3 ms·

>“Don’t Be Evil” wasn’t just a slogan (...) —it was a north star for teams making hard calls I've developed an involuntary, muscle-level reflex that forces me

by lbrito 4mo ago

>“Don’t Be Evil” wasn’t just a slogan (...) —it was a north star for teams making hard calls I've developed an involuntary, muscle-level reflex that forces me to close the tab immediately when I read these "not just X -- it was Y" LLMisms. I realize the author might be human and am sorry if that's the case, but I can't help it.

morganf 4mo ago
Same for me. It is the spectral signal of LLM writing. I'm a writer and last week I re-read one of my own books, that was written a few years before LLMs appeared. And I saw I used the "It's not X; it's Y" construction and I cringed, and now I have a moral dilemma: it feels so painful LLM robot speak that I want to rewrite that sentence for the next edition. But on the other hand, I want to keep it in because it is what I wrote and it was me talking not an LLM. Oh the moral dilemmas one must face!!!
- wrs 4mo ago
  What’s painful is that you’re thinking of letting robots suppress your authentic voice. Also, they got that way by copying humans, and if you continue to cede to them everything they copy, you’ll have no place left to be.
  - archagon 4mo ago
    There used to be (is...?) an xkcd IRC chatroom where you were only allowed to post things that had never been said before. Violations resulted in an n-minute ban, increasing with each violation. Maybe this is the future of all (interesting/worthwhile) human writing. Perpetually stay one step ahead of the machines.
- FloorEgg 4mo ago
  Surely there are times when using that pattern is a great way to communicate the point to be made. The problem is LLMs over-use it and apply it in lots of cases when it's not appropriate. My low-confidence theory is that it's an artifact of making the LLMs better at coding. My two cents: think carefully if that pattern is a really great way to say what you want to say in your book. If it is, leave it, if you could say it better, change it. How LLMs write and how people feel about them is evolving and the current dynamic will pass...
- int_19h 4mo ago
  Chatbots can be prompted to write into all kinds of styles, this is just their default "help me with the homework" presentation. It doesn't make sense to drop some construct where it is appropriate just because bots overuse it.
- runeb 4mo ago
  So it was you! /s
FloorEgg 4mo ago
The author might be human, but used an LLM to help them draft the letter. Something I do sometimes is brain dump into an LLM and have it help me organize it, and then I iteratively refine what I want to say. 20 some odd years ago I read zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance, and it made the point that writing is hard when trying to decide what to say and how to say it at the same time. Just stuck with me. Brain dumping into an LLM is one way to get some momentum. That said, the negation parallel pattern LLMs overuse drives me nuts and I'm always having to manually edit those out. I can't help but wonder if there is an advantage to thinking like that that helps with coding. E.g. defensive negation in coding probably improves code quality, but it dilutes good writing when over used.
- 3D39739091 4mo ago
  Brain dumping to a blank page and organizing your own thoughts is still an option.
  - FloorEgg 4mo ago
    Sure, so is calculating my taxes with pen and paper and no calculator, or doing a bathroom renovation without any power tools, or hiking off into the forest without any clothes or supplies, never to return.
    - nevertoolate 3mo ago
      So you think that having your words rewritten by an llm is somehow a more powerful, faster, safer way to write down your ideas? What do you want to say with this exactly? How you separate the “what” to write from “how” to write it? Why I engage with this comment? I truly believe that trusting your own knowledge and skills is the way forward. If you don’t have the skill? Build it. Don’t outsource thinking and learning.
tejohnso 4mo ago
That example flowed well and didn't stand out to me. But what happens when you no longer feel that you have a decent chance of being able to determine that something might have been created with LLM assistance? Do you not mind because you can't tell anyway, or do you refuse to read anything at all for fear of potentially consuming some LLM assisted work? I'm fine with it as long as it's not full of the usual signals, because that's just bad writing that I don't enjoy.
- lbrito 4mo ago
  I had exactly the same thought yesterday. For now the "its not Y, its X" idiom is a strong LLM marker. It should be fairly simple for the brain trust at the labs to get rid of it, and I'm sure they eventually will when prose writers becomes a relevant enough customer base. It already is very hard to identify AI text, and we probably consume a lot of it unbeknownst to ourselves. Its like microplastics now -- you can find it everywhere (or so the propaganda goes). I don't have a solution for when they fix that stupid idiom. I'm already reading less current things in general because of this, and might just do more of that. Even if its impossible to distinguish, I think people will pro-actively mark their stuff as LLM-free. There isn't a tech to support/prove that rn, but there might be in the future.
beambot 4mo ago
Google removed "Don't be evil" from its Code of Conduct in May 2018. Shocking that it took 8 years for the author to make their ethical stand -- during which time Google stock went up 600%...
- Ferret7446 4mo ago
  No it didn't, it's still in the employee handbook. As the saying goes, a lie will go around the world before the truth can put its pants on. What changed was Google's motto, and it changed from "don't be evil" to "do the right thing". The given reason is that the prior motto also included inaction.
- Rebelgecko 4mo ago
  It was still there when I started in the 2020s
bicepjai 4mo ago
Also comparing something to northstar is also the tell tell sign
pjmlp 4mo ago
I love this dichotomy. "Look what I did with Claude, LLMs are going to change our world!" "Lame author, used an LLM to write a blog post."

by lbrito 4mo ago

morganf 4mo ago

Same for me. It is the spectral signal of LLM writing. I'm a writer and last week I re-read one of my own books, that was written a few years before LLMs appeared. And I saw I used the "It's not X; it's Y" construction and I cringed, and now I have a moral dilemma: it feels so painful LLM robot speak that I want to rewrite that sentence for the next edition. But on the other hand, I want to keep it in because it is what I wrote and it was me talking not an LLM. Oh the moral dilemmas one must face!!!

wrs 4mo ago
What’s painful is that you’re thinking of letting robots suppress your authentic voice. Also, they got that way by copying humans, and if you continue to cede to them everything they copy, you’ll have no place left to be.
- archagon 4mo ago
  There used to be (is...?) an xkcd IRC chatroom where you were only allowed to post things that had never been said before. Violations resulted in an n-minute ban, increasing with each violation. Maybe this is the future of all (interesting/worthwhile) human writing. Perpetually stay one step ahead of the machines.
FloorEgg 4mo ago
Surely there are times when using that pattern is a great way to communicate the point to be made. The problem is LLMs over-use it and apply it in lots of cases when it's not appropriate. My low-confidence theory is that it's an artifact of making the LLMs better at coding. My two cents: think carefully if that pattern is a really great way to say what you want to say in your book. If it is, leave it, if you could say it better, change it. How LLMs write and how people feel about them is evolving and the current dynamic will pass...
int_19h 4mo ago
Chatbots can be prompted to write into all kinds of styles, this is just their default "help me with the homework" presentation. It doesn't make sense to drop some construct where it is appropriate just because bots overuse it.
runeb 4mo ago
So it was you! /s

FloorEgg 4mo ago

The author might be human, but used an LLM to help them draft the letter. Something I do sometimes is brain dump into an LLM and have it help me organize it, and then I iteratively refine what I want to say. 20 some odd years ago I read zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance, and it made the point that writing is hard when trying to decide what to say and how to say it at the same time. Just stuck with me. Brain dumping into an LLM is one way to get some momentum. That said, the negation parallel pattern LLMs overuse drives me nuts and I'm always having to manually edit those out. I can't help but wonder if there is an advantage to thinking like that that helps with coding. E.g. defensive negation in coding probably improves code quality, but it dilutes good writing when over used.

3D39739091 4mo ago
Brain dumping to a blank page and organizing your own thoughts is still an option.
- FloorEgg 4mo ago
  Sure, so is calculating my taxes with pen and paper and no calculator, or doing a bathroom renovation without any power tools, or hiking off into the forest without any clothes or supplies, never to return.
  - nevertoolate 3mo ago
    So you think that having your words rewritten by an llm is somehow a more powerful, faster, safer way to write down your ideas? What do you want to say with this exactly? How you separate the “what” to write from “how” to write it? Why I engage with this comment? I truly believe that trusting your own knowledge and skills is the way forward. If you don’t have the skill? Build it. Don’t outsource thinking and learning.

tejohnso 4mo ago

That example flowed well and didn't stand out to me. But what happens when you no longer feel that you have a decent chance of being able to determine that something might have been created with LLM assistance? Do you not mind because you can't tell anyway, or do you refuse to read anything at all for fear of potentially consuming some LLM assisted work? I'm fine with it as long as it's not full of the usual signals, because that's just bad writing that I don't enjoy.

lbrito 4mo ago
I had exactly the same thought yesterday. For now the "its not Y, its X" idiom is a strong LLM marker. It should be fairly simple for the brain trust at the labs to get rid of it, and I'm sure they eventually will when prose writers becomes a relevant enough customer base. It already is very hard to identify AI text, and we probably consume a lot of it unbeknownst to ourselves. Its like microplastics now -- you can find it everywhere (or so the propaganda goes). I don't have a solution for when they fix that stupid idiom. I'm already reading less current things in general because of this, and might just do more of that. Even if its impossible to distinguish, I think people will pro-actively mark their stuff as LLM-free. There isn't a tech to support/prove that rn, but there might be in the future.

beambot 4mo ago

Google removed "Don't be evil" from its Code of Conduct in May 2018. Shocking that it took 8 years for the author to make their ethical stand -- during which time Google stock went up 600%...

Ferret7446 4mo ago
No it didn't, it's still in the employee handbook. As the saying goes, a lie will go around the world before the truth can put its pants on. What changed was Google's motto, and it changed from "don't be evil" to "do the right thing". The given reason is that the prior motto also included inaction.
Rebelgecko 4mo ago
It was still there when I started in the 2020s

bicepjai 4mo ago

Also comparing something to northstar is also the tell tell sign

pjmlp 4mo ago

I love this dichotomy. "Look what I did with Claude, LLMs are going to change our world!" "Lame author, used an LLM to write a blog post."