart and soul. If you think the superficial monotonous style is all there is, you're mistaken. Most of the obnoxious LLM-style stuff is an artifact of the conversational training with Kenyans and the like in the early days. But, you can easily break through that with better prompts (or fine-tuning it yourself.) That said, one shouldn't conflate the creation of the content and structure and substance of a work of prose with the manner in which it is written. You're not going to get an LLM to come up with a decent plot... yet. But, as far as fleshing out the framework of a story in a synthetic 'voice' that sounds human? Definitely doable.

by lurquer 8mo ago

co_king_5 8mo ago

[dead]

adambb 8mo ago
The great promise and the great disaster of LLMs is that for any topic on which we are "below average", the bland, average output seems to be a great improvement.
- dsf2d 8mo ago
  Counter intuitively... this is a disaster. We dont need more average stuff - below average output serves as a proxy for one to direct their resources towards producing output of higher-value.
Selkirk 8mo ago
I have a colleague that recently self-published a book. I can easily tell which parts were LLM driven and which parts represent his own voice. Just like you can tell who's in the next stall in the bathroom at work after hearing just a grunt and a fart. And THAT is a sentence an LLM would not write.
- lurquer 8mo ago
  > And THAT is a sentence an LLM would not write. Really? Here's some alternatives. Some are clunky. But, some aren't. …just like you can tell whose pubes those are on the shared bar of soap without launching a formal investigation. …just like you can tell who just wanked in the shared bathroom by the specific guilt radiating off them when they finally emerge. …just like you can tell which of your mates just shitted at the pub by who's suddenly walking like they're auditioning for a period drama. …just like you can tell which coworker just had a wank on their lunch break by the post-nut serenity that no amount of hand-washing can disguise. …just like you can tell whose sneeze left that slug trail on the conference room table by the specific way they're not making eye contact with it. …just like you can identify which flatmate's cum sock you've accidentally stepped on by the vintage of the crunch. …just like you can tell who just crop-dusted the elevator by the studied intensity with which one person is suddenly reading the inspection certificate.
  - tartoran 8mo ago
    It's still on you to pick what the LLMs regurgitate. If you don't have a style or taste you will simply make choices that would give you away. And if you already have your own taste and style LLMs don't have much to offer in this regard.
    - lurquer 8mo ago
      Indeed. Wholeheartedly agree. Just as it’s on you to pick the word you want when using Roger’s Thesaurus. My workflow, when using it for writing, is different than when coding. When coding, I want an answer that works and is robust. When writing, I want options. You pick and choose, run it through again, perhaps use different models, have one agent critique the output of another agent, etc. This iterative process is much different than asking an LLM to ‘write an article about [insert topic)’ and hope for the best. In any case, I’ve found the LLMs when properly used greatly benefit prose and knee-jerk comments about how all LLM prose sound the same are a bit outdated… (understandable as few authors are out there admitting they are using AI… there’s a stigma about it. But, trust me, there are some beautiful soulful pieces of prose out there that came out of a properly used LLM… it’s just that the authors aren’t about to admit it.)
  - co_king_5 8mo ago
    [dead]
    - lurquer 8mo ago
      One shouldn’t expect the ‘joke’ to have identical tone. (As if that’s even measurable.) The point was simply that these examples are not trending towards the average or ‘ablating’ things as the article puts it. They seem fairly creative, some are funny, all are gross… and they are the result of very brief prompt… you can ‘sculpt’ the output in ways that go way beyond the boring crap you typically find in AI-generated slop.
lurquer 8mo ago
My point is simply that the tell-tale marks of LLM prose can be remediated through prompts. I have a very large ‘default prompt’ that explicitly deals with the more obnoxious grammatical structures emblematic of LLMs. I would wager I deal with more amateurishly created AI slop on a doily basis than you do. (Legal field, where everyone is churning out LLM-written briefs.) Most of it is instantly recognizable. And, all of it can be fixed with more careful prompt-engineering. If you think you can spot well-crafted LLM prose generated by someone proficient at the craft of prompt-engineering by, to use an analogy to the early days of image creation, counting how many fingers the hand has, you’re way behind.
FooBarWidget 8mo ago
So what even if that is true? You confirmed that it improved upon what he could manually produce, which is still a win. It doesn't always make sense to pay $20000 to a professional author to turn it into a masterpiece.
- co_king_5 8mo ago
  [dead]

matternous 8mo ago

Why don't you post it so we can see how much better the AI made it?

lurquer 8mo ago
Because HN isn't a literary forum. Maybe it sucks. Maybe it doesn't. But, I notice a curious pretentiousness when it comes to some people's assumptions about their ability to identify LLM prose. Obviously, the generic first-pass 'chat' crap is recognizable; the kind of garbage that is filling up blog-posts on the internet. But, one shouldn't underestimate the power of this technology when it comes to language. Hell, the 'coding' skills were just a pleasant side-effect of the language training, if you recall. These things have been trained on millions of works of prose of all styles: its their heart and soul. If you think the superficial monotonous style is all there is, you're mistaken. Most of the obnoxious LLM-style stuff is an artifact of the conversational training with Kenyans and the like in the early days. But, you can easily break through that with better prompts (or fine-tuning it yourself.) That said, one shouldn't conflate the creation of the content and structure and substance of a work of prose with the manner in which it is written. You're not going to get an LLM to come up with a decent plot... yet. But, as far as fleshing out the framework of a story in a synthetic 'voice' that sounds human? Definitely doable.